EIGHT YEARS OF VAGABONDAGE
THERE has been much nonsense written concerning what has been called the
“veiled period” of George Borrow’s life. This has arisen from a letter
which Richard Ford of the _Handbook for Travellers in Spain_ wrote to
Borrow after a visit to him at Oulton in 1844. Borrow was full of his
projected _Lavengro_, the idea of which he outlined to his friends. He
was a genial man in those days, on the wave of a popular success. Was
not _The Bible in Spain_ passing merrily from edition to edition!
Borrow, it is clear, told Ford that he was writing his “Autobiography”—he
had no misgiving then as to what he should call it—and he evidently
proposed to end it in 1825 and not in 1833, when the Bible Society gave
him his real chance in life. His friend Ford indeed begged him not to
“drop a curtain” over the eight years succeeding 1825. “No doubt,” says
Ford, “it will excite a mysterious interest,” but then he adds in effect
it will lead to a wrong construction being put upon the omission. Well,
there can be but one interpretation, and that not an unnatural one.
Borrow had a very rough time during these years. His vanity was hurt,
and no wonder. It seems a strange matter to us now that Charles Dickens
should have been ashamed of the blacking-bottle episode of his boyhood.
Genius has a right to a poverty-stricken—even to a sordid, boyhood. But
genius has no right to a sordid manhood, and here was George “Olaus”
Borrow, who was able to claim the friendship of William Taylor, the
German scholar; who was able to boast of his association with sound
scholastic foundations, with the High School at Edinburgh and the Grammar
School at Norwich; who was a great linguist and had made rare
translations from the poetry of many nations, starving in the byways of
England and of France. What a fate for such a man that he should have
been so unhappy for eight years; should have led the most penurious of
roving lives, and almost certainly have been in prison as a common tramp.
{79} It was all very well to romance about a poverty-stricken youth.
But when youth had fled there ceased to be romance, and only sordidness
was forthcoming. From his twenty-third to his thirty-first year George
Borrow was engaged in a hopeless quest for the means of making a living.
There is, however, very little mystery. Many incidents of each of these
years are revealed at one or other point. His home, to which he returned
from time to time, was with his mother at the cottage in Willow Lane,
Norwich. Whether he made sufficient profit out of a horse, as in _The
Romany Rye_, to enable him to travel upon the proceeds, as Dr. Knapp
thinks, we cannot say. Dr. Knapp is doubtless right in assuming that
during this period he led “a life of roving adventure,” his own
authorised version of his career at the time, as we may learn from the
biography in his handwriting from _Men of the Time_. But how far this
roving was confined to England, how far it extended to other lands, we do
not know. We are, however, satisfied that he starved through it all,
that he rarely had a penny in his pocket. At a later date he gave it to
be understood at times that he had visited the East, and that India had
revealed her glories to him. We do not believe it. Defoe was Borrow’s
master in literature, and he shared Defoe’s right to lie magnificently on
occasion. Borrow certainly did some travel in these years, but it was
sordid, lacking in all dignity—never afterwards to be recalled. For the
most part, however, he was in England. We know that Borrow was in
Norwich in 1826, for we have seen him superintending the publication of
the _Romantic Ballads_ by subscription in that year. In that year also
he wrote the letter to Haydon, the painter, to say that he was ready to
sit for him, but that he was “going to the south of France in a little
better than a fortnight.” We know also that he was in Norwich in 1827,
because it was then, and not in 1818 as described in _Lavengro_, that he
“doffed his hat” to the famous trotting stallion Marshland Shales, when
that famous old horse was exhibited at Tombland Fair on the Castle Hill.
We meet him next as the friend of Dr. Bowring. The letters to Bowring we
must leave to another chapter, but they commence in 1829 and continue
through 1830 and 1831. Through them all Borrow shows himself alive to
the necessity of obtaining an appointment of some kind, and meanwhile he
is hard at work upon his translations from various languages, which, in
conjunction with Dr. Bowring, he is to issue as _Songs of Scandinavia_.
It has been said that in 1829 he made the translation of the _Memoirs of
Vidocq_, which appeared in that year with a short preface by the
translator. {80a} But these little volumes bear no internal evidence of
Borrow’s style, and there is no external evidence to support the
assumption that he had a hand in their publication. His occasional
references to Vidocq are probably due to the fact that he had read this
little book.
I have before me one very lengthy manuscript of Borrow’s of this period.
It is dated December, 1829, and is addressed, “To the Committee of the
Honourable and Praiseworthy Association, known by the name of the
Highland Society.” {80b} It is a proposal that they should publish in
two thick octavo volumes a series of translations of the best and most
approved poetry of the ancient and modern Scots-Gaelic bards. Borrow was
willing to give two years to the project, for which he pleads “with no
sordid motive.” It is a dignified letter, which will be found in one of
Dr. Knapp’s appendices—so presumably Borrow made two copies of it. The
offer was in any case declined, and so Borrow passed from disappointment
to disappointment during these eight years, which no wonder he desired,
in the coming years of fame and prosperity, to veil as much as possible.
The lean years in the lives of any of us are not those upon which we
delight to dwell, or upon which we most cheerfully look back. {80c}