DEATH OF MRS. BORROW
DURING the visit to Belfast Mrs. Borrow had been unwell, and her
ill-health was her husband’s principal cause of anxiety for the following
three years. In 1867 they visited Bognor, where she was revivified by
the sea breezes, while he made tours through Hampshire and the New
Forest. The next year complications arose in the administration of the
Oulton estate, and they had to go into Norfolk to extricate the business.
On their return, Mrs. Borrow failed rapidly. Weakened by heart disease
and dropsy, and worried by the prospect of litigation with a neighbour,
her illness took a serious form, and threw Borrow into a state of
melancholy in which “the Horrors” attacked him, as we find by a reference
in Miss Cobbe’s autobiography. She speaks of having one night “cheered
him and sent him off quite brisk” after a bout of this kind, her method
being to engage him in theological argument “in a serious way”! He
“abounded in my sense of the nonexistence of Hell.” If the processes by
which they sought to remove Borrow’s megrims were original, the sympathy
and solicitude of Miss Cobbe and Miss Lloyd were unfailing. But none of
the cares of friendship, no effort on Borrow’s part, could avail to stave
off the disaster that approached. His wife grew worse, and on January
30th, 1869, succumbed to an aggregation of maladies, just in time to
obviate the necessity (foreshadowed by Dr. Playfair, who was called in at
the end) of sequestration because of mental affliction.
Thus sadly closed the long partnership of thirty years so romantically
begun at Seville in “a dream of sunshine and shade, of falling water and
flowers.” Mrs. Borrow had reached the age of seventy-three, and was
seven years older than her husband. His grief was terrible. He had lost
her who had been in literal fact his better half, who had inspired his
courage and fought his “Horrors” for him, had organised his business, and
had been wife and friend, counsellor and physician, amanuensis and
private secretary rolled into one. “Poor old Borrow is in a sad state,”
wrote Miss Cobbe. In his distraught condition friendliness suffered. He
hesitated to “trouble anyone with his sorrows” and, when over-persuaded
to dine out, was melancholy, “so cross so _rude_,” as said Miss Cobbe on
one occasion. Her narrative of the attempts she made to drag him out of
himself is luminous with humour—conscious and unconscious. There was
much innocent malice in the fashion in which she set her superior
knowledge of Norse lore against his, parrying his Firbolgs with her
Keatinge, and his Tuatha-de-Danaan with her Hakon of Norway. But she did
not perceive that the most humorous thing of all was the fact that she
should attempt to raise a bereaved man out of his despair by touching him
in his most tender intellectual spots.
For a year after the death of his wife Borrow buried himself in
books—out-of-the-way books, archaic books, as usual. Drake’s “Historia
Anglo-Scotica” figures in the list. He declared to Miss Cobbe that he
had read no modern writer since Scott. This was not literally accurate.
He had read and admired Dickens, for, in a letter to Luis de Usóz, he
spoke of him as “a second Fielding . . . who, in certain novels founded
on life in London and the provinces, as displayed in every grade of
society from the lowest to the highest, has evinced such talent, such
humour, variety and profound knowledge of character, that he charms his
readers—at least, those that have the capacity to comprehend him. . . .
Read, as soon as you can, all the writings of ‘Boz,’ and I am sure you
will thank me all your life for having disclosed to you a mine of such
delectable reading.” {241} His opinion of Scott had undergone
considerable modification since the days of the Appendix and
“Charlie-o’er-the-Waterism,” for he said that “Scott _was greater than
Homer_!” (The italics and the note of astonishment are Miss Cobbe’s.)
Another sweeping dictum of his on the same occasion was that the Norse
stories were “far grander than the Greek.” But Borrow was addicted to
impulsive generalisations, and we need pay no more special attention to
these judgments promulgated in Hereford Square than to the declarations
made at various times that Gronwy Owen’s account of the toppling down of
the crag of Snowdon on the Judgment Day was better than anything in
Homer, that Horace and Martial were not superior to Ab Gwilym, and that
Huw Morris was the finest lyrical poet of the seventeenth century.
Not long after these passages at arms with Miss Cobbe, he was suddenly
plunged again into the old romantic interest of gypsyism. Towards the
end of 1870 he received a letter from C. G. Leland, who had then been
about eighteen months in England, and was pursuing his studies of the
English gypsies on more scientific and more thorough lines than Borrow
had ever adopted. No two men were farther apart in literary
characteristics than Borrow and Leland. The author of the “Hans
Breitmann” ballads is far better known to the larger world as a writer of
comic verse than as a student of languages and folklore. “Hans
Breitmann’s Barty” and “Ping-Wing, the Pieman’s Son” are in everybody’s
mouth; “The English Gypsies and their Language” and his “Gypsy Sorcery”
are familiar mainly to the elect. The humour of Borrow and that of
Leland are of widely different character. Leland’s gay spirit lights a
lamp of jocund fancy; Borrow’s humour is elemental, and, when his art
adds quality to it, the quality is sardonic. Yet these two were attuned
in a remarkable way, and on the subject of gypsyism and philology their
tastes were in common. Borrow—leaving out of account a little natural
jealousy—could hardly fail to be attracted to the man who was to write so
vividly later of his intimacy with all “the lords and earls of Little
Egypt” in the south of England, and of those sojourns in the tents which
involved “a great deal of strangely picturesque rural life, night-scenes
by firelight, in forests and by river banks, and marvellously odd
reminiscences of other days.” And there were other interests held by
both—for Leland was a Celtic scholar; did he not “discover” Shelta, and
know all about the olden men, who
“. . . sat with ghosts on a stormy shore
And spoke in a tongue men speak no more”?
Leland told Borrow in his first letter that he was a lover of his books,
and had read them all five times, with the exception of “The Bible in
Spain” and “Wild Wales,” which he had only read once. He had been
seeking in vain for some mutual friend to introduce them, and now put
himself forward modestly as the author of “a collection of ballads
satirising Germany and the Germans, under the title of ‘Hans Breitmann.’”
Borrow wrote giving an invitation. Leland acknowledged it in a charming
letter, announcing that he had asked his publishers to send Borrow copies
of “Breitmann” and “The Music Lesson of Confucius.” The former was
offered as an oblation to the gypsy gods; it contained a ballad “written
by myself in the German Romany jib . . . which I would gladly learn from
yourself whether it be worth anything or not.” The second was a delicate
compliment to Borrow, for in it was a poem “suggested by a passage in
‘The Romany Rye,’ referring to the melancholy Sven Vonved, the Northern
Sphynx, who went about giving out riddles and gold rings.” Leland ran on
about gypsies and the Romany tongue, tinkers and rat-catchers, horses and
hunting, in his inimitable way, declaring, “My dear Mr. Borrow, for all
this you are entirely responsible. More than twenty years ago your books
had an incredible influence on me, and now you see the results.”
At the meeting which followed, Leland told Borrow that he was preparing a
work on the English gypsies, and it is fairly clear that this fact
induced Borrow to write his own last book, “The Romano Lavo-Lil,” or
Word-Book of the Gypsies. There have been found even Borrovians to
regret that this book was ever published. Most of the criticism lavished
upon it is no doubt justified. It is quite as unscientific, quite as
useless as a lexicon, as its assailants said. Its miscellaneous contents
are not to be compared for vigour and interest with his earlier work.
But the true lover of Borrow would not have it absent from the little
shelf which holds his books, even if it were only for the tale of Ryley
Bosvil, and the interview with Esther Blyth—a reminiscence of his visit
to Kirk Yetholm to see the “Queen of the Nokkums” during the Border tour.
“The Romano Lavo-Lil” did not appear, however, till 1874. In the
meantime, he edited a third edition of “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye,”
in one volume each, for Murray (1872), and recast his translation of the
Gospel of Luke in the Calo.
An acquaintance he formed during the late years of his London life was
that of Mr. William Mackay, who subsequently went to live at Oulton
Broad. Mr. Mackay has related one or two anecdotes spiced with a very
piquant frankness, for he is apparently no worshipper of Borrow, and has
taken pains to dispute the claims advanced by those who are. He speaks
of one occasion when they went together to a tavern on the edge of a
great common, where Borrow called for “swipes.” This was the beerhouse
title of the poorest kind of ale. Mr. Mackay says that Borrow affected
it because it was the drink of his Romany friends. When he “had taken a
pull at the pewter, he pointed out to me a yokel at the end of the
apartment. The foolish bumpkin was slumbering. Borrow, in a stage
whisper, gravely assured me that the man was a murderer, and confided to
me, with all the emphasis of honest conviction, the scene and details of
his crime. Subsequently I ascertained that the elaborate incidents and
fine touches of local colour were but the coruscations of a too vivid
imagination, and that the villain of the ale-house on the common was as
innocent as the author of ‘The Romany Rye.’” It may not unreasonably
seem to dispassionate persons that Borrow took a pull not only at the
pewter, but at his friend’s leg as well.
But Mr. Mackay is able to throw an interesting light on one or two facets
of his character—notably on his love of pugilism for its own sake.
Outside Borrow’s own books, I do not know any sketch that gives a more
living idea of his joy in combat than this. “It was a fine thing,” says
Mr. Mackay, “to see the great man tackle a tramp. Then he scented the
battle from afar, bearing down on the enemy with quivering nostril. If
the nomad happened to be a gypsy, he was courteously addressed; but if he
were a mere native tatterdemalion, inclined to be truculent, Borrow’s
coat was off in a moment, and the challenge to decide there and then who
was the better man flung forth. I have never seen such challenges
accepted, for Borrow was robust and towering. But those who have seen
him ‘put his dukes up’ affirm that he gave an excellent account of
himself.”
There is also a glimpse in these notes {245} of Borrow’s attitude towards
the great, though the story is not attested in any way and may be merely
_ben trovato_. When a member of the Russian Embassy called on him in
Hereford Square to request for his Imperial master a copy of “Targum,”
Borrow “rudely told the official to let his master fetch it himself!”
The most pregnant friendship of the later days remains to be mentioned.
Two souls of close affinity discovered each other in 1872. In that year
Borrow encountered Mr. Theodore Watts. The fortunate fates threw these
two men together: Mr. Watts-Dunton, as we know him, has done more for the
true interpretation of Borrow than any other man. He brought to the
study of the Borrow books and the elucidation of the Borrow character an
intimate knowledge of the quaint things that Borrow loved. He brought an
extensive and peculiar acquaintance with the tortuous paths in which
Borrow roamed, whether they were literary, or philological, or merely
geographical. Nobody has so deeply penetrated the Borrovian psychology;
the pity of it is that his criticism and appreciation are scattered
through the inaccessible files of journals and reviews, or appear as
“introductions” to various editions of Borrow’s works, and have never
been collected.
The story of their meeting on the common ground of friendship with Dr.
Gordon Hake is, of course, familiar to all Borrovians. It had results so
wide, however, that some account of it is due. For many years before the
date mentioned, Mr. Watts-Dunton, with his amour of _Natura benigna_, his
gypsyism, his cult of the open air, had naturally been strongly drawn
towards such a personality as Borrow’s, and had learnt to love his
strange books. He had seen the white-haired giant swimming in the sea
off Yarmouth, but had never spoken to him till the day at Gordon Hake’s
house at Roehampton, when Borrow’s approach, “striding across the
common,” was announced. They got into touch with difficulty. Kindred
spirits as they were, Borrow’s whimsies, his strangely mingled egoism and
shyness, placed obstacles in the way of sympathy.
Mr. Watts-Dunton’s account of the meeting is lit by a mischievously
flashing humour. It may be aptly compared with Boswell’s description of
his introduction to Johnson in the back parlour of Davies’s shop, but it
is far fuller of humorous intent. He knew something of Borrow’s
idiosyncrasies—his impatience of any learning that was not in his own
“line,” his touchiness about his own books, his objection to inquiries
into his relations with the gypsies. A way of approach was gradually
discovered in the pamphlet literature of the eighteenth century, in which
both were highly cultured. Bampfylde Moore Carew did not yield much, for
Borrow “evidently considered that every properly educated man ought to be
familiar with the story of Bampfylde Moore Carew in its every detail.”
Beer, bruising, gentility, languages were no more successful. “I tried
other subjects in the same direction, but with small success, till in a
lucky moment I bethought myself of Ambrose Gwinett. There is a very
scarce eighteenth-century pamphlet narrating the story of Ambrose
Gwinett, the man who, after having been hanged and gibbeted for murdering
a traveller with whom he had shared a double-bedded room at a seaside
inn, revived in the night, escaped from the gibbet-irons, went to sea as
a common sailor, and afterwards met on a British man-of-war the very man
he had been hanged for murdering. The truth was that Gwinett’s supposed
victim, having been seized on the night in question with a violent
bleeding at the nose, had risen and left the house for a few minutes’
walk in the sea breeze, when the pressgang captured him and carried him
off to sea, where he had been in service ever since. I introduced the
subject of Ambrose Gwinett, and Douglas Jerrold’s play upon it, and at
once the ice between us thawed, and we became friends.”
We have to thank Ambrose Gwinett and the gypsies on Wimbledon Common for
many charming additions to the literature of Borrow. Hard upon this
conversation came the first of those walks in Richmond Park which Mr.
Watts-Dunton has described with so much felicity. It included that call
at the Bald-faced Stag in Kingston Vale, {248} in order that Borrow might
show his companion Jerry Abershaw’s sword. It was the occasion of the
rainbow whose “triumphal arch” filled the sky, when Borrow explained the
gypsy mystery of the trus’hul, how, by making a cross of two sticks, the
expert in occultism could wipe the rainbow out of the heavens. {249} Mr.
Watts-Dunton quaintly discusses the question whether Borrow was “a true
child of the open air,” and comes to the conclusion that the man who
stood looking at the deer and the herons in Richmond Park, what time he
carried under his arm a huge, bulging, green gamp, was not one of those
who, “owing to some exceptional power or some exceptional infirmity,” can
get closer to Nature than to brother, sister, wife, or friend. The
inquisitiveness of the man of science prevents this familiarity; so does
“sensivity to human contact,” as in the case of Emily Brontë; so does
subjection to the love passion. It was neither science nor passion that
prevented Borrow from matriculating in the University of the Open Air in
the sense that Thoreau did. It was Ambition.
“His books show that he could never cleanse his stuffed bosom of the
perilous stuff of ambition. To become renowned, judging from many a
peroration in his books, was as great an incentive . . . to learn
languages as to Alexander Smith’s poet-hero it was an incentive to
write poetry. . . . But I soon found that if he was not a perfect
Child of the Open Air—he was something better: a man of that deep
sympathy with human kind which the Child of the Open Air must needs
lack.”
There was much talk during that ramble of the herons of Whittlesea
Mere—which Mr. Watts-Dunton identified as the scene of some of the
adventures in the early part of “Lavengro”—of viper-taming, of the East
Anglian gypsies, of horses (and especially of the descendants of
“Shales”), of the quality of the sea-water off the east coast, and of
like matters dear to the heart of Borrow. The East Anglian in his new
companion completely conquered Borrow. They sang a duet in praise of the
glassy Ouse, which was the only river in England adequate to reflect the
rainbow, and of the wet sands of the Norfolk coast. The last passage of
the dialogue that Mr. Watts-Dunton has set down is an amusing example of
the complacency with which they agreed on the superiority of East Anglia
to any other spot under heaven:
“It is on sand alone that the sea strikes its true music—Norfolk
sand; a rattle is not music.”
“The best of the sea’s lutes,” I said, “is made by the sands of
Cromer.”
Thus was the entente ratified. It endured till Borrow finally left
London to end his days not far from the sound of the sea’s best lute.