IN A LAWYER’S OFFICE
DOUBTS were very frequently expressed in Borrow’s lifetime as to his
having really been articled to a solicitor, but that point has been set
at rest by reference to the Record Office. Borrow was articled to
Simpson and Rackham of Tuck’s Court, St. Giles’s, Norwich, “for the term
of five years”—from March, 1819, to March, 1824,—and these five years
were spent in and about Norwich, and were full of adventure of a kind
with which the law had nothing to do. If Borrow had had the makings of a
lawyer he could not have entered the profession under happier auspices.
The firm was an old established one even in his day. It had been
established in Tuck’s Court as Simpson and Rackham, then it became
Rackham and Morse, Rackham, Cooke and Rackham, and Rackham and Cooke;
finally, Tom Rackham, a famous Norwich man in his day, moved to another
office, and the firm of lawyers who at present occupy the original
offices is called Leathes Prior and Sons. Borrow has told us frankly
what a poor lawyer’s clerk he made—he was always thinking of things
remote from that profession, of gypsies, of prize-fighters, and of
word-makers. Yet he loved the head of the firm, William Simpson, who
must have been a kind and tolerant guide to the curious youth. Simpson
was for a time Town Clerk of Norwich, and his portrait hangs in the
Blackfriars Hall. Borrow went to live with Mr. Simpson in the Upper
Close near the Grammar School. Archdeacon Groome recalled having seen
Borrow “reserved and solitary” haunting the precincts of the playground;
another schoolboy, William Drake, remembered him as “tall, spare,
dark-complexioned.” {50}
Borrow tells us how at this time he studied the Welsh language and later
the Danish; his master said that his inattention would assuredly make him
a bankrupt, and his father sighed over his eccentric and impracticable
son. The passion for languages had indeed caught hold of Borrow. Among
my Borrow papers I find a memorandum in the handwriting of his
stepdaughter, in which she says:
I have often heard his mother say, that when a mere child of eight or
nine years, all his pocket-money was spent in purchasing foreign
Dictionaries and Grammars; he formed an acquaintance with an old
woman who kept a bookstall in the market-place of Norwich, whose son
went voyages to Holland with cattle, and brought home Dutch books,
which were eagerly bought by little George. One day the old woman
was crying, and told him that her son was in prison. “For doing
what?” asked the child. “For taking a silk handkerchief out of a
gentleman’s pocket.” “Then,” said the boy, “your son stole the
pocket handkerchief?” “No dear, no, my son did not steal,—he only
glyfaked.”
We have no difficulty in recognising here the heroine of the Moll
Flanders episode in _Lavengro_. But it was not from casual meetings with
Welsh grooms and Danes and Dutchmen that Borrow acquired even such
command of various languages as was undoubtedly his. We have it on the
authority of an old fellow-pupil at the Grammar School, Burcham,
afterwards a London police-magistrate, that William Taylor gave him
lessons in German, {51} but he acquired most of his varied knowledge in
these impressionable years in the Corporation Library of Norwich. Dr.
Knapp found, in his very laudable examination of some of the books,
Borrow’s neat pencil notes, the making of which was not laudable on the
part of his hero. One book here marked was on ancient Danish literature,
the author of which, Olaus Wormius, gave him the hint for calling himself
Olaus Borrow for a time—a signature that we find in some of Borrow’s
published translations. Borrow at this time had aspirations of a
literary kind, and Thomas Campbell accepted a translation of Schiller’s
_Diver_, which was sighed “O. B.” There were also translations from the
German, Dutch, Swedish, and Danish, in the _Monthly Magazine_. Clearly
Borrow was becoming a formidable linguist, if not a very exact master of
words. Still he remained a vagabond, and loved to wander over Mousehold
Heath, to the gypsy encampment, and to make friends with the Romany folk;
he loved also to haunt the horse fairs for which Norwich was so
celebrated; and he was not averse from the companionship of wilder
spirits who loved pugilism, if we may trust _Lavengro_, and if we may
assume, as we justly may, that he many times cast youthful, sympathetic
eyes on John Thurtell in these years, the to-be murderer of Weare, then
actually living with his father in a house on the Ipswich Road, Thurtell,
the father, being in no mean position in the city—an alderman, and a
sheriff in 1815. Yes, there was plenty to do and to see in Norwich, and
Borrow’s memories of it were nearly always kindly.
At the very centre of Borrow’s Norwich life was William Taylor,
concerning whom we have already written much. It was a Jew named Mousha,
a quack it appears, who pretended to know German and Hebrew, and had but
a smattering of either language, who first introduced Borrow to Taylor,
and there is a fine dialogue between the two in _Lavengro_, of which this
is the closing fragment:
“Are you happy?” said the young man.
“Why, no! And, between ourselves, it is that which induces me to
doubt sometimes the truth of my opinions. My life, upon the whole, I
consider a failure; on which account, I would not counsel you, or
anyone, to follow my example too closely. It is getting late, and
you had better be going, especially as your father, you say, is
anxious about you. But, as we may never meet again, I think there
are three things which I may safely venture to press upon you. The
first is, that the decencies and gentlenesses should never be lost
sight of, as the practice of the decencies and gentlenesses is at all
times compatible with independence of thought and action. The second
thing which I would wish to impress upon you is, that there is always
some eye upon us; and that it is impossible to keep anything we do
from the world, as it will assuredly be divulged by somebody as soon
as it is his interest to do so. The third thing which I would wish
to press upon you—”
“Yes,” said the youth, eagerly bending forward.
“Is”—and here the elderly individual laid down his pipe upon the
table—“that it will be as well to go on improving yourself in
German!”
Taylor it was who, when Borrow determined to try his fortunes in London
with those bundles of unsaleable manuscripts, gave him introductions to
Sir Richard Phillips and to Thomas Campbell. It was in the agnostic
spirit that he had learned from Taylor that he wrote during this period
to his one friend in London, Roger Kerrison. Kerrison was grandson of
Sir Roger Kerrison, Mayor of Norwich in 1778, as his son Thomas was after
him in 1806. Roger was articled, as was Borrow, to the firm of Simpson
and Rackham, while his brother Allday was in a drapery store in Norwich,
but with mind bent on commercial life in Mexico. George was teaching him
Spanish in these years as a preparation for his great adventure. Roger
had gone to London to continue his professional experience. He finally
became a Norwich solicitor and died in 1882. Allday went to Zacatecas,
Mexico, and acquired riches. John Borrow followed him there and met with
an early death, as we have seen. Borrow and Roger Kerrison were great
friends at this time; but when _Lavengro_ was written they had ceased to
be this, and Roger is described merely as an “acquaintance” who had found
lodgings for him on his first visit to London. As a matter of fact that
trip to London was made easy for Borrow by the opportunity given to him
of sharing lodgings with Roger Kerrison at Milman Street, Bedford Row,
where Borrow put in an appearance on 1st April, 1824, some two months
after the following letter was written:
TO MR. ROGER KERRISON, 18 MILMAN STREET, BEDFORD ROW.
NORWICH, _Jany._ 20, 1824.
DEAREST ROGER,—I did not imagine when we separated in the street, on
the day of your departure from Norwich, that we should not have met
again: I had intended to have come and seen you off, but happening to
dine at W. Barron’s I got into discourse, and the hour slipt past me
unawares.
I have been again for the last fortnight laid up with that detestable
complaint which destroys my strength, impairs my understanding, and
will in all probability send me to the grave, for I am now much worse
than when you saw me last. But _nil desperandum est_, if ever my
health mends, and possibly it may by the time my clerkship is
expired, I intend to live in London, write plays, poetry, etc., abuse
religion and get myself prosecuted, for I would not for an ocean of
gold remain any longer than I am forced in this dull and gloomy town.
I have no news to regale you with, for there is none abroad, but I
live in the expectation of shortly hearing from you, and being
informed of your plans and projects; fear not to be prolix, for the
slightest particular cannot fail of being interesting to one who
loves you far better than parent or relation, or even than the God
whom bigots would teach him to adore, and who subscribes himself,
Yours unalterably,
GEORGE BORROW.
Borrow might improve his German—not sufficiently, as we shall see in our
next chapter—but he would certainly never make a lawyer. Long years
afterwards, when, as an old man, he was frequently in Norwich, he not
seldom called at that office in Tuck’s Court, where five strange years of
his life had been spent. A clerk in Rackham’s office in these later
years recalls him waiting for the principal as he in his youth had
watched others waiting. {54}