BORROW AND THE BIBLE SOCIETY
THAT George Borrow should have become an agent for the Bible Society,
then in the third decade of its flourishing career, has naturally excited
doubts as to his moral honesty. The position was truly a contrast to an
earlier ideal contained in the letter to his Norwich friend, Roger
Kerrison, that we have already given, in which, with all the zest of a
Shelley, he declares that he intends to live in London, “write plays,
poetry, etc., abuse religion, and get myself prosecuted.” But that was
in 1824, and Borrow had suffered great tribulation in the intervening
eight years. He had acquired many languages, wandered far and written
much, all too little of which had found a publisher. There was plenty of
time for his religious outlook to have changed in the interval, and in
any case Borrow was no theologian. The negative outlook of “Godless
Billy Taylor,” and the positive outlook of certain Evangelical friends
with whom he was now on visiting terms, were of small account compared
with the imperative need of making a living—and then there was the
passionate longing of his nature for a wider sphere—for travelling
activity which should not be dependent alone upon the vagabond’s crust.
What matter if, as Harriet Martineau—most generous and also most
malicious of women, with much kinship with Borrow in temperament—said,
that his appearance before the public as a devout agent of the Bible
Society excited a “burst of laughter from all who remembered the old
Norwich days”; what matter if another “scribbling woman,” as Carlyle
called such strident female writers as were in vogue in mid-Victorian
days—Frances Power Cobbe—thought him “insincere”; these were unable to
comprehend the abnormal heart of Borrow, so entirely at one with Goethe
in _Wilhelm Meister’s Wanderjahre_:
Bleibe nicht am Boden heften,
Frisch gewagt und frisch hinaus!
Kopf und Arm, mit heitern Kräften,
Ueberall sind sie zu Haus;
Wo wir uns der Sonne freuen,
Sind wir jede Sorge los;
Dass wir uns in ihr zerstreuen,
Darum ist die Welt so gross. {91a}
Here was Borrow’s opportunity indeed. Verily I believe that it would
have been the same had it been a society for the propagation of the
writings of Defoe among the Persians. With what zest would Borrow have
undertaken to translate _Moll Flanders_ and _Captain Singleton_ into the
languages of Hafiz and Omar! But the Bible Society was ready to his
hand, and Borrow did nothing by halves. A good hater and a staunch
friend, he was loyal to the Bible Society in no half-hearted way, and not
the most pronounced quarrel with forces obviously quite out of tune with
his nature led to any real slackening of that loyalty. In the end a
portion of his property went to swell the Bible Society’s funds. {91b}
When Borrow became one of its servants, the Bible Society was only in its
third decade. It was founded in the year 1804, and had the names of
William Wilberforce, Granville Sharp, and Zachary Macaulay on its first
committee. To circulate the authorised version of the Bible without note
or comment was the first ideal that these worthy men set before them;
never to the entire satisfaction of the great printing organisations,
which already had a considerable financial interest in such a
circulation. For long years the words “Sold under cost price” upon the
Bibles of the Society excited mingled feelings among those interested in
the book trade. The Society’s first idea was limited to Bibles in the
English tongue. This was speedily modified. A Bible Society was set up
in Nuremberg to which money was granted by the parent organisation. A
Bible in the Welsh language was circulated broadcast through the
Principality, and so the movement grew. From the first it had one of its
principal centres in Norwich, where Joseph John Gurney’s house was open
to its committee, and at its annual gatherings at Earlham his sister
Elizabeth Fry took a leading part, while Wilberforce, Charles Simeon, the
famous preacher, and Legh Richmond, whose _Dairyman’s Daughter_ Borrow
failed to appreciate, were of the company. “Uncles Buxton and Cunningham
are here,” we find one of Joseph John Gurney’s daughters writing in
describing a Bible Society gathering. This was John Cunningham, rector
of Harrow, and it was his brother who helped Borrow to his position in
connection with the Society, as we shall see. At the moment of these
early meetings Borrow is but a boy, meeting Joseph Gurney on the banks of
the river near Earlham, and listening to his discourse upon angling. The
work of the Bible Society in Russia may be said to have commenced when
one John Paterson of Glasgow, who had been a missionary of the
Congregational body, went to St. Petersburg during those critical months
of 1812 that Napoleon was marching into Russia. Paterson indeed, William
Canton tells us, was “one of the last to behold the old Tartar wall and
high brick towers” and other splendours of the Moscow which in a month or
two were to be consumed by the flames. Paterson was back again in St.
Petersburg before the French were at the gates of Moscow, and it is
noteworthy that while Moscow was burning, and the Czar was on his way to
join his army, this remarkable Scot was submitting to Prince Galitzin a
plan for a Bible Society in St. Petersburg, and a memorial to the Czar
thereon:
The plan and memorial were examined by the Czar on the 18th (of
December); with a stroke of his pen he gave his sanction—“So be it,
Alexander”; and as he wrote, the last tattered remnants of the Grand
Army struggled across the ice of the Niemen. {92}
The Society was formed in January 1813, and when the Czar returned to St.
Petersburg in 1815, after the shattering of Napoleon’s power, he
authorised a new translation of the Bible into modern Russian. From
Russia it was not a far cry, where the spirit of evangelisation held
sway, to Manchuria and to China. To these remote lands the Bible Society
desired to send its literature. In 1822 the gospel of St. Matthew was
printed in St. Petersburg in Manchu. Ten years later the type of the
whole New Testament in that language was lying in the Russian capital.
“All that was required was a Manchu scholar to see the work through the
press.” Here came the chance for Borrow. At this period there resided
at Oulton Hall, Suffolk, but a few miles from Norwich, a family of the
name of Skepper, Edmund and Anne his wife, with their two children,
Breame and Mary. Mary married in 1817 one Henry Clarke, a lieutenant in
the Royal Navy. He died afterwards of consumption. A posthumous child
of the marriage, Henrietta Mary, was born two months after her father
died. Mary Clarke, as she now was, threw herself with zest into all the
religious enthusiasms of the locality, and the Rev. Francis Cunningham,
Vicar of St. Margaret’s, Lowestoft, was one of her friends. Borrow had
met Mary Clarke on one of her visits to Lowestoft, and she had doubtless
been impressed with his fine presence, to say nothing of the intelligence
and varied learning of the young man. The following note, the first
communication I can find from Borrow to his future wife, indicates how
matters stood at the time:
TO MRS. CLARKE
ST. GILES, NORWICH, 22 _October_, 1832.
DEAR MADAM,—According to promise I transmit you a piece of Oriental
writing, namely the tale of Blue Beard, translated into Turkish by
myself. I wish it were in my power to send you something more worthy
of your acceptance, but I hope you will not disdain the gift,
insignificant though it be. Desiring to be kindly remembered to Mr.
and Mrs. Skepper and the remainder of the family,—I remain, dear
Madam, your most obedient humble servant,
GEORGE BORROW.
That Borrow owed his introduction to Mr. Cunningham to Mrs. Clarke is
clear, although Cunningham, in his letter to the Bible Society urging the
claims of Borrow, refers to the fact that a “young farmer” in the
neighbourhood had introduced him. This was probably her brother, Breame
Skepper. Dr. Knapp was of the opinion that Joseph John Gurney obtained
Borrow his appointment, but the recently published correspondence of
Borrow with the Bible Society makes it clear that Cunningham wrote—on
27th December, 1832—recommending Borrow to the secretary, the Rev. Andrew
Brandram. How little he knew of Borrow is indicated by the fact that he
referred to him as “independent in circumstances.” Brandram told
Caroline Fox many years afterwards that Gurney had effected the
introduction, but this was merely a lapse of memory. In fact we find
Borrow asking to be allowed to meet Gurney before his departure. In any
case he has himself told us, in one of the brief biographies of himself
that he wrote, that he promptly walked to London, covering the whole
distance of 112 miles in twenty-seven hours, and that his expenses
amounted to 5½d. laid out in a pint of ale, a half-pint of milk, a roll
of bread and two apples. He reached London in the early morning, called
at the offices of the Bible Society in Earl Street, and was kindly
received by Andrew Brandram and Joseph Jowett, the two secretaries. He
was asked if he would care to learn Manchu, and go to St. Petersburg. He
was given six months for the task, and doubtless also some money on
account. He returned to Norwich more luxuriously—by mail coach. In
June, 1833, we find a letter from Borrow to Jowett, dated from Willow
Lane, Norwich, and commencing, “I have mastered Manchu, and I should feel
obliged by your informing the committee of the fact, and also my
excellent friend, Mr. Brandram.” A long reply to this by Jowett is among
my Borrow Papers, but the Bible Society clearly kept copies of its
letters, and a portion of this one has been printed. It shows that
Borrow went through much heart-burning before his destiny was finally
settled. At last he was again invited to London, and found himself as
one of two candidates for the privilege of going to Russia. The
examination consisted of a Manchu hymn, of which Borrow’s version seems
to have proved the more acceptable, and he afterwards printed it in his
_Targum_. Finally, on the 5th of July, 1833, Borrow received a letter
from Jowett offering him the appointment with a salary of £200 a year and
expenses. The letter contained his first lesson in the then unaccustomed
discipline of the Evangelical vocabulary. He was not at first at home in
the precise measure of unction required by his new friends. Borrow had
spoken of the prospect of becoming “useful to the Deity, to man, and to
himself.” “Doubtless you meant,” commented Jowett, “the prospect of
glorifying God,” and Jowett frankly tells him that his tone of confidence
in speaking of himself “had alarmed some of the excellent members of our
committee.” Borrow adapted himself at once, and is congratulated by
Jowett in a later communication upon the “truly Christian” spirit of his
next letter.
By an interesting coincidence there was living in Norwich at the moment
when Borrow was about to leave it, a man who had long identified himself
with good causes in Russia, and had lived in that country for a
considerable period of his life. John Venning was born in Totnes in
1776, and he is buried—in the Rosary Cemetery—at Norwich, where he died
in 1858, after twenty-eight years’ residence in that city. He started
for St. Petersburg four years after John Howard had died, ostensibly on
behalf of the commercial house with which he was associated, but with the
intention of carrying on the work of that great man in prison reform.
Alexander I. was on the throne, and he made Venning his friend,
frequently conversing with him upon religious subjects. He became the
treasurer of a society for the humanising of Russian prisons; but when
Nicholas became Czar in 1825 Venning’s work became more difficult, though
the Emperor was sympathetic. Venning returned to England in 1830, and
thus opportunely, in 1833, was able to give his fellow-townsman letters
of introduction to Prince Galitzin and other Russian notables, so that
Borrow was able to set forth under the happiest auspices—with an entire
change of conditions from those eight years of semi-starvation that he
was now to leave behind him for ever. Borrow left London for St.
Petersburg on 31st July, 1833, not forgetting to pay his mother before he
left the £17 he had had to borrow during his time of stress. Always
devoted to his mother, Borrow sent her sums of money at intervals from
the moment the power of earning came to him. We shall never know, we can
only surmise, something of the self-sacrificing devotion of that mother
during the years in which Borrow had failed to find remunerative work.
Wherever he wandered there had always been a home in the Willow Lane
cottage. It is probable that much the greater part of the period of his
eight years of penury was spent under her roof. Yet we may be sure that
the good mother never once reproached her son. She had just that touch
of idealism in her character that made for faith and hope. In any case
never more was Borrow to suffer penury, or to be a burden on his mother.
Henceforth, to her dying day, she was to be his devoted care.