“LAVENGRO” AND HIS CRITICS
AT this period Borrow suffered frequently from attacks of melancholia;
little vexations upset him terribly. He was more than once assaulted by
roughs while on his way home to Oulton from Lowestoft, and the remedy
that occurred to him was that he should be made a magistrate so that he
might take short measures with the ruffians who infested the woods. He
applied in various quarters for this appointment. But the Whigs were in
and Borrow was a Tory. Neither the influence of Lockhart nor the
admiration which Gladstone entertained for “The Bible in Spain” sufficed
to prevail against the eternal principle of “the spoils to the victors.”
In connection with this episode, as may be imagined, several persons were
placed upon Borrow’s index. Lockhart himself soon got there. When
Ford’s “Handbook for Spain” appeared, the author was exceedingly anxious
that Borrow should write the article on it for the _Quarterly Review_.
No man could have done it with ampler knowledge or invested it with more
absorbing interest than “El Gitano,” as Lockhart dubbed him in the
correspondence on the subject. But the essay Borrow produced, written in
ill-health, and betraying all the evidences of a jaundiced and embittered
mind, was in no sense a review of Ford’s book. It was a long screed
against those persons and tendencies in Spanish politics that aroused his
ire. The extract given by Dr. Knapp is in the very best invective style
of the Appendix. Lockhart behaved exceedingly well in the matter. He
would publish the article in the _Quarterly_ if Borrow would permit him
to insert extracts from Ford’s book in suitable places, so that the
reader might be able to obtain some glimmering of the author’s style and
subject. Borrow petulantly replied that he would not have the paper
tampered with. Lockhart then very properly exercised his editorial
authority, and refused to publish it. He softened the decision by
suggesting that Borrow’s work would make an admirable magazine article,
mentioning periodicals that would be glad to have it. The suggestion was
not adopted, the article remained in proof-sheet in the hands of Murray,
and Lockhart was numbered among the increasing army of Borrow’s mortal
enemies. It was an unhappy sequel to this incident that the friendship
between Ford and Borrow cooled off, and their intercourse ceased
altogether a few years later—by no desire of Ford’s, as the
correspondence shows.
More trouble arose from the obscure dispute with Bowring, in which Borrow
accused him of palming off upon the House of Commons as his own the
Manchu-Tartar version of the Scriptures that Borrow had printed at St.
Petersburg, in order to get for himself the consulship at Canton, while
at the same time affecting to promote the candidature of Borrow for the
post. To any impartial mind the evidence in favour of this theory is
scanty, and the theory itself improbable. That Borrow believed it there
can be no doubt; it tinged his life with added gall and wormwood, and
helped to divert the course and purpose of his book. A further grievance
was the failure of the British Museum trustees to get the funds for a
mission to the Convent of St. Catharine on Sinai in search of the
manuscript of the fourth-century Greek Testament, afterwards acquired by
Tischendorf for Alexander II. of Russia. But it would be tiresome to
follow all the convolutions of Borrow’s tempers and jealousies throughout
these troubled years. They are amply reflected in many portions of the
literary work he was doing.
Time drifted, and it was 1848 before Murray could make a definite
announcement about “Lavengro.” In that year appeared in his “list of new
works in preparation” the following:—“‘Lavengro’: An Autobiography. By
George Borrow, author of ‘The Bible in Spain,’ etc. 3 vols., post 8vo.”
In October the first volume went to press, and then there was more
vacillation about the title of the book. It was advertised in the
_Quarterly Review_ and the _Athenæum_ in November, and December as “Life:
A Drama.” That form was immediately dropped. Borrow was taken ill and
work ceased. In July, 1849, the old advertisement describing it as an
autobiography was restored, though we well know now that by this time it
had ceased to be autobiographical in the conventional sense. Finally the
pangs of labour ended with the year 1850, and “Lavengro—The Scholar—The
Gypsy—The Priest” was delivered to the reading world and to the tender
mercies of the critics in February, 1851.
It will be seen that the autobiographical claim was abandoned at the
last. In the preface, which he accomplished just in time to get it to
press, Borrow modified his description of the book: “In the following
pages I have endeavoured to describe a _Dream_.” Later he denied that he
ever said it was an autobiography, or that he ever authorised anybody
else to say it was; this in spite of the advertisements quoted above, and
of the general impression he had allowed to be created that he was
writing an account of his life.
Yet, in fact, “Lavengro” is little else. It followed faithfully the
original plan throughout the first volume. Then came Borrow’s journey in
the East and his return to accumulate hatreds, nurse revenges, and
conduct wordy war with the battalions of his imaginary foes. And, in
order to vent his spleen upon them, he deliberately altered the tenour of
his book. The episodes of travel on the English roads were already
protracting themselves beyond manageable length when events occurred that
determined him to reject the whole scheme of the two remaining volumes
first designed, and to extend these episodes still further so as to drag
in some of his pet aversions and exhibit them in a disgraceful or
ridiculous light. Particularly did he pour forth the vials of his wrath
upon Bowring, the Old Radical, inserting the incident of the postilion
and his story specially for the purpose.
But while Borrow was down in the summer-house at Oulton writing
marvellous pages on odd scraps of paper, probing profound depths of
speculation, and rising to the dizziest heights of natural eloquence,
while he allowed himself to be possessed and fascinated by the gypsies
and the jockeys, the tramps and the wastrels, the thimble-engroes and the
pugilists, and all the weird company that defile through the haunting
pages of his book, while the development of Catholic missions in England
diverted his ultra-Protestant mind to the machinations of mythical
Jesuits and gave him the figure of the Man in Black; while he piled rage
and scorn upon the devoted head of John Bowring, who added to his other
sins against the Borrovian covenant a characteristically Unitarian
indifference to the “No Popery” cry {132}—all this time “Lavengro” was
not making much progress with his life, the publisher was appealing to
him to hurry, and the hungry printer was sending up pitiable cries for
“copy.” Borrow, having gone off on a branch line, utterly declined to
return. He had occupied nearly two volumes in describing the events of a
few months—from his descent upon London and Sir Richard Phillips to his
sojourn in Mumper’s Dell. He was in the middle of the postilion’s story,
wherein the Old Radical was receiving his shrewdest knocks, when Murray
issued his ultimatum, and Mrs. Borrow was despatched to London with the
last of the manuscript (November, 1850). He had been obliged to break
off abruptly, for Murray threatened, if the book were not finished there
and then, to “throw it up.” Promising himself to complete the narrative
in a sequel, Borrow left “Lavengro” as we have it now. The reviewers and
the reading world, instead of the autobiography in common form which they
had been led to expect, received a picaresque hotch-potch about which the
best they could find to say was that it was “remarkable.”
The almost unanimous verdict of the critics was highly unfavourable. The
_Athenæum_ (whose review was written by Dilke) spoke of the warm
expectations that had been raised and the great disappointment that was
felt; _Fraser_, in which William Stirling (Sir William Stirling-Maxwell)
discussed it, was vigorously satirical about Borrow’s trivial
mystifications, his dashes, dots, and asterisks; _Blackwood_ was “sick of
the Petulengros and their jargon,” and its reviewer acutely perceived the
internal evidence of the changes in plan and disposition which had been
made while the work was in progress. The two persons who found anything
good to say about the book were friends of Borrow—Dr. Gordon Hake and Mr.
W. B. Donne. It is curious that these were the only reviewers who
displayed much prescience in their criticism. Hake took the bold course
of prophecy: “Lavengro’s” roots, he said, would strike deep into the soil
of English letters. Donne perceived that, as he said, the public had
been looking for a second Marco Polo, and were presented instead with a
nineteenth-century Defoe.
In spite, however, of all that could be said in its favour, the public
would have none of “Lavengro.” Three thousand copies of the first
edition were printed. Notwithstanding Murray’s confident prophecy that
it would find a ready sale, it fell almost lifeless, and twenty-one years
passed before another edition was called for. It is a little difficult
to understand the attitude of the public and the Press towards a work
which, in spite of its obvious faults, is one of the most virile and most
entrancing works of English literature. The true explanation is to be
found in the theory suggested by Mr. Watts-Dunton. “Lavengro” was a
complete failure, he said, and its reception by the Press, the
accusations of “lowness and vulgarity,” embittered Borrow. Why was it
that the public of that day considered such books as “Lavengro” and “The
Romany Rye” to be low and vulgar? The fact was that “Lavengro,” issuing
forth in the year of the great Exhibition, made its bow before the most
genteel and most philistine age of Victorian literature. A writer hardly
dared to admit that a man was a man or a woman a woman. We have arrived
at the other extreme in the process of emancipating ourselves from
philistinism, and there is no excuse in Art or Nature for many of the
books written and published at the present time. But the reception of
“Lavengro” was largely due to the mawkish sentiment against which Borrow
hysterically declaimed as “gentility-nonsense,” and we have fortunately
outgrown it. In time readers came to see the extraordinary merits of
Borrow’s books; they bought them as they were re-issued, read them, liked
them, and will go on reading and liking them. Gypsyism has, in fact,
become popular in the genteelest circles.
Many years ago Mr. Watts-Dunton succeeded in throwing a gleam of light
upon Borrow’s own view of the work. He tells us how, when they were
discussing the question of the real nature of autobiography, Borrow
exclaimed, “What is an autobiography? Is it a mere record of the
incidents of a man’s life, or is it a picture of the man himself—his
character, his soul?” And Mr. Watts-Dunton adds observations applying
the inference to Borrow’s book. He points out what we have already
seen—that he sat down to write his own life in “Lavengro,” and that in
the first volume he did almost confine himself to matters of fact. “But,
as he went on, he clearly found that the ordinary tapestry into which
destiny had woven the incidents of his life was not tinged with
sufficient depth of colour to satisfy his sense of wonder. When he
wishes to dive very boldly into the ‘abysmal deeps of personality,’ he
speaks and moves partly behind the mask of some fictitious character.”
“Let it be remembered,” says Mr. Watts-Dunton, “that it was this instinct
of wonder, not the instinct of the mere _poseur_, that impelled him to
make certain exaggerated statements about the characters themselves that
are introduced into his books.”
This view of the eccentricities and purple patches of “Lavengro” and “The
Romany Rye” is interesting, and certainly just to a point. It does not
account for the whole of the leaps that Borrow took in one direction and
another; it does not explain Mr. Platitude, or the Man in Black, or the
Old Radical. The reason for their creation has been already stated. The
“instinct of wonder,” the Celtic imagination, now brooding, now soaring,
does, however, explain much in the books that cannot be explained by
reference to actual facts of the author’s career, and does justify in a
sense his theory of autobiography—that the truest self-revelation may be
found not so much in the mere recital of bare facts as in the impression
of the form of his thought, and in the reflection of the colours that
glow in his soul.
If the year of the great Exhibition was an unfortunate year for the
commercial fortunes of “Lavengro,” the Exhibition itself had certain
irresistible attractions for “Lavengro’s” author. It had drawn to London
a large congregation of the peoples of the earth, and the thought that in
Hyde Park twenty languages were chiming a rare cacophony was too much for
him. He went off to town to see the show, taking his step-daughter with
him. The tall man with the white hair, striding about under the glass
roof, soon began to create a minor sensation, which was by no means to
the liking of Miss Clarke. To see a group of foreigners in converse was
enough for him. He went up to them and addressed them in their own
tongue, and repeated the process so often that it began to be whispered
about that he was “uncanny,” and he excited so much remark that his
daughter thought it better to drag him away.
While Borrow was at Oulton struggling with the composition of “Lavengro,”
quarrelling with the vicar, denouncing Sir Morton Peto, procrastinating
with his publisher, and passing some of the most miserable, if the most
fruitful years of his life, he made an acquaintance which ripened into an
important and valuable friendship. The Misses Harvey introduced the
Borrows to Dr. Thomas Gordon Hake, then resident as a physician at Bury
St. Edmund’s—the friendly critic of “Lavengro” already mentioned. Visits
were paid and repaid by the two families at Bury and at Oulton, and a
close association and familiarity grew up. Dr. Hake thus becomes one of
the most trustworthy and most interesting authorities on this portion of
Borrow’s life, and relates many exceedingly suggestive stories
illustrating the varied and strangely contradictory phases of Borrow’s
character. His sketch of the personality of his friend, inscribed in his
“Memoirs,” has often been quoted. Its principal value is that it brings
out with the authority of a medical man the cause of much that frequently
seems inexplicable in Borrow—his native hypochondria, and the reason for
his violent antipathy towards society, and especially “genteel” society:
“Society he loved and hated alike; he loved it that he might be pointed
out and talked of; he hated it because he was not the prince he felt
himself in its midst.” I refer again in this connection to the view
proffered to me by Mr. Watts-Dunton, gleaned from intercourse with Borrow
at a later period of his life, that his denunciation of respectability
and “gentility-nonsense” was simply by way of revenge upon the
Philistines; that he loved real respectability and good repute,
worshipped fame and success, and equally hated insignificance and
failure.
Dr. Hake’s anecdotes illustrate his impatience of much of the kind of
fame and notice he attracted, the outbursts of violence with which he
greeted people who did not appeal to him, and the intensity of his
egoism. Poor Agnes Strickland was anxious to be introduced to him, and,
after expressing her great admiration of his books, she begged to be
allowed to send him a copy of her “Queens of England.” Borrow cried,
“For God’s sake don’t, madam; I should not know what to do with them.”
And, getting up, he said to Mr. Donne, of the London Library, who had
introduced the ill-assorted pair, “What a d— fool that woman is!” There
was Mrs. Bevan, the wife of the Suffolk banker, with whom he went to
dine, Dr. Hake being of the company. Borrow knew that the bank had
dealt, as he thought, rigorously with a friend who was in financial
straits. Mrs. Bevan, who, of course, had no responsibility in this
matter, sat next to Borrow at dinner. Dr. Hake describes her as “a
simple, unpretending woman, desirous of pleasing him,” which she sought
to do by describing the pleasure with which she had read his books.
“Pray, what books do you mean, madam?” said Borrow. “Do you mean my
account-books?” And he rose from the table, walking up and down the room
during dinner, and wandered about the house till the carriage was
ordered. There was Thackeray, whom he met at Hardwicke House, in
Suffolk. Thackeray ventured to ask him whether he had read the “Snob
Papers” in _Punch_. “In _Punch_?” said Borrow. “It is a periodical I
never look at!”
Instances of his boorishness could be multiplied, but it is sufficiently
proved. Let us see what there is on the other side of the account.
There is a tale told by Mr. Ewing Ritchie {140} which illustrates the
fact that Borrow thoroughly detested the practice of snubbing—when he
witnessed it as a third person. A clergyman at the supper table at
Oulton Hall (then let to a tenant who was a Nonconformist) made an
onslaught upon a young Independent minister for holding Calvinistic
opinions. The occasion of this Christian dispute was the more
appropriate as they had all just returned from an undenominational
meeting of the Bible Society, at which Borrow had made a speech. The
minister stood up to the cleric, and told him that the Thirty-nine
Articles to which he had sworn assent were Calvinistic. The reply to
this was that there was a mode of explaining away the Articles: we were
not bound to take the words “in their natural sense.” The young
Nonconformist confessed that he did not understand that way out of the
difficulty, and subsided. Then Borrow stepped into the fray, “opening
fire on the clergyman,” says Mr. Ritchie, “in a very unexpected manner,
and giving him such a setting-down as the hearers, at any rate, never
forgot. All the sophistry about the non-natural meaning of terms was
held up by Borrow to ridicule, and the clergyman was beaten at every
point.” The comment of the young minister to Mr. Ritchie was, “Never did
I hear one man give another such a dressing as on that occasion.” It was
very like to be tremendous when Borrow had his Protestant bonnet on and
at the same time thought he saw a member of the Church he loved making
himself ridiculous.
The interview between Borrow and the Rev. Whitwell Elwin has been
previously mentioned (p. 52). “What party are you in the Church?” he
suddenly exclaimed to the Rector of Booton. “Tractarian, Moderate, or
Evangelical? I am happy to say _I_ am the old High.” “I am happy to say
I am _not_,” replied Elwin. A conversation thus begun with unpromising
differences of opinion about the ethics of review-writing, and continued
in an atmosphere of theological disputation, would ordinarily have ended
in a violent quarrel. Borrow must have been in an especially benignant
mood that day, for he allowed Elwin to throw aspersions upon his
pronunciation of the Norfolk dialect, and yet did not bring the _séance_
to a conclusion with lightning in his eyes, thunder on his brows, and
storms of invective flowing from his eloquent tongue. “Borrow boasted,”
says Elwin, “of his proficiency in the Norfolk dialect, which he
endeavoured to speak as broadly as possible. I told him that he had not
cultivated it with his usual success.” But the clouds cleared, the
protagonists became warm friends, and promised to visit each other. It
does not appear that Elwin ever went to Oulton, but Borrow did go to
Booton, exerted himself to please his hosts by calling upon his stores of
anecdote and adventure, and entranced the children of the rectory by
singing gypsy songs to them. It will be remembered that Elwin was then
editing the _Quarterly Review_ as deputy for Lockhart. He begged Borrow
to “try his hand at an article for the _Review_.” But Borrow was far too
sore with reviews and reviewers to entertain such a proposal; the
incident of Ford’s “Handbook,” too, was recent. “Never!” he cried. “I
have made a resolution never to have anything to do with such a
blackguard trade!”
The Booton episode is related mainly because it offers an opportunity of
referring to a trait of Borrow which has been the subject of strange
misrepresentation. Dr. Jessopp wrote for the _Daily Chronicle_ {142} a
review of a new edition of “The Romany Rye,” in which the following
remarkable passage occurred:
“Of anything like animal passion there is not a trace in all his many
volumes. Not a hint that he ever kissed a woman or ever took a
little child upon his knee. He was beardless; his voice was not the
voice of a man. His outbursts of wrath never translated themselves
into uncontrollable acts of violence; they showed themselves in all
the rancorous hatred that could be put into words—the fire smouldered
in that sad heart of his. Those big bones and huge muscles and the
strong brain were never to be reproduced in an offspring to be proud
of. How if he were the Narses of literature—one who could be only
what he was, though we are always inclined to lament that he was not
something more?”
One does not care to discuss the principal suggestion here involved, save
to say that there is not a tittle of evidence to support it, that it
cannot be believed by any student of some of the most robust and most
virile works in the English language, and that the alleged facts upon
which it is based have been categorically contradicted by Mr. Thomas Hake
(the eldest son of Dr. Gordon Hake) in an interesting letter to Mr.
Watts-Dunton. {143} This gentleman, the author of several novels, who
knew more of Borrow than anyone else, must not be confounded with his
younger brother, Mr. Egmont Hake (mentioned on page 8), the well-known
author of “The Story of Chinese Gordon.” It will be a great pity if Mr.
Thomas Hake does not give us his reminiscences of the author of
“Lavengro.” One point, however, of Dr. Jessopp’s impeachment of Borrow
may be taken up without offence. There is not a hint, says Dr. Jessopp,
that Borrow “ever kissed a woman or ever took a little child upon his
knee.” It is a new demand upon biographers that they shall record, even
by way of hint, the osculatory adventures of their heroes, and possibly
the best reply is that there is certainly no hint that he never kissed a
woman, and there is plenty of testimony to the fact that he was no
misogynist. But if a hint will suffice it may be found in Mr.
Watts-Dunton’s account of the conversation between them and the gypsy
woman Perpinia, whom he warned against smoking tobacco while she was
suckling an infant: “It ought to be a criminal offence for a woman to
smoke at all,” growled Borrow. “Fancy kissing a woman’s mouth that smelt
of stale tobacco—pheugh!” The inference is so obvious that one need not
pursue the argument by inversion of the story. When one comes to Dr.
Jessopp’s picture of Borrow in his relation to children, however, there
is a large quantity of direct evidence gathered from many quarters which
proves it to be erroneous. Mr. Thomas Hake, in the letter just cited,
says:
“When our family lived at Bury St. Edmund’s in the ’fifties, my
father, as you know, was one of Borrow’s most intimate friends, and
he was frequently at our house, and Borrow and my father were a good
deal in correspondence (as Dr. Knapp’s book shows), and my impression
of Borrow is exactly the contrary of that which it would be if he in
the least resembled Dr. Jessopp’s description of him. At that time
George was in the nursery and I was a child. He took a wonderfully
kind interest in us all . . . but the one he took most notice of was
George, chiefly because he was a very massive child. It was then
that he playfully christened him ‘Hales,’ because he said that the
child would develop into a second ‘Norfolk giant.’ You will remember
that he always addressed George by that name.”
The truth is that Borrow was exceedingly fond of children. He appealed
strongly to them. No such impression as he made upon the Elwin children
at Booton, upon the boys of Dr. Gordon Hake’s family at Bury, upon the
Cornish children he encountered in 1854 (p. 170), was ever made by a man
who did not understand children and sympathise with them.
The chronicle to the end of 1853 may be very briefly recounted. Borrow’s
mother had been persuaded in 1849 to leave the house in Willow Lane,
Norwich, where she had lived alone ever since his departure for St.
Petersburg, and take up her quarters with the family at Oulton. In the
midst of the writing of “The Romany Rye” in 1853, Dr. Hake ordered
Borrow’s wife not to remain at Oulton during the coming winter. Borrow
himself welcomed the prospect of a change, and in August he and the three
women of his household removed to Yarmouth, where they lived in lodgings
for seven years, except when they were engaged in the excursions which he
presently organised in various parts of the United Kingdom.