BORROW’S MOTHER
THROUGHOUT his whole life George Borrow adored his mother, who seems to
have developed into a woman of great strength of character far remote
from the pretty play-actor who won the heart of a young soldier at East
Dereham in the last years of the eighteenth century. We would gladly
know something of the early years of Ann Perfrement. Her father was a
farmer, whose farm at Dumpling Green we have already described. He did
not, however, “farm his own little estate” as Borrow declared. The
grandfather—a French Protestant—came, if we are to believe Borrow, from
Caen in Normandy after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, but there
is no documentary evidence to support the contention. However, the story
of the Huguenot immigration into England is clearly bound up with Norwich
and the adjacent district. And so we may well take the name of
“Perfrement” as conclusive evidence of a French origin, and reject as
utterly untenable the not unnatural suggestion of Nathaniel Hawthorne,
that Borrow’s mother was “of gypsy descent.” She was one of the eight
children of Samuel and Mary Perfrement, all of whom seem to have devoted
their lives to East Anglia. We owe to Dr. Knapp’s edition of _Lavengro_
one exquisite glimpse of Ann’s girlhood that is not in any other issue of
the book. Ann’s elder sister, curious to know if she was ever to be
married, falls in with the current superstition that she must wash her
linen and “watch” it drying before the fire between eleven and twelve at
night. Ann Perfrement was ten years old at the time. The two girls
walked over to East Dereham, purchased the necessary garment, washed it
in the pool near the house that may still be seen, and watched and
watched. Suddenly when the clock struck twelve they heard, or thought
they heard, a footstep on the path, the wind howled, and the elder sister
sprang to the door, locked and bolted it, and then fell in convulsions on
the floor. The superstition, which Borrow seems to have told his mother
had a Danish origin, is common enough in Ireland and in Celtic lands. It
could scarcely have been thus rehearsed by two Norfolk children had they
not had the blood of a more imaginative race in their veins. In addition
to this we find more than one effective glimpse of Borrow’s mother in
_Lavengro_. We have already noted the episode in which she takes the
side of her younger boy against her husband, with whom John was the
favourite. We meet her again when after his father’s death George had
shouldered his knapsack and made his way to London to seek his fortune by
literature. His elder brother had remained at home, determined upon
being a painter, but joined George in London, leaving the widowed mother
momentarily alone in Norwich.
“And how are things going on at home?” said I to my brother, after we
had kissed and embraced. “How is my mother, and how is the dog?”
“My mother, thank God, is tolerably well,” said my brother, “but very
much given to fits of crying. As for the dog, he is not so well; but
we will talk more of these matters anon,” said my brother, again
glancing at the breakfast things. “I am very hungry, as you may
suppose, after having travelled all night.”
Thereupon I exerted myself to the best of my ability to perform the
duties of hospitality, and I made my brother welcome—I may say more
than welcome; and when the rage of my brother’s hunger was somewhat
abated, we recommenced talking about the matters of our little
family, and my brother told me much about my mother; he spoke of her
fits of crying, but said that of late the said fits of crying had
much diminished, and she appeared to be taking comfort; and, if I am
not much mistaken, my brother told me that my mother had of late the
prayer-book frequently in her hand, and yet oftener the Bible. {15}
Ann Borrow lived in Willow Lane, Norwich, for thirty-three years. That
Borrow was a devoted husband these pages will show. He was also a
devoted son. When he had made a prosperous marriage he tried hard to
persuade his mother to live with him at Oulton, but all in vain. She had
the wisdom to see that such an arrangement is rarely conducive to a son’s
domestic happiness. She continued to live in the little cottage made
sacred by many associations until almost the end of her days. Here she
had lived in earlier years with her husband and her two ambitious boys,
and in Norwich, doubtless, she had made her own friendships, although of
these no record remains. The cottage still stands in its modest court,
and now serves the worthy purpose of a museum for Borrow relics. In
Borrow’s day it was the property of Thomas King, a carpenter. You enter
from Willow Lane through a covered passage into what was then known as
King’s Court. Here the little house faces you, and you meet it with a
peculiarly agreeable sensation, recalling more than one incident in
_Lavengro_ that transpired there. Thomas King, the carpenter, was in
direct descent in the maternal line from the family of Parker, which gave
to Norwich one of its most distinguished sons in the famous Archbishop of
Queen Elizabeth’s day. He extended his business as carpenter
sufficiently to die a prosperous builder. Of his two sons one, also
named Thomas, became physician to Prince Talleyrand, and married a sister
of John Stuart Mill. All this by the way, but there is little more to
record of Borrow’s mother apart from the letters addressed to her by her
son, which occur in their due place in these records. Yet one little
memorandum among my papers which bears Mrs. Borrow’s signature may well
find place here:
In the year 1797 I was at Canterbury. One night at about one o’clock
Sir Robert Laurie and Captain Treve came to our lodgings and tapped
at our bedroom door, and told my husband to get up, and get the men
under arms without beat of drum as soon as possible, for that there
was a mutiny at the Nore. My husband did so, and in less than two
hours they had marched out of town towards Sheerness without making
any noise. They had to break open the store-house in order to get
provender, because the Quartermaster, Serjeant Rowe, was out of the
way. The Dragoon Guards at that time at Canterbury were in a state
of mutiny. ANN BORROW.