BORROW AND BOWRING
WE now have Borrow a youth of twenty-two. His life has been full of
weird adventure, but to all appearances quite unprofitable in any worldly
sense. His future is nebulous. Dreams are dreamed; visions are
vanished. He seems to be farther from fame and fortune than when he set
off in the coach for London, with the green box in the boot carrying his
Danish ballads and his “Ab Gwilym.” His castles in the clouds have come
crashing to earth in irremediable ruin.
Borrow was indignant with a scurvy world which had treated him harshly.
The plain truth was that the world had no feeling about him at all, one
way or the other. He had nothing to sell that anybody wanted to buy, and
no means of making a living. He had a long road to travel before he
found himself. In 1825 he went home to Norwich a failure, with the sense
of defeat very strong upon him. The mother who was at once his best
adviser and sincerest worshipper was not likely to chide his folly as the
father had done. She was ready to receive him with demonstrations of
love, and to share her little with him. This was part of the ignominy
which he hated—that he was obliged to impose himself upon the household
in Willow Lane. In a world out of joint, the cursed spite was that he
could do nothing to set it right.
Long time he struggled hard to lift himself out of this rut. He
continued to fail. When at last he did succeed, these years became to
him a horrible nightmare. He would not speak of them; he tried not to
think of them. He resolutely refused to permit the public a glimpse into
the sordid secrets they contained. From 1825 to 1832 he lived a life of
which he wished nobody to know anything. Out of some correspondence
between him and Richard Ford arose the phrase, “the Veiled Period.” Ford
implored him to lift the veil a little and allow his admirers to know
what he was doing. There were many reasons why he declined to do so. He
endeavoured to puzzle the public about it, and perhaps succeeded partly
in mystifying himself. He suggested a kind of vague romance of
wanderings in remote parts of Europe. Some of the suggestions were
founded on a slight basis of fact; that is all that can be said for them.
As to the facts: there is no doubt that he did buy a horse with money
lent to him by Ambrose Smith, and sell it at a profit. As in the case of
Isopel, it may not be unwise to allow some discount off the published
accounts of the transaction. Very possibly the horse was not such a fine
horse as that noble animal with whose assistance Lavengro electrified the
jockeys at Horncastle Fair; perhaps the profit on the sale was not so
great as it was made to appear in “The Romany Rye.” But there was such a
transaction. Ambrose Smith reminded him of it, long years afterwards,
when he visited the great author at Oulton.
Soon after his return to Norwich, he was busy again about his literary
schemes. He tried to sell copies of his translation of Klinger, which he
took from the publisher in lieu of payment for the work. While with
Phillips in London, he had projected a volume of poetical translations of
Danish ballads. The plan then came to naught. Now he printed the book
in Norwich by subscription, after a correspondence with Allan Cunningham
about it. Cunningham was full of admiration for the old songs drawn from
the “Kjaempe Viser.” “Swayne Vonved” was his favourite, and it remained
Borrow’s own pet throughout life. Five hundred copies of the “Romantic
Ballads” were printed, of which 200 were subscribed for. These, at ten
and sixpence a copy, paid all the expenses of the issue. There was an
arrangement under which the London publisher, John Taylor, took the rest
and placed his imprint on the title-page. Cunningham gave the young poet
a great deal of good advice about promoting the interests of the book.
He neglected it, with characteristic self-sufficiency. He had published
ballads, and if the great public did not share Mopsa’s affection for
ballads in print, the nineteenth-century Autolycus could not help it, and
would be content with what he could get out of the local subscribers in
Norwich.
In 1826 he was in London, and in correspondence with Benjamin Haydon
about sitting for a figure in one of his pictures—possibly the “Mock
Election.” In the course of the correspondence Borrow speaks of
proceeding presently to the South of France. This is the first hint of
those brief travels on the Continent which became magnified by the
pervading haze into world-wide wanderings. “Were you ever at Kiachta?”
Bowring asked him in a letter some years later. He was never within some
thousands of miles of Kiachta. In 1826 he probably did go tramping
through part of Europe, but he did not reach the East, as some confused
references in the books suggest. The tale of Murtagh in “The Romany Rye”
may incorporate some of his adventures. At any rate, that alluring
narrative was certainly not given to Borrow in the year 1825 at
Horncastle Fair. There is clear evidence of that in the fact that a
portion of it was picked up nearly thirty years later in very different
circumstances.
The real itinerary of the tour of 1826 is probably by way of Paris on
foot to Bayonne; across the Pyrenees into Spain; Pamplona, the Riviera,
Italy, Genoa, and thence home by ship. Slight traces can be found of
such a journey. There is the lightly-touched meeting with Vidocq in
Paris. That delectable rascal’s career always had a strong fascination
for Borrow, whose appetite for picturesque blackguards was greedy.
Vidocq at this time was fifty years of age. A quarter of a century of
adventure as a showman, a soldier, a galley-slave, and a highwayman had
terminated in 1812 with his appointment to the head of a detective office
in Paris, on the principle of setting a thief to catch a thief. By the
year 1825 the authorities were persuaded that the principle was
unworkable, and dismissal ended Vidocq’s career of corruption and
swindling. If Borrow met him in Paris the next year, therefore, he found
his hero a free lance. The _Mémoires_ of M. Vidocq, which appeared in
1828, and are probably at least as trustworthy as Baron Munchausen, were
among Borrow’s favourite reading; his relish for literature, embloomed
with the flowers of crime and perfumed by the breath of criminals, had
been cultivated by the compilation of the “Celebrated Trials,” and it
never left him. Vidocq and Peyrecourt loom large in passages of his
works; whether they made so great a figure in his actual experiences in
France is another question. He appears to have met Baron Taylor at
Bayonne, and naturally found in the “picturesque and romantic” voyager a
congenial companion. From these lofty associations the descent on the
other side of the Pyrenees to Quesada {72} and his “Army of Faith,” the
gang of frontiersmen who were helping themselves freely in the name of
the Church, was sudden and severe. But Borrow seems to have fallen even
further, for there is a dim suggestion of his imprisonment at Pamplona,
of his emergence from gaol in a state of beggary, and his succour at the
hands of a party of gypsies whose patteran he followed in the mountains.
He tramped eastwards, ultimately brought up at Genoa, penniless, and was
assisted by some person or persons unknown to get ship for England.
This is as far as Dr. Knapp has been able to trace the elusory course of
the Wandering Jew of Literature. The theory that he acted as the
travelling commissioner of a London newspaper finds no support. By 1827
he was back in Norwich, keeping his mother’s small household accounts,
visiting the Tombland Fair to inspect “Marshland Shales,” the glorious
chieftain of all the equine race, grubbing for booksellers, writing
articles for newspapers. It was a mean and anxious way of life,
abominable to Borrow, who hated poverty and was ashamed of it. Therein
may be sought the real reason why he “veiled” these years of his life.
His next appearance in the literary arena is in the distinguished company
of Dr. John Bowring.
The Bowring episode in Borrow’s life is one of its most remarkable and
least explicable features. Bowring seems to have been a good friend to
Borrow for many years, to have engaged with him in literary
collaboration, and to have exerted himself in various directions on his
behalf. His reward, so far as Borrow’s works go, is a scurrilous sketch
of himself in “Lavengro,” a long denunciation in the Appendix to “The
Romany Rye,” and the bitter hatred of a man who knew how to hate as
fiercely as he could love intensely. The whole story of their severance
is obscure, but there can be little doubt that Borrow was entirely in the
wrong, that the charges he made against Bowring of treachery and
falsehood were baseless, and that of many people pilloried in Borrow’s
books Bowring was among the least deserving such scurvy treatment. We
have observed already the circumstances of the first meeting between
Borrow and Bowring at Taylor’s house in Norwich. We shall see that
Bowring came to his rescue when he was in the sorest straits, and was, in
fact, doing much to help him during part of the “veiled period.”
It has been the writer’s fortune to secure {73} a series of letters from
Borrow to Bowring, which throw much light upon his schemes and modes of
life in the last three of those mysterious years between his return from
the Continent and his engagement by the Bible Society. He did not remain
long in Norwich. In 1829 he was in London, residing at No. 17, Great
Russell Street, Bloomsbury, and deeply employed about certain
translations of Scandinavian poetry which were to form the basis of a new
book on more elaborate lines than those of the “Romantic Ballads.”
Bowring and Borrow had a plan for issuing in collaboration a collection
of English versions, with interpretations, of those Northern poets whom a
purblind public, not yet obsessed by the Scandinavian spirit in poetry
and music, resolutely disregarded and despised. This was the “literary
project” of which the world heard so much in the Appendix. The
arrangements went so far that a prospectus of the work was put out. The
title proposed was “The Songs of Scandinavia,” and the collection was to
be published in two volumes octavo. The project remained a project, and
the niche left by expectant librarians for the two octavo volumes was
never filled. But in connection with the negotiations and arrangements
between Borrow and Bowring a correspondence occurred which is full of
interest and contains one or two characteristic bits of Borrovian humour.
Incidentally, the letters, if taken in sequence, and read together with
another one of the year 1842, show that, up to a time not far ante-dating
the publication of “The Romany Rye,” with its gross attack on Bowring,
the two men were on the best possible terms. Indeed, in 1842 Borrow
speaks of his old collaborator as “my oldest, I may say my only, friend.”
{75}
It were greatly to be wished that the sordid dispute with Bowring might
be numbered among the delenda of Borrow’s history, but some mention of it
will be necessary. Unhappily, no satisfactory explanation can be given
which is at all flattering to Borrow. For these letters prove
conclusively that he introduced into “Lavengro” and its sequel opinions
about Bowring which he certainly did not hold at the time of which he was
writing.
In 1829 their Scandinavian scheme was in the tideway. They had written
and they had met for the discussion of their plans; Borrow had done a
great deal of translation. He was exceedingly anxious that at any rate
the first volume should appear at once; for, as he said in a letter
written on the last day of the year, he was “_terribly afraid of being
forestalled in the Kiampe Viser by some of those Scotch blackguards_, who
affect to translate from all languages, of which they are fully as
ignorant as Lockhart is of Spanish.” The italicised passage is
underlined in Borrow’s letter; it is a curious foretaste of some of the
choicer invective which he afterwards bestowed on Scott and the Scots,
and of his disagreement with Lockhart. The preparations were hurried on
with a view to the appearance of the first part of the book in February.
The drafting of the prospectus was left to Borrow, and on January 8th
(1830) he sent a copy to Bowring for his inspection, inviting “the
correction of your master-hand.” He had, he said, “endeavoured to frame
a Danish style,” but was not sure whether he had succeeded. “Alter, I
pray you,” he exclaimed, “whatever false logic has crept into it, find a
remedy for its incoherencies, and render it fit for its intended
purpose.” There follows a delightful touch of egotism. He has, he
explains, had a rising headache for two days, which has “almost”
prevented him from doing anything. But, he adds with fine nonchalance,
“I sat down this morning and translated a hundred lines of the ‘May
Day’”—as though a hundred lines of English verse were a trifle which he
threw off without effort, _malgré_ his “rising headache.”
Bowring examined the prospectus, made what revisions he thought
necessary, and sent it back.
“I approve of the prospectus in every respect,” wrote Borrow (January
14th). “It is businesslike, and there is nothing flashy in it. I do not
wish to suggest one alteration.” He goes on to describe the energy with
which he is working, and speaks of having rendered four hundred lines in
one day! The last paragraph of this letter displays Borrow in a
different attitude towards reviews and reviewing from that which he
adopted in after years. “When you see the foreign editor,” he tells
Bowring,
“I should feel much obliged if you would speak to him about my
reviewing Tegnér, and inquire whether a _good_ article on Welsh
poetry would be received. I have the advantage of not being a
Welshman. I would speak the truth, and would give translations from
some of the best Welsh poetry; and I really believe that my
translations would not be the worst that have been made from the
Welsh tongue.”
But this condition of things, in which the romantic ferment caused by
Steffens and Oehlenschläger in Denmark was to be reproduced in England by
Borrow’s translations, did not last long. Difficulties arose in
connection with the publication of the proposed book, and the enthusiasm
paled as the year progressed. The two volumes receded from view; the
twin mountain in labour finally brought forth a review article of some
forty pages. This was despatched in the summer to the _Foreign Quarterly
Review_, was held back for twelve months, and appeared at last in the
number for June, 1831. In this Bowring wrote in lively style on Danish
and Norwegian literature, and Borrow supplied sixteen specimens of verse.
In the meantime, Bowring was doing what he could to assist his _protégé_
to some profitable employment. He sent him an ancient manuscript which
Grundtvig, the Danish poet, wanted to have transcribed. Borrow said
(June 7th) the task would not be overpaid at £49, but as he was “doing
nothing particular” at the time, and might learn something from it, he
would do it for £20. Bowring also exerted his influence to get him work
in the magazines. During the summer of 1830, Borrow flitted from Great
Russell Street to No. 7, Museum Street, and in the autumn, went to
Norwich for a holiday. In the letter (September 14th) in which he tells
Bowring of his proposal to leave London for Norwich, we get the first
hint of a project which now and then flashed through his mind for a year
or two—that of entering the military service: “I have thought of
attempting to get into the French service, as I should like prodigiously
to serve under Clausel in the next Bedouin campaign.” This remained a
thought, though, as we shall see, other plans of the same character went
a little further. In the same letter he complained that he was very
unwell, but traced his malady to ennui and unsettled prospects, and hoped
that cold bathing in October and November would prove of some service to
him. There is no reference in this correspondence to one task which he
himself asserts he achieved in 1830. That was the translation of Elis
Wyn. At the instance of “a little bookseller of my acquaintance” in
Smithfield, he rendered from the Welsh Wyn’s, “Visions of the Sleeping
Bard.” This was the nearest approach he made to the promise of literary
success; but even here his malign fate dogged him. When the little
bookseller saw the translation, he begged off the bargain on the plea
that “the terrible descriptions of vice and torment would frighten the
genteel part of the English public out of their wits. . . . Myn Diawl! I
had no idea till I read him in English that Elis Wyn had been such a
terrible fellow!” The sly dig at the “genteel” public may be reasonably
attributed to the bookmaker rather than to the bookseller.
Before he departed from London, Borrow, returning some books to Bowring,
utters (September 17th) one of those ejaculations on public affairs which
he subsequently inserted as tags to many of his letters: “More
Revolutions, I see. The King of Saxony has run away, and the Kent
peasantry are burning stacks and houses. _Where will all this end_?”
A dozen plans for carving a way to undying fame and modest fortune, all
equally futile, were built up and fell down about this time. Apparently
Borrow could not rid himself of the delusion that a hungry world was
waiting to devour the beauties of the Gaelic Bards, if only they were
served up in a suitable form for general consumption. He launched at the
devoted heads of the Highland Society of London a scheme under which the
Society was to employ (and pay) him for two years in translating the
Gaelic Bards into English verse. The scheme left the Highland Society as
cold as the Bards would have left the reading world. He turned his
artillery upon the British Museum. The Codex Exoniensis was to be
copied; he applied for the work, but without success. It was done in
1831 by one of the regular officials of the Museum. Discouraged but not
dismayed, he sought other employment in Bloomsbury, and asked Bowring to
put in a word for him. The Doctor pointed out that in his position it
was necessary to go about such a matter with discretion. It would not do
for him to originate an application, but if the authorities of the Museum
could be induced to seek his opinion, he would give Borrow such a
character as would “take you to the top of Hecla itself. You have
claims, strong ones, and I should rejoice to see you niched in the
British Museum.” But this design failed like the rest. In a letter to
Bowring he described himself, with melancholy eloquence, as “drifting
upon the sea of the world, and likely to be so.” To Borrow there was “no
fiercer hell than failure”; but the inferno was of his own creation. His
greatest failure was the failure to realise that there was no sort of
demand for the work he insisted on doing, and that its intrinsic value
was far below the standard at which he placed it.
Compelled thus to abandon his literary ambitions for the present, he
turned his efforts in another direction. He began the pursuit of a
shimmering phantom over which, in the course of his life, he contrived to
waste a great deal of valuable time. Upon what he based the idea does
not appear, but Borrow seems to have imagined that he had some claim to
official employment abroad. It did not much matter whether the work was
made for him by the British Government or by a foreign State, so long as
he should be given the opportunity of displaying his philological prowess
in foreign parts. After the appearance of the joint article in the
_Foreign Quarterly_, as Bowring seemed to be able to do nothing for him
at the British Museum, Borrow asked him to see what he could do towards
getting him a post under the Belgian Government. Bowring made the
application, but without success; the Belgians were not at the moment in
need of any English assistance, however talented. Borrow keenly
recognised his friend’s diligence in the matter, and turned his heaviest
artillery on the Ministry at Brussels, who were so obstinately blind to
the advantages of having Mr. George Borrow in their service. They did
not seem, he said in a letter to Bowring written from Willow Lane,
Norwich, and dated September 11th, 1831, either to know or to care for
the opinion of the great Cyrus, whose advice to his captains he quoted
from Xenophon: “Take no heed from what countries ye fill up your ranks,
but seek recruits as ye do horses, not those particularly who are of your
own country, but those of merit.” Belgium, having failed to appreciate
the worth of George Borrow, at once became the most contemptible nation
on earth:
“The Belgians will only have such recruits as are born in Belgium,
and when we consider the _heroic_ manner in which the native Belgian
army defended the person of their new sovereign in the last conflict
with the Dutch, can we blame them for their determination? It is
rather singular, however, that, resolved as they are to be served
only by themselves, they should have sent for 50,000 Frenchmen to
clear their country of a handful of Hollanders, who have generally
been considered the most unwarlike people in Europe, and who, if they
had had fair play given them, would long ere this time have replanted
the Orange flag on the towers of Brussels and made the Belgians what
they deserved to be—hewers of wood and drawers of water.”
This sardonic outburst is one of the earliest samples of the polemical
style which Borrow was to develop so strongly in later years.
As he could neither go to fight Bedouins under Clausel nor enter the
Belgian service in Europe, it appears to have occurred to his friend
Bowring that he might care to follow in his father’s footsteps, and that
the British service might suit him at a pinch. If Borrow would like to
purchase a commission, Bowring offered to introduce his name to the War
Secretary. Borrow replied that his name had been down for several years
for the purchase of a commission, but he had never had sufficient
interest to procure an appointment. He would not now mind serving in the
militia if they were to be embodied for service in Ireland (“that unhappy
country”), but he wished to leave the question open for a few months in
order to see whether something more promising turned up. If he had not
secured employment within two or three months, he would then ask Bowring
to redeem his promise in the matter of the War Secretary, and to
recommend him to a corps in one of the Eastern colonies on the plea that
he was “well grounded in Arabic” and had some talent for languages:
“I flatter myself that I could do a great deal in the East, provided
I could once get there, either in a civil or military capacity.
There is much talk at present about translating European books in the
two great languages, the Arabic and Persian. Now, I believe that
with my enthusiasm for these tongues I could, if resident in the
East, become in a year or two better acquainted with them than any
European has been yet, and more capable of executing such a task. . .
.”
This letter concluded with a postscript in which he requested that his
best remembrances might be presented to Mrs. Bowring and to Edgar, their
son; and, he added, “tell them they will both be starved.
“There is now a report in the street that twelve corn-stacks are
blazing within twenty miles of this place. I have lately been
wandering about Norfolk, and I am sorry to say that the minds of the
peasantry are in a horrible state of excitement. I have repeatedly
heard men and women in the harvest-field swear that not a grain of
the corn they were cutting should be eaten, and that they would as
lieve be hanged as live. I am afraid all this will end in a famine
and a rustic war.”
Reform staved off the “rustic war,” and other things intervened to
prevent Borrow from carrying out his half-formed intention of becoming a
military man.