MARY BORROW
AMONG the many Borrow manuscripts in my possession I find a page of
unusual pathos. It is the inscription that Borrow wrote for his wife’s
tomb, and it is in the tremulous handwriting of a man weighed down by the
one incomparable tragedy of life’s pilgrimage:
_Sacred to the Memory of Mary Borrow_,
_the Beloved and Affectionate Wife of_
_George Borrow_, _Esquire_, _who departed_
_this Life on the_ 30_th_ _Jan._ 1869.
GEORGE BORROW.
The death of his wife saddened Borrow, and assisted to transform him into
the unamiable creature of Norfolk tradition. But it is well to bear in
mind, when we are considering Borrow on his domestic and personal side,
that he was unquestionably a good and devoted husband throughout his
married life of twenty-nine years. It was in the year 1832 that Borrow
and his wife first met. He was twenty-nine; she was a widow of
thirty-eight. She was undeniably very intelligent, and was keenly
sympathetic to the young vagabond of wonderful adventures on the highways
of England, now so ambitious for future adventure in distant lands. Her
maiden name was Mary Skepper. She was one of the two children of Edmund
Skepper and his wife Anne, who lived at Oulton Hall in Suffolk, whither
they had removed from Beccles in 1805. Mary’s brother inherited the
Oulton Hall estate of three hundred acres, and she had a mortgage, the
interest of which yielded £450 per annum. In July, 1817, Mary married,
at Oulton Church, Henry Clarke, a lieutenant in the Navy, who died eight
months later of consumption. Two months after his death their child
Henrietta Mary, the “Hen.” who was Borrow’s life companion, was born.
There is a letter among my Borrow Papers addressed to the widow by her
husband’s father at this time. It is dated 17th June, 1818, and runs as
follows:
I read your very kind, affectionate, and respectful Letter of the
15th Inst, with Feelings of Satisfaction and thankfulness—thankful
that God has mercifully given you so pleasing a Pledge of the Love of
my late dear, but lamented son, and I most sincerely hope and trust
that dear little Henrietta will live to be the Joy and Consolation of
your Life: and satisfyed I am that you are what I always esteemed you
to be, _one_ of the best of Women; God grant! that you may be, as I
am sure you deserve to be _one_ of the happiest—His Ways of
Providence are past finding out; to you—they seem indeed to have been
truly afflictive: but we cannot possibly say that they are really so;
we cannot doubt His Wisdom nor ought we to distrust His Goodness, let
us avow, then, where we have not the Power of fathoming—viz. the
dispensations of God; in His good time He will show us, perhaps, that
every painful Event which has happened was abundantly for the best—I
am truly glad to hear that you and the sweet Babe, my little grand
Daughter, are doing so well, and I hope I shall have the pleasure
shortly of seeing you either at Oulton or Sisland. I am sorry to add
that neither Poor L. nor myself are well.—Louisa and my Family join
me in kind love to you, and in best regards to your worthy Father,
Mother, and Brother.
Mary Skepper was certainly a bright, intelligent girl, as I gather from a
manuscript poem before me written to a friend on the eve of leaving
school. As a widow, living at first with her parents at Oulton Hall, and
later with her little daughter in the neighbouring cottage, she would
seem to have busied herself with all kinds of philanthropies, and she was
clearly in sympathy with the religious enthusiasms of certain
neighbouring families of Evangelical persuasion, particularly the Gurneys
and the Cunninghams. The Rev. Francis Cunningham was rector of
Pakefield, near Lowestoft from 1814 to 1830. He married Richenda, sister
of the distinguished Joseph John Gurney and of Elizabeth Fry, in 1816.
In 1830 he became vicar of St. Margaret’s, Lowestoft. His brother, John
William Cunningham, was vicar of Harrow, and married a Verney of the
famous Buckinghamshire family. This John William Cunningham was a great
light of the Evangelical Churches of his time, and was for many years
editor of _The Christian Observer_. His daughter Mary Richenda married
Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, the well-known judge, and the brother of Sir
Leslie Stephen. But to return to Francis Cunningham, whose acquaintance
with Borrow was brought about through Mrs. Clarke. Cunningham was a
great supporter of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and was the
founder of the Paris branch. It was speedily revealed to him that
Borrow’s linguistic abilities could be utilised by the Society, and he
secured the co-operation of his brother-in-law, Joseph John Gurney, in an
effort to find Borrow work in connection with the Society.
We do not meet Mary Clarke again until 1834, when we find a letter from
her to Borrow addressed to St. Petersburg, in which she notifies to him
that he has been “mentioned at many of the Bible Meetings this year,”
adding that “dear Mr. Cunningham” had spoken so nicely of him at an
Oulton gathering. “As I am not afraid of making you proud,” she
continues, “I will tell you one of his remarks. He mentioned you as one
of the most extraordinary and interesting individuals of the present
day.” Henceforth clearly Mary Clarke corresponded regularly with Borrow,
and one or two extracts from her letters are given by Dr. Knapp. Joseph
Jowett of the Bible Society forwarded Borrow’s letters from Russia to
Cunningham, who handed them to Mrs. Clarke and her parents. Borrow had
proposed to continue his mission by leaving Russia for China, but this
Mary Clarke opposed:
I must tell you that your letter chilled me when I read your
intention of going as a Missionary or Agent, with the Manchu
Scriptures in your hand, to the Tartars, that land of incalculable
dangers.
In 1835 Borrow was back in England at Norwich with his mother, and on a
visit to Mary Clarke and the Skeppers at Oulton. Mrs. Skepper died just
before his arrival in England—that is, in September, 1835—while her
husband died in February, 1836. Her only brother died in the following
year.
Thus we see Mary Clarke, aged forty-three, left to fight the world with
her daughter, aged nineteen, and not only to fight the world but her own
family, particularly her brother’s widow, owing to certain ambiguities in
her father’s will. It was these legal quarrels that led Mary Clarke and
her daughter to set sail for Spain, where Mary had had the indefatigable
and sympathetic correspondent during the previous year of trouble.
Borrow and Mary Clarke met, as we have seen, at Seville and there, at a
later period, they became “engaged.” Mrs. Clarke and her daughter
Henrietta sailed for Spain in the _Royal Tar_, leaving London for Cadiz
in June, 1839. Much keen correspondence between Borrow and Mrs. Clarke
had passed before the final decision to visit Spain. His mother was one
of the few people who knew of Mrs. Clarke’s journey to Seville, and must
have understood, as mothers do, what was pending, although her son did
not. When the engagement is announced to her—in November, 1839—she
writes to Mary Clarke a kindly, affectionate letter:
I shall now resign him to your care, and may you love and cherish him
as much as I have done. I hope and trust that each will try to make
the other happy.
There is no reason whatever to accept the suggestion that has been made
that Borrow married for money. And this because he had said in one of
his letters, “It is better to suffer the halter than the yoke,” the kind
of thing that a man might easily say on the eve of making a proposal
which he was not sure would be accepted. Nor can a casual remark of
Borrow’s—“marriage is by far the best way of getting possession of an
estate”—be counted as conclusive. That Borrow was all his life devoted
to his wife I think is proved by his many letters to her that are given
in this volume. Borrow’s further tribute to his wife and stepdaughter in
_Wild Wales_ is well known:
Of my wife I will merely say that she is a perfect paragon of wives,
can make puddings and sweets and treacle posset, and is the best
woman of business in Eastern Anglia. Of my stepdaughter—for such she
is, though I generally call her daughter, and with good reason,
seeing that she has always shown herself a daughter to me—that she
has all kinds of good qualities, and several accomplishments, knowing
something of conchology, more of botany, drawing capitally in the
Dutch style, and playing remarkably well on the guitar—not the
trumpery German thing so called, but the real Spanish guitar.
Borrow belonged to the type of men who would never marry did not some
woman mercifully take them in hand. Mrs. Clarke, when she set out for
Spain, had doubtless determined to marry Borrow. It is clear that he had
no idea of marrying her. Yet he was certainly “engaged,” as we learn
from a letter to Mr. Brackenbury, when he wrote a letter from Seville to
Mr. Brandram, dated 18th March, in which he said: “I wish very much to
spend the remaining years of my life in the northern parts of China, as I
think I have a call to those regions. . . . I hope yet to die in the
cause of my Redeemer.” Surely never did man take so curious a view of
the responsibilities of marriage. Possibly here also Borrow was adapting
himself to the language of the Bible Society. He must have known that
his proposal would be declined—as it was.
Very soon after the engagement Borrow experienced his third term of
imprisonment in Spain, this time, however, only for thirty hours, and all
because he had asked the Alcalde, or mayor of the district in which he
lived, for his passport, and had quarrelled with his worship over the
matter. Borrow gave up the months of this winter of 1839 rather to
writing his first important book, _The Gypsies of Spain_, than to the
concerns of the Bible Society, which fidgeted exceedingly, no doubt
imaging heavy bills for expenses, with no corresponding reports of the
usual character to be read out at meetings. Finally Borrow, with Mrs.
Clarke and her daughter, sailed from Cadiz on the 3rd April, 1840, as we
have already related. He had with him his Jewish servant, Hayim Ben
Attar, and his Arabian horse, Sidi Habismilk, both of which were to
astonish the natives of the Suffolk broads. The party reached London on
16th April and stayed at the Spread Eagle Inn, Gracechurch Street. The
marriage took place at St. Peter’s Church, Cornhill, on 23rd April, 1840.
There are only two letters from Mrs. Borrow to her husband extant. They
were written in the Hereford Square days between the years 1860 and
1869—the last year of Mrs. Borrow’s life. The pair had been married some
twenty-five years at least, and it is made clear by those letters alone
that at the end of this period they were still a most happily assorted
couple. Mrs. Borrow must have gone to Brighton for her health on two
separate occasions, each time accompanied by her daughter. Borrow, who
had enjoyed many a pleasant ramble on his own account, as we shall
see—rambles which extended as far away as Constantinople—is “keeping
house” in Hereford Square, Brompton, the while. It will be noted that
Mrs. Borrow signed herself “Carreta,” the pet name that her husband
always gave her. It has been suggested that as “carreta” means a Spanish
dray-cart, “carita,” “my dear,” was probably meant. But, careless as was
the famous word-master over the spelling of words in the tongues that he
never really mastered scientifically, he could scarcely have made so
obvious a blunder as this, and there must have been some particular
experience in the lives of husband and wife that led to the playful
designation. {145a} Here are the two letters:
TO GEORGE BORROW, ESQ.
GRENVILLE PLACE, BRIGHTON, SUSSEX.
MY DARLING HUSBAND,—I am thankful to say that I arrived here quite
safe on Saturday, and on Wednesday I hope to see you at home. We may
not be home before the evening about six o’clock, sooner or later, so
do not be anxious, as we shall be careful. We took tea with the
Edwards at six o’clock the day I came; they are a very kind, nice
family. You must take a walk when we come home, but remember now we
have a young servant, and do not leave the house for very long
together. The air here is very fresh, and much cooler than in
London, and I hope after the five days’ change I shall be benefited,
but I wish to come home on Wednesday. See to all the doors and
windows of a night, and let Jane keep up the chain, and lock the back
door by the hop plant before it gets dark. Our love to Lady
Soame.—And with our best love to you, believe me, your own
CARRETA.
_Sunday morning_, 10 _o’clock_.
If I do not hear from you I shall conclude all is well, and you may
do the same with regard to us. Have the tea ready a little before
six on Wednesday. Henrietta is wonderfully improved by the change,
and sends dear and best love to you.
* * * * *
TO GEORGE BORROW, ESQ.
33 GRENVILLE PLACE, BRIGHTON, SUSSEX.
_Thursday morning_.
MY DEAR HUSBAND,—As it is raining again this morning I write a few
lines to you. I cannot think that we have quite so much rain as you
have at Brompton, for I was out _twice_ yesterday an hour in the
morning in a Bath chair, and a little walk in the evening on the
Marine Parade, and I have been out little or much every day, and hope
I feel a little better. Our dear Henrietta likewise says that she
feels the better for the air and change. As we are here I think we
had better remain till Tuesday next, when the fortnight will be up,
but I fear you feel very lonely. I hope you get out when you can,
and that you take care of your health. I hope Ellen continues to
attend to yr. comfort, and that when she gives orders to Mrs. Harvey
or the Butcher that she shews you what they send. I shall want the
stair carpets down, and the drawing-room _nice_—blinds and shutters
closed to prevent the sun, also bed-rooms prepared, with well _aired
sheets_ and counterpane _by next Tuesday_. I suppose we shall get to
Hereford Square perhaps about five o’clock, but I shall write again.
You had better dine at yr. usual time, and as we shall get a dinner
here we shall want only tea.
Henrietta’s kindest dear love and mine, remaining yr. true and
affectionate wife.
CARRETA.
No reader can peruse the following pages without recognising the true
affection for his wife that is transparent in Borrow’s letters to her.
Arthur Dalrymple’s remark that he had frequently seen Borrow and his wife
travelling—
He stalking along with a huge cloak wrapped round him in all
weathers, and she trudging behind him like an Indian squaw, with a
carpet bag, or bundle, or small portmanteau in her arms, and
endeavouring under difficulty to keep up with his enormous strides—
is clearly a travesty. “Mrs. Borrow was devoted to her husband, and
looked after business matters; and he always treated her with exceeding
kindness,” is the verdict of Miss Elizabeth Jay, who was frequently
privileged to visit the husband and wife at Oulton.