A VISIT TO CORNISH KINSMEN
IF Borrow had been a normal man of letters he would have been quite
satisfied to settle down at Oulton, in a comfortable home, with a devoted
wife. The question of money was no longer to worry him. He had moreover
a money-making gift, which made him independent in a measure of his
wife’s fortune. From _The Bible in Spain_ he must have drawn a very
considerable amount, considerable, that is, for a man whose habits were
always somewhat penurious. _The Bible in Spain_ would have been followed
up, were Borrow a quite other kind of man, by a succession of books
almost equally remunerative. Even for one so prone to hate both books
and bookmen there was always the wind on the heath, the gypsy encampment,
the now famous “broad,” not then the haunt of innumerable trippers. But
Borrow ever loved wandering more than writing. Almost immediately after
his marriage—in 1840—he hinted to the Bible Society of a journey to
China; a year later, in June, 1841, he suggested to Lord Clarendon that
Lord Palmerston might give him a consulship: he consulted Hasfeld as to a
possible livelihood in Berlin, and Ford as to travel in Africa. He seems
to have endured residence at Oulton with difficulty during the succeeding
three years, and in 1844 we find him engaged upon the continental travel
that we have already recorded. In 1847 he had hopes of the consulship at
Canton, but Bowring wanted it for himself, and a misunderstanding over
this led to an inevitable break of old friendship. Borrow’s passionate
love of travel was never more to be gratified at the expense of others.
He tried, indeed, to secure a journey to the East from the British Museum
Trustees, and then gave up the struggle. Further wanderings, which were
many, were to be confined to Europe and indeed to England, Scotland,
Ireland, and the Isle of Man. His first journey, however, was not at his
own initiative. Mrs. Borrow’s health was unequal to the severe winters
at Oulton, and so the Borrows made their home at Yarmouth from 1853 to
1860. During these years he gave his vagabond propensities full play.
No year passed without its record of wandering. His first expedition was
the outcome of a burst of notoriety that seems to have done for Borrow
what the success of his _Bible in Spain_ could not do—reveal his identity
to his Cornish relations. The _Bury Post_ of 17th September, 1853,
recorded that Borrow had at the risk of his life saved at least one
member of a boat’s crew wrecked on the coast at Yarmouth:
The moment was an awful one, when George Borrow, the well-known
author of _Lavengro_ and _The Bible in Spain_, dashed into the surf
and saved one life, and through his instrumentality the others were
saved. We ourselves have known this brave and gifted man for years,
and, daring as was his deed, we have known him more than once to risk
his life for others. We are happy to add that he has sustained no
material injury.
This paragraph in the Bury St. Edmunds newspaper was copied into the
_Plymouth Mail_, and was there read by the Borrows of Cornwall, who had
heard nothing of their relative, Thomas Borrow the army captain, and his
family for fifty years or more. One of Borrow’s cousins by marriage,
Robert Taylor of Penquite, invited him to his father’s homeland, and
Borrow accepted, glad, we may be sure, of any excuse for a renewal of his
wanderings. And so on the 23rd of December, 1853, Borrow made his way
from Yarmouth to Plymouth by rail, and thence walked twenty miles to
Liskeard, where quite a little party of Borrow’s cousins were present to
greet him. The Borrow family consisted of Henry Borrow of Looe Down, the
father of Mrs. Taylor, William Borrow of Trethinnick, Thomas Nicholas and
Elizabeth Borrow, all first cousins, except Anne Taylor. Anne, talking
to a friend, describes Borrow on this visit better than any one else has
done:
A fine tall man of about six feet three; well-proportioned and not
stout; able to walk five miles an hour successively; rather florid
face without any hirsute appendages; hair white and soft; eyes and
eyebrows dark; good nose and very nice mouth; well-shaped
hands;—altogether a person you would notice in a crowd.
Borrow stayed at Penquite with his cousins from 24th December to 9th
January, then he went on a walking tour to Land’s End, through Truro and
Penzance; he was back at Penquite from 26th January to 1st February, and
then took a week’s tramp to Tintagel, King Arthur’s Castle, and Pentire.
Naturally he made inquiries into the language, already extinct, but
spoken within the memory of the older inhabitants. “My relations are
most excellent people,” he wrote to his wife from London on his way back,
“but I could not understand more than half of what they said.”
I have only one letter to Mrs. Borrow written during this tour:
TO MRS. GEORGE BORROW
PENQUITE, 27_th_ _Janry._ 1854.
MY DEAR CARRETA,—I just write you a line to inform you that I have
got back safe here from the Land’s End. I have received your two
letters, and hope you received mine from the Land’s End. It is
probable that I shall yet visit one or two places before I leave
Cornwall. I am very much pleased with the country. When you receive
this if you please write a line _by return of post_ I think you may;
the Trethinnick people wish me to stay with them for a day or two.
When you see the Cobbs pray remember me to them; I am sorry Horace
has lost his aunt, he will _miss her_. Love to Hen. Ever yours,
dearest,
G. BORROW.
(Keep this.)
It was the failure of _The Romany Rye_ that prevented Borrow from writing
the Cornish book that he had caused to be advertised in the flyleaf of
that work. Borrow would have made a beautiful book upon Cornwall. Even
the title, _Penquite and Pentyre_; _or_, _The Head of the Forest and the
Headland_, has music in it. And he had in these twenty weeks made
himself wonderfully well acquainted not only with the topography of the
principality, but with its folklore and legend. The gulf that ever
separated the Borrow of the notebook and the unprepared letter from the
Borrow of the finished manuscript was extraordinary, and we may deplore
with Mr. Walling the absence of this among Borrow’s many unwritten books.
Borrow was back in Yarmouth at the end of February, 1854—he had not fled
the country as Dalrymple had suggested—but in July he was off again for
his great tour in Wales, in which he was accompanied by his wife and
daughter. Of that tour we must treat in another and later chapter, for
_Wild Wales_ was not published until 1862. The year following his great
tour in Wales he went on a trip to the Isle of Man.