I hope Mrs. Clarke will write shortly; tell her if she wishes for a retreat I have found one here for her and Henrietta. I have my eye on a beautiful one at fifteen pence a day. I call it a small house, though it is a paradise in its way, having a stable, court-yard, fountain, and twenty rooms. She has only to write to my address at Madrid and I shall receive the letter without fail. Henrietta had better bring with her a Spanish grammar and pocket dictionary, as not a word of English is spoken here. The house-dog—perhaps a real English bulldog would be better—likewise had better come, as it may be useful. God bless you therefore for the present, my dearest mother.

GEORGE BORROW.

Borrow had need of friends more tolerant of his idiosyncrasies than the 'powerful friends' he describes to his mother, for the Secretary of the Bible Society was still in a critical mood:—

You narrate your perilous journey to Seville, and say at the beginning of the description, 'my usual wonderful good fortune accompanying us.' This is a mode of speaking to which we are not accustomed—it savours, some of our friends would say, a little of the profane.[124]

On 29th July 1839 Borrow was instructed by his Committee to return to England, but he was already on the way to Tangier, whence in September he wrote a long and interesting letter to Mr. Brandram, which was afterwards incorporated in The Bible in Spain. He had left Mrs. Clarke and her daughter in Seville, and they joined him at Gibraltar later. We find him en route for Tangier, staying two days with Mr. John M. Brackenbury, the British Consul in Cadiz, who found him a most fascinating man.

His Tangier life is fully described in The Bible in Spain. Here he picked up a Jewish youth, Hayim Ben Attar, who returned to Spain as his servant, and afterwards to England.

Borrow, at the end of September, was back again in Seville, in his house near the cathedral, in the Plazuela de la Pila Seca, which, when I visited Seville in the spring of this year (1913), I found had long been destroyed to make way for new buildings. Here he received the following letter from Mr. George Browne of the Bible Society:—

To Mr. Borrow

BIBLE HOUSE, Oct. 7, 1839.

MY DEAR FRIEND,—Mr. Brandram and myself being both on the eve of a long journey, I have only time to inform you that yours of the 2d ult. from Tangier, and 21st from Cadiz came to hand this morning. Before this time you have doubtless received Mr. Brandram's letter, accompanying the resolution of the Comee., of which I apprised you, but which was delayed a few days, for the purpose of reconsideration. We are not able to suggest precisely the course you should take in regard to the books left at Madrid and elsewhere, and how far it may be absolutely necessary or not for you to visit that city again before you return. The books you speak of, as at Seville, may be sent to Gibraltar rather than to England, as well as any books you may deem it expedient or find it necessary to bring out of the country. As soon as your arrangements are completed we shall look for the pleasure of seeing you in this country. The haste in which I am compelled to write allows me to say no more than that my best wishes attend you, and that I am, with sincere regard, yours truly,

G. BROWNE.

I thank you for your kind remembrance of Mrs. Browne. Did I thank you for your letter to her? She feels, I assure you, very much obliged. Your description of Tangier will be another interesting 'morceau' for her.

'Where is Borrow?' asked the Bible Society meanwhile of the Consuls at Seville and Cadiz, but Borrow had ceased to care. He hoped to become a successful author with his Gypsies; he would at any rate secure independence by marriage, which must have been already mooted. In November he and Mrs. Clarke were formally betrothed, and would have been married in Spain, but a Protestant marriage was impossible there. When preparing to leave Seville he had one of those fiery quarrels, with which his life was to be studded. This time it was with an official of the city over a passport, and the official promptly locked him up, for thirty hours. Hence the following letter in response to his complaint. The writer is Mr., afterwards Sir, George Jerningham, then Secretary of Legation at Madrid, who it may be mentioned came from Costessey, four miles from Norwich. It is written from the British Legation, and is dated 23rd December 1839:

I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your two letters, the one without date, the second dated the 19th November (which however ought to have been December), respecting the outrageous conduct pursued towards you at Seville by the Alcalde of the district in which you resided. I lost no time in addressing a strong representation thereon to the Spanish Minister, and I have to inform you that he has acquainted me with his having written to Seville for exact information upon the whole subject, and that he has promised a further answer to my representation as soon as his inquiries shall have been answered. In the meantime I shall not fail to follow up your case with proper activity.

Borrow was still in Seville, hard at work upon the Gypsies, all through the first three months of the year 1840. In April the three friends left Cadiz for London. A letter of this period from Mr. Brackenbury, the British Consul at Cadiz, is made clear by these facts:

To George Borrow, Esq.

BRITISH CONSULATE, CADIZ, January 27th, 1840.

MY DEAR SIR,—I received on the 19th your very acceptable letter without date, and am heartily rejoiced to find that you have received satisfaction for the insult, and that the Alcalde is likely to be punished for his unjustifiable conduct. If you come to Cadiz your baggage may be landed and deposited at the gates to be shipped with yourselves wherever the steamer may go, in which case the authorities would not examine it, if you bring it into Cadiz it would be examined at the gates—or, if you were to get it examined at the Custom House at Seville and there sealed with the seal of the Customs—it might then be transhipped into the steamer or into any other vessel without being subjected to any examination. If you take your horse, the agents of the steamer ought to be apprized of your intention, that they may be prepared, which I do not think they generally are, with a suitable box.

Consuls are not authorised to unite Protestant subjects in the bonds of Holy Matrimony in popish countries—which seems a peculiar hardship, because popish priests could not, if they would—hence in Spain no Protestants can be legally married. Marriages solemnised abroad according to the law of that land wheresoever the parties may at the time be inhabitants are valid—but the law of Spain excludes their priests from performing these ceremonies where both parties are Protestants—and where one is a Papist, except a dispensation be obtained from the Pope. So you must either go to Gibraltar—or wait till you arrive in England. I have represented the hardship of such a case more than once or twice to Government. In my report upon the Consular Act, 6 Geo. IV. cap. 87—eleven years ago—I suggested that provision should be made to legalise marriages solemnised by the Consul within the Consulate, and that such marriages should be registered in the Consular Office—and that duly certified copies thereof should be equivalent to certificates of marriages registered in any church in England. These suggestions not having been acted upon, I brought the matter under the consideration of Lord John Russell (I being then in England at the time of his altering the Marriage Act), and proposed that Consuls abroad should have the power of magistrates and civil authorities at home for receiving the declarations of British subjects who might wish to enter into the marriage state—but they feared lest the introduction of such a clause, simple and efficacious as it would have been, might have endangered the fate of the Bill; and so we are as Protestants deprived of all power of being legally married in Spain.

What sort of a horse is your hack?—What colour? What age? Would he carry me?—What his action? What his price? Because if in all these points he would suit me, perhaps you would give me the refusal of him. You will of course enquire whether your Arab may be legally exported.

All my family beg to be kindly remembered to you.—I am, my dear sir, most faithfully yours,

J. M. BRACKENBURY.

There is a young gentleman here, who is in Spain partly on account of his health—partly for literary purposes. I will give him, with your leave, a line of introduction to you whenever he may go to Seville. He is the Honourable R. Dundas Murray, brother of Lord Elibank, a Scottish nobleman.

FOOTNOTES:

[111] Norfolk Chronicle, 17th October 1835.

[112] Secretary Samuel Brandram, writing to Borrow from the office of the Bible Society in October 1835, gave clear indication that the Society was uncertain how next to utilise Borrow's linguistic and missionary talents. Should he go to Portugal or to China was the question. In November the committee had decided on Portugal, although they thought it probable that Borrow would 'eventually go to China,' 'With Portugal he is already acquainted,' said Mr. Brandram in a letter of introduction to the Rev. E. Whitely, the British chaplain in Oporto. So that Borrow must really have wandered into Portugal in that earlier and more melancholy apprenticeship to vagabondage concerning which there is so much surmise and so little knowledge. Had he lied about his acquaintance with Portugal he would certainly have been 'found out' by this Portuguese acquaintance, with whom he had much social intercourse.

[113] The reader who finds Borrow's Bible in Spain insufficient for his account of that period, and I am not of the number, may turn to the Letters of George Borrow to the Bible Society, from which we have already quoted, or to Mr. Herbert Jenkins's Life of George Borrow. In the former book the greater part of 500 closely-printed pages is taken up with repetitions of the story as told in The Bible in Spain, or with additions which Borrow deliberately cancelled in the work in question. In Mr. Jenkins's Life he will find that out of a solid volume of 496 pages exactly 212 are occupied with Borrow's association with the Peninsula and his work therein. To the enthusiast who desires to supplement The Bible in Spain with valuable annotation I cordially commend both these volumes.

[114] Who that has visited Spain can for a moment doubt but that, if Napoleon had really conquered the Peninsula and had been able to put his imprint upon it as he did upon Italy, the Spain of to-day would have become a much greater country than it is at present—than it will be in a few short years.

[115] The Bible in Spain, ch. xlii.

[116] The Old and New Testament, in ten volumes, were first issued in Spanish at Valencia in 1790-93. When in Madrid I picked up on a second-hand bookstall a copy of a cheap Spanish version of Scio's New Testament, which bears a much earlier date than the one Borrow carried. It was published, it will be noted, two years before Borrow published his translation of Klinger's ribald book Faustus:—

'El Nuevo Testamento, Traducido al Espanol de la Vulgata Latina por el Rmo. P. Philipe Scio de S. Miguel. Paris: En la Imprenta de J. Smith, 1823,'

[117] This kind of interpretation is not restricted to the youthful Sunday School teacher. At a meeting of the Bible Society held at Norwich—Borrow's own city—on 29th May 1913, Mrs. Florence Barclay, the author of many popular novels, thus addressed the gathering. I quote from the Eastern Daily Press: 'She had heard sometimes a shallow form of criticism which said that it was impossible that in actual reality any man should have lived and breathed three days and three nights in the interior of a fish. Might she remind the meeting that the Lord Jesus Christ, who never made mistakes, said Himself, "As Jonah was three days and three nights in the interior of the sea monster." Please note that in the Greek the word was not "whale," but "sea monster." And then, let us remember, that we were told that the Lord God had prepared the great fish in order that it should swallow Jonah. She did suggest that if mere man nowadays could construct a submarine, which went down to the depths of the ocean and came up again when he pleased, it did not require very much faith to believe that Almighty God could specially prepare a great fish which should rescue His servant, to whom He meant to give another chance, from the depths of the sea, and land him in due course upon the shore. (Applause).' These crude views, which ignored the symbolism of Nineveh as a fish, now universally accepted by educated people, were not, however, endorsed by Dr. Beeching, the learned Dean of Norwich, who in the same gathering expressed the point of view of more scholarly Christians:—'He would not distinguish inspired writing from fiction. He would say there could be inspired fiction just as well as inspired facts, and he would point to the story of the prodigal son as a wonderful example from the Bible of inspired fiction. There were a good many other examples in the Old Testament, and he had not the faintest doubt that the story of Jonah was one. It was on the same level as the prodigal son. It was a story told to teach the people a distinct truth.'

[118] When in Madrid in May 1913 I called upon Mr. William Summers, the courteous Secretary of the Madrid Branch of the British and Foreign Bible Society in the Flor Alta. Mr. Summers informs me that the issues of the British and Foreign Bible Society, Bibles and Testaments, in Spain for the past three years are as follows:

Year. Bibles. Testaments. Portions. Total. 1910, 5,309 8,971 70,594 84,874 1911, 5,665 11,481 79,525 96,671 1912, 9,083 11,842 85,024 105,949

The Calle del Principe is now rapidly being pulled down and new buildings taking the place of those Borrow knew.

[119] Embeo e Majaro Lucas. El Evangelio segun S. Lucas traducido al Romani o dialecto de los Gitanos de Espana, 1857. Two later copies in my possession bear on their title-pages 'Lundra, 1871' and 'Lundra, 1872.' But the Bible Society in Spain has long ceased to handle or to sell any gypsy version of St. Luke's Gospel.

[120] And in Darlow's Letters of George Borrow to the Bible Society, pp. 180-4.

[121] Darlow, Letters of George Borrow to the Bible Society.

[122] The story of all the negotiations concerning this imprisonment and release is told by Dr. Knapp (Life, vol. i, pp. 279-297), and is supplemented by Mr. Herbert Jenkins by valuable documents from the Foreign Office Papers at the Record Office.

[123] Printed by Mr. Darlow in Letters of George Borrow to the Bible Society, pp. 359-379.

[124] Darlow, George Borrow's Letters to the Bible Society, p. 414.



CHAPTER XIX

BORROW'S SPANISH CIRCLE

There are many interesting personalities that pass before us in Borrow's three separate narratives,[125] as they may be considered, of his Spanish experiences. We would fain know more concerning the two excellent secretaries of the Bible Society—Samuel Brandram and Joseph Jowett. We merely know that the former was rector of Beckenham and was one of the Society's secretaries until his death in 1850;[126] that the latter was rector of Silk Willoughby in Lincolnshire, and belonged to the same family as Jowett of Balliol. But there are many quaint characters in Borrow's own narrative to whom we are introduced. There is Maria Diaz, for example, his landlady in the house in the Calle de Santiago in Madrid, and her husband, Juan Lopez, also assisted Borrow in his Bible distribution. Very eloquent are Borrow's tributes to the pair in the pages of The Bible in Spain. 'Honour to Maria Diaz, the quiet, dauntless, clever, Castilian female! I were an ungrate not to speak well of her,' We get a glimpse of Maria and her husband long years afterwards when a pensioner in a Spanish almshouse revealed himself as the son of Borrow's friends. Eduardo Lopez was only eight years of age when Borrow was in Madrid, and he really adds nothing to our knowledge.[127] Then there were those two incorrigible vagabonds—Antonio Buchini, his Greek servant with an Italian name, and Benedict Mol, the Swiss of Lucerne, who turns up in all sorts of improbable circumstances as the seeker of treasure in the Church of St. James of Compostella—only a masterly imagination could have made him so interesting. Concerning these there is nothing to supplement Borrow's own story. But we have attractive glimpses of Borrow in the frequently quoted narrative of Colonel Napier,[128] and this is so illuminating that I venture to reproduce it at greater length than previous biographers have done. Edward Elers Napier, who was born in 1808, was the son of one Edward Elers of the Royal Navy. His widow married the famous Admiral Sir Charles Napier, who adopted her four children by her first husband. Edward Elers, the younger, or Edward Napier, as he came to be called, was educated at Sandhurst and entered the army, serving for some years in India. Later his regiment was ordered to Gibraltar, and it was thence that he made several sporting excursions into Spain and Morocco. Later he served in Egypt, and when, through ill-health, he retired in 1843 on half-pay, he lived for some years in Portugal. In 1854 he returned to the army and did good work in the Crimea, becoming a lieutenant-general in 1864. He died in 1870. He wrote, in addition to these Excursions, several other books, including Scenes and Sports in Foreign Lands.[129] It was during his military career at Gibraltar that he met George Borrow at Seville, as the following extracts from his book testify. Borrow's pretension to have visited the East is characteristic—and amusing:—

1839. Saturday 4th.—Out early, sketching at the Alcazar. After breakfast it set in a day of rain, and I was reduced to wander about the galleries overlooking the 'patio.' Nothing so dreary and out of character as a rainy day in Spain. Whilst occupied in moralising over the dripping water-spouts, I observed a tall, gentlemanly-looking man, dressed in a zamarra,[130] leaning over the balustrades, and apparently engaged in a similar manner with myself. Community of thoughts and occupation generally tends to bring people together. From the stranger's complexion, which was fair, but with brilliant black eyes, I concluded he was not a Spaniard; in short, there was something so remarkable in his appearance that it was difficult to say to what nation he might belong. He was tall, with a commanding appearance; yet, though apparently in the flower of manhood, his hair was so deeply tinged with the winter of either age or sorrow as to be nearly snow-white. Under these circumstances, I was rather puzzled as to what language I should address him in. At last, putting a bold face on the matter, I approached him with a 'Bonjour, monsieur, quel triste temps!'

'Yes, sir,' replied he in the purest Parisian accent; 'and it is very unusual weather here at this time of the year.'

'Does "monsieur" intend to be any time at Seville?' asked I. He replied in the affirmative. We were soon on a friendly footing, and from his varied information I was both amused and instructed. Still I became more than ever in the dark as to his nationality; I found he could speak English as fluently as French. I tried him on the Italian track; again he was perfectly at home.

He had a Greek servant, to whom his gave his orders in Romaic. He conversed in good Castilian with 'mine host'; exchanged a German salutation with an Austrian Baron, at the time an inmate of the fonda; and on mentioning to him my morning visit to Triano, which led to some remarks on the gypsies, and the probable place from whence they derived their origin, he expressed his belief that it was from Moultan, and said that, even to this day, they retained many Moultanee and Hindoostanee expressions, such as 'panee' (water), 'buree panee'[131] (the sea), etc. He was rather startled when I replied 'in Hindee,' but was delighted on finding I was an Indian, and entered freely, and with depth and acuteness, on the affairs of the East, most of which part of the world he had visited.

In such varied discourse did the hours pass so swiftly away that we were not a little surprised when Pepe, the 'mozo' (and I verily believe all Spanish waiters are called Pepe), announced the hour of dinner; after which we took a long walk together on the banks of the river. But, on our return, I was as much as ever in ignorance as to who might be my new and pleasant acquaintance.

I took the first opportunity of questioning Antonio Baillie (Buchini) on the subject, and his answer only tended to increase my curiosity. He said that nobody knew what nation the mysterious 'Unknown' belonged to, nor what were his motives for travelling. In his passport he went by the name of ——, and as a British subject, but in consequence of a suspicion being entertained that he was a Russian spy, the police kept a sharp look-out over him. Spy or no spy, I found him a very agreeable companion; and it was agreed that on the following day we should visit together the ruins of Italica.

May 5.—After breakfast, the 'Unknown' and myself, mounting our horses, proceeded on our expedition to the ruins of Italica. Crossing the river, and proceeding through the populous suburb of Triano, already mentioned, we went over the same extensive plain that I had traversed in going to San Lucar, but keeping a little more to the right a short ride brought us in sight of the Convent of San Isidrio, surrounded by tall cypress and waving date-trees. This once richly-endowed religious establishment is, together with the small neighbouring village of Santi Ponci, I believe, the property of the Duke of Medina Coeli, at whose expense the excavations are now carried on at the latter place, which is the ancient site of the Roman Italica.

We sat down on a fragment of the walls, and sadly recalling the splendour of those times of yore, contrasted with the desolation around us, the 'Unknown' began to feel the vein of poetry creeping through his inward soul, and gave vent to it by reciting, with great emphasis and effect, and to the astonishment of the wondering peasant, who must have thought him 'loco,' the following well-known and beautiful lines:—

'Cypress and ivy, weed and wallflower, grown, Matted and massed together, hillocks heap'd On what were chambers, arch crush'd, column strown In fragments, choked up vaults, and frescoes steep'd In subterranean damps, where the owl peep'd, Deeming it midnight; Temples, baths, or halls— Pronounce who can: for all that Learning reap'd From her research hath been, that these are walls.'

I had been too much taken up with the scene, the verses, and the strange being who was repeating them with so much feeling, to notice the approach of one who now formed the fourth person of our party. This was a slight female figure, beautiful in the extreme, but whom tattered garments, raven hair (which fell in matted elf-locks over her naked shoulders), swarthy complexion, and flashing eyes, proclaimed to be of the wandering tribe of 'gitanos.' From an intuitive sense of natural politeness she stood with crossed arms, and a slight smile on her dark and handsome countenance, until my companion had ceased, and then addressed us in the usual whining tone of supplication, with 'Caballeritos, una limosita! Dios se lo pagara a ustedes!' ('Gentlemen, a little charity! God will repay it to you!') The gypsy girl was so pretty, and her voice so sweet, that I involuntarily put my hand in my pocket.

'Stop!' said the 'Unknown.' 'Do you remember what I told you about the Eastern origin of these people? You shall see I am correct. Come here, my pretty child,' said he in Moultanee, 'and tell me where are the rest of your tribe?'

The girl looked astounded, replied in the same tongue, but in broken language; when, taking him by the arm, she said, in Spanish: 'Come, caballero; come to one who will be able to answer you;' and she led the way down amongst the ruins towards one of the dens formerly occupied by the wild beasts, and disclosed to us a set of beings scarcely less savage. The sombre walls of this gloomy abode were illumined by a fire, the smoke from which escaped through a deep fissure in the massy roof; whilst the flickering flames threw a blood-red glare on the bronzed features of a group of children, of two men, and a decrepit old hag, who appeared busily engaged in some culinary preparations.

On our entrance, the scowling glance of the males of the party, and a quick motion of the hand towards the folds of the 'faja,'[132] caused in me, at least, anything but a comfortable sensation; but their hostile intentions, if ever entertained, were immediately removed by a wave of the hand from our conductress, who, leading my companion towards the sibyl, whispered something in her ear. The old crone appeared incredulous. The 'Unknown' uttered one word; but that word had the effect of magic; she prostrated herself at his feet, and in an instant, from an object of suspicion he became one of worship to the whole family, to whom, on taking leave, he made a handsome present, and departed with their united blessings, to the astonishment of myself, and what looked very like terror in our Spanish guide.

I was, as the phrase goes, dying with curiosity, and, as soon as we mounted our horses, exclaimed, 'Where, in the name of goodness, did you pick up your acquaintance and the language of these extraordinary people?' 'Some years ago, in Moultan,' he replied. 'And by what means do you possess such apparent influence over them?' But the 'Unknown' had already said more than he perhaps wished on the subject. He drily replied that he had more than once owed his life to gipsies, and had reason to know them well; but this was said in a tone which precluded all further queries on my part. The subject was never again broached, and we returned in silence to the fonda....

May 7th.—Pouring with rain all day, during which I was mostly in the society of the 'Unknown.' This is a most extraordinary character, and the more I see of him the more I am puzzled. He appears acquainted with everybody and everything, but apparently unknown to every one himself. Though his figure bespeaks youth—and by his own account his age does not exceed thirty—yet the snows of eighty winters could not have whitened his locks more completely than they are. But in his dark and searching eye there is an almost supernatural penetration and lustre, which, were I inclined to superstition, might induce me to set down its possessor as a second Melmoth; and in that character he often appears to me during the troubled rest I sometimes obtain through the medium of the great soother, 'laudanum.'

The next most interesting figure in the Borrow gallery of this period is Don Luis de Usoz y Rio, who was a good friend to Borrow during the whole of his sojourn in Spain. It was he who translated Borrow's appeal to the Spanish Prime Minister to be permitted to distribute Scio's New Testament. He watched over Borrow with brotherly solicitude, and wrote him more than one excellent letter, of which the two following from my Borrow Papers, the last written at the close of the Spanish period, are the most interesting:

To Mr. George Borrow

(Translated from the Spanish)

PIAZZA DI SPAGNA 17, ROME, 7 April 1838.

DEAR FRIEND,—I received your letter, and thank you for the same. I know the works under the name of 'Boz,' about which you write, and also the Memoirs of the Pickwick Club, and although they seemed to me good, I have failed to appreciate properly their qualities, because much of the dramatic style and dialogue in the same are very difficult for those who know English merely from books. I made here a better acquaintance than that of Mezzofanti (who knows nothing), namely, that of Prof. Michel-Angelo Lanci, already well-known on account of his work, La sacra scrittura illustrata con monumenti fenico-assiri ed egiziani, etc., etc. (The Scriptures, illustrated with Ph[oe]nician-Assyrian and Egyptian monuments), which I am reading at present, and find very profound and interesting, and more particularly very original. He has written and presented me a book, Esposizione dei versetti del Giobbe intorno al cavallo (Explanation of verses of Job about a horse), and in these and other works he proves himself to be a great philologist and Oriental scholar. I meet him almost daily, and I assure you that he seems to me to know everything he treats thoroughly, and not like Gayangos or Calderon, etc., etc. His philosophic works have created a great stir here, and they do not please much the friars here; but as here they are not like the police barbarians there, they do not forbid it, as they cannot. Lanci is well known in Russia and in Germany, and when I bring his works there, and you are there and have not read them, you will read them and judge for yourself.

Wishing you well, and always at your service, I remain, always yours,

LUIS DE USOZ Y RIO.

To Mr. George Borrow

(Translated from the Spanish)

NAPLES, 28 August 1839.

DEAR FRIEND,—I received your letter of the 28 July written from Sevilla, and I am waiting for that which you promise me from Tangier.

I am glad that you liked Sevilla, and I am still more glad of the successful shipment of the beloved book. In distributing it, you are rendering the greatest service that generous foreigners (I mean Englishmen) can render to the real freedom and enlightenment in Spain, and any Spaniard who is at heart a gentleman must be grateful for this service to the Society and to its agent. In my opinion, if Spain had maintained the customs, character, and opinions that it had three centuries ago, it ought to have maintained also unity in religious opinions: but that at present the circumstances have changed, and the moral character and the advancement of my unfortunate country would not lose anything in its purification and progress by (the grant of) religious liberty.

You are saying that I acted very light-mindedly in judging Mezzofanti without speaking to him. You know that the other time when I was in Italy I had dealings and spoke with him, and that I said to you that he had a great facility for speaking languages, but that otherwise he was no good. Because I have seen him several times in the Papal chapels with a certain air of an ass and certain grimaces of a blockhead that cannot happen to a man of talent. I am told, moreover, that he is a spy, and that for that reason he was given the hat. I know, moreover, that he has not written anything at all. For that reason I do not wish to take the trouble of seeing him.

As regards Lanci, I am not saying anything except that I am waiting until you have read his work without passion, and that if my books have arrived at Madrid, you can ask my brother in Santiago.

You are judging of him and of Pahlin in the way you reproach me with judging Mezzofanti; I thank you, and I wish for the dedication Gabricote; and I also wish for your return to Madrid, so that in going to Toledo you would get a copy of Aristophanes with the order that will be given to you by my brother, who has got it.

If for the Gabricote or other work you require my clumsy pen, write to Florence and send me a rough copy of what is to be done, in English or in Spanish, and I will supply the finished work. From Florence I intend to go to London, and I should be obliged if you would give me letters and instructions that would be of use to me in literary matters, but you must know that my want of knowledge of speaking English makes it necessary that the Englishmen who speak to me should know Spanish, French, or Italian.

As regards robberies, of which you accuse Southern people, from the literatures of the North, do you think that the robberies committed by the Northerners from the Southern literature would be left behind? Erunt vitia donec homines.—Always yours,

ELEUTHEROS.

Yet another acquaintance of these Spanish days was Baron Taylor—Isidore Justin Severin Taylor, to give him his full name—who had a career of wandering achievement, with Government pay, that must have appealed to Borrow. Although his father was an Englishman he became a naturalised Frenchman, and he was for a time in the service of the French Government as Director of the Theatre Francais, when he had no little share in the production of the dramas of Victor Hugo and Dumas. Later he was instrumental in bringing the Luxor obelisk from Egypt to Paris. He wrote books upon his travels in Spain, Portugal and Morocco.[133] He wandered all over Europe in search of art treasures for the French Government, and may very well have met Borrow again and again. Borrow tells us that he had met Taylor in France, in Russia, and in Ireland, before he met him in Andalusia, collecting pictures for the French Government. Borrow's description of their meetings is inimitable:—

Whenever he descries me, whether in the street or the desert, the brilliant hall or amongst Bedouin haimas, at Novogorod or Stambul, he flings up his arms and exclaims, "O ciel! I have again the felicity of seeing my cherished and most respectable Borrow."[134]



The last and most distinguished of Borrow's colleagues while in Spain was George Villiers, fourth Earl of Clarendon, whom we judge to have been in private life one of the most lovable men of his epoch. George Villiers was born in London in 1800, and was the grandson of the first Earl, Thomas Villiers, who received his title when holding office in Lord North's administration, but is best known from his association in diplomacy with Frederick the Great. His grandson was born, as it were, into diplomacy, and at twenty years of age was an attache to the British Embassy in St. Petersburg. Later he was associated with Sir John Bowring in negotiating a commercial treaty with France. In August 1833 he was sent as British Minister—'envoy extraordinary' he was called—to Madrid, and he had been two years in that seething-pot of Spanish affairs, with Christinos and Carlists at one another's throats, when Borrow arrived in the Peninsula. His influence was the greater with a succession of Spanish Prime Ministers in that in 1838 he had been largely instrumental in negotiating the quadruple alliance between England, France, Spain, and Portugal. In March 1839—exactly a year before Borrow took his departure—he resigned his position at Madrid, having then for some months exchanged the title of Sir George Villiers for that of Earl of Clarendon through the death of his uncle;[135] Borrow thereafter having to launch his various complaints and grievances at his successor, Mr.—afterwards Sir George—Jerningham, who, it has been noted, had his home in Norfolk, at Costessey, four miles from Norwich. Villiers returned to England with a great reputation, although his Spanish policy was attacked in the House of Lords. In that same year, 1839, he joined Lord Melbourne's administration as Lord Privy Seal, O'Connell at the time declaring that he ought to be made Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, so sympathetic was he towards concession and conciliation in that then feverishly excited country. This office actually came to him in 1847, and he was Lord-Lieutenant through that dark period of Ireland's history, including the Famine, the Young Ireland rebellion, and the Smith O'Brien rising. He pleased no one in Ireland. No English statesman could ever have done so under such ideals of government as England would have tolerated then, and for long years afterwards. The Whigs defended him, the Tories abused him, in their respective organs. He left Ireland in 1852 and was more than once mentioned as possible Prime Minister in the ensuing years. He was Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in Lord Aberdeen's Administration during the Crimean War, and he held the same office under Lord Palmerston, again under Earl Russell in 1865, and under Mr. Gladstone in 1868. He might easily have become Prime Minister. Greville in his Diary writes of Prince Albert's desire that he should succeed Lord John Russell, but Clarendon said that no power on earth would make him take that position. He said he could not speak, and had not had parliamentary experience enough. He died in 1870, leaving a reputation as a skilful diplomatist and a disinterested politician, if not that of a great statesman. He had twice refused the Governor-Generalship of India, and three times a marquisate.

Sir George Villiers seems to have been very courteous to Borrow during the whole of the time they were together in Spain. It would have been easy for him to have been quite otherwise. Borrow's Bible mission synchronised with a very delicate diplomatic mission of his own, and in a measure clashed with it. The government of Spain was at the time fighting the ultra-clericals. Physical and moral strife were rife in the land. Neither Royalists nor Carlists could be expected to sympathise with Borrow's schemes, which were fundamentally to attack their church. But Villiers was at all times friendly, and, as far as he could be, helpful. Borrow seems to have had ready access to him, and he answered his many letters. He gave Borrow an opportunity of an interview with the formidable Prime Minister Mendizabal, and he interviewed another minister and persuaded him to permit Borrow to print and circulate his Bibles. He intervened successfully to release Borrow from his Madrid prison. But Villiers could not have had any sympathy with Borrow other than as a British subject to be protected on the Roman citizen principle. We do not suppose that when The Bible in Spain appeared he was one of those who were captivated by its extraordinary qualities. When Borrow crossed his path in later life he received no special consideration, such as would be given very promptly in our day by a Cabinet minister to a man of letters of like distinction. We find him on one occasion writing to the ex-minister, now Lord Clarendon, asking his help for a consulship. Clarendon replied kindly enough, but sheltered himself behind the statement that the Prime Minister was overwhelmed with applications for patronage. Yet Clarendon, who held many high offices in the following years, might have helped if he had cared to do so. Some years later—in 1847—there was further correspondence when Borrow desired to become a Magistrate of Suffolk. Here again Clarendon wrote three courteous letters, and appears to have done his best in an unenthusiastic way. But nothing came of it all.

FOOTNOTES:

[125] The accounts in The Bible in Spain, The Gypsies of Spain, and the Letters to the Bible Society.

[126] The only 'Samuel Brandram' in the Dictionary of National Biography is a reciter who died in 1892; he certainly had less claim to the distinction than his namesake.

[127] See 'Footprints of George Borrow' by A. G. Jayne in The Bible in the World for July 1908.

[128] Excursions along the Shores of the Mediterranean, by Lieut.-Colonel E. Napier, vol. ii (Henry Colburn), 1842.

[129] See Dictionary of National Biography, vol. xl. pp. 54-55.

[130] A sheepskin jacket with the wool outside, a costume much worn here in cold weather.

[131] 'panee' is masculine (marginal note in pencil).

[132] In the folds of the sash is concealed the 'navaja,' or formidable clasp-knife, always worn by the Spaniard.

[133] His principal work was Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l'ancienne France.

[134] The Bible in Spain, ch. xv.

[135] Many interesting letters from Villiers will be found in Memoirs and Memories, by his niece, Mrs. C. W. Earle, 1911.



CHAPTER XX

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 30th 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-six. 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 Beceles in 1805. Mary's brother inherited the Oulton Hall estate of three hundred acres, and she had a mortgage the interest of which yielded L450 per annum. In July 1817 Mary married, at Oulton Church, Henry Clarke,[136] 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, a 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. There is a letter of Borrow's to Mrs. Clarke of this period in my Borrow Papers which my readers will already have read.[137]

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.[138]

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. Mary Clarke's only brother died in the following year.[139]

Thus we see Mary Clarke, aged about forty, left to fight the world with her daughter, aged twenty-three, 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 which are given forth in dreary detail in Dr. Knapp's Life.[140] 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 Dr. Knapp's suggestion,[141] strange as coming from so pronounced a hero-worshipper, 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 Dr. Knapp's further discovery of 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, letters, however, which Dr. Knapp had not seen. 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, to be given hereafter, when he wrote a letter from Seville to Mr. Brandram, dated March 18, 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. 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. 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. Dr. Knapp apparently discovered none in the Borrow Papers in his possession. The two before me 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 these 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. Dr. Knapp points out that 'carreta' means a Spanish dray-cart, and that '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.[142] 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.

There is one letter from Borrow to his wife, written from London in 1843, in which he says:

I have not been particularly well since I wrote last; indeed, the weather has been so horrible that it is enough to depress anybody's spirits, and, of course, mine. I did very wrong not to bring you when I came, for without you I cannot get on at all. Left to myself a gloom comes upon me which I cannot describe.[143]

Assuredly no reader can peruse the following pages without recognising the true affection for his wife that is transparent in his 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[136] All I know of Henry Clarke is contained in two little documents in my Borrow Papers which run as follows:

'These are to Certify the Principal Officers and Commissioners of H.M. Navy that Mr. Henry Clarke has Served as Midshipman on board H.M. Ship Salvador del Mundo under my Command from the 23 September 1810 to the date hereof, during which time he behaved with Diligence, Sobriety, and Attention, and was always obedient to Command.

Given under my Hand on board the Salvador del Mundo the 4 April 1811.

JAMES NASH, Captain.'

'These are to Certify the Principal Officers and Commissioners of H.M. Navy that Mr. Henry Clarke has Served as Midshipman on board H.M. Ship Tisiphone under my Command from the 20th of June 1813 to the date hereof, during which time he behaved with Diligence, Sobriety, and Attention, and was always obedient to Command.

Given under my Hand on board the Tisiphone in the Needles passage this 30th day of November 1813.

E. HODDER, Captain.'

[137] Vide supra, p. 158.

[138] Knapp's Life, vol. i. 189.

[139] The tombs in Oulton Churchyard bear the following inscriptions:

(1) Beneath this stone are interred in the same grave the Mortal Remains of Edmund Skepper, who died Febry. 5th, 1836, aged 69. Also Ann Skepper, his wife, who died Sept. 15th, 1835, aged 62.

(2) Beneath this stone are interred the Mortal Remains of Breame Skepper, who died May 22nd, 1837, aged 42, leaving a wife and six children to lament his severe loss.

(3) Sacred to the Memory of Lieut. Henry Clarke of His Maj.'s Royal Navy, who departed this life on the 21st of March 1818, aged 25 years, leaving a firmly attached widow and an infant daughter to lament his irreparable loss.

A further tomb commemorates the mother of George Borrow, whose epitaph is given elsewhere.

[140] The following document in Henrietta's handwriting is among my Borrow Papers:

'When my Grandfather died he owed a mortgage of L5000 on the Oulton Hall estate—to a Mrs. Purdy.

'At my Grandfather's death my Mother applied to her Brother for the money left to her and also the money left—beside the money owed to her daughter which is also mentioned in the Will. She was refused both, and told moreover that neither the money nor the interest would be paid to her.

'My Mother and I were living at the Cottage since the funeral of my Grandfather—the Skeppers removed to the Hall. The Estate was to be sold—and my Mother and myself were to be paid. 'My Mother mentioned this to her solicitor, who hastened back to Norwich and got L5000—which he carried to the old lady, Mrs. Purdy, next day and paid off the mortgage. My Mother then was mortgagee in possession—after which she let the place for what she could get—this accounts for the whole affair and the whole confusion.

'My Mother was a Widow at this time and remained so for some time after—consequently all transactions took place with her and not with Mr. Borrow—she being afterwards married to Mr. Borrow without a settlement.

'After this, in 1844, the place was again put up by public auction and bought in by Mr. Borrow and my Mother.'

[141] Knapp's Life, vol. i. pp. 330, 331.

[142] The following suggestion has, however, been made to me by a friend of Henrietta MacOubrey nee Clarke:

'I think Borrow intended "Carreta" for "dearest," It is impossible to think that he would call his wife a "cart." Perhaps he intended "Carreta" for "Querida." Probably their pronunciation was not Castillian, and they spelled the word as they pronounced it. In speaking of her to "Hen." Borrow always called her "Mamma." Mrs. MacOubrey took a great fancy to me because she said I was like "Mamma." She meant in character, not in person.'

[143] Dr. Knapp: Life, vol. ii p. 39.



CHAPTER XXI

'THE CHILDREN OF THE OPEN AIR'

Behold George Borrow, then, in a comfortable home on the banks of Oulton Broad—a family man. His mother—sensible woman—declines her son's invitation to live with the newly-married pair. She remains in the cottage at Norwich where her husband died. The Borrows were married in April 1840, by May they had settled at Oulton. It was a pleasantly secluded estate, and Borrow's wife had L450 a year. He had, a month before his marriage, written to Mr. Brandram to say that he had a work nearly ready for publication, and 'two others in a state of forwardness.' The title of the first of these books he enclosed in his letter. It was The Zincali: Or an Account of the Gypsies of Spain. Mr. Samuel Smiles, in his history of the House of Murray—A Publisher and his Friends—thus relates the circumstances of its publication:—

In November 1840 a tall, athletic gentleman in black called upon Mr. Murray offering a MS. for perusal and publication.... Mr. Murray could not fail to be taken at first sight with this extraordinary man. He had a splendid physique, standing six feet two in his stockings, and he had brains as well as muscles, as his works sufficiently show. The book now submitted was of a very uncommon character, and neither the author nor the publisher were very sanguine about its success. Mr. Murray agreed, after perusal, to print and publish 750 copies of The Gypsies of Spain, and divide the profits with the author.

It was at the suggestion of Richard Ford, then the greatest living English authority on Spain, that Mr. Murray published the book. It did not really commence to sell until The Bible in Spain came a year or so later to bring the author reputation.[144] From November 1840 to June 1841 only three hundred copies had been sold in spite of friendly reviews in some half dozen journals, including The Athenaeum and The Literary Gazette. The first edition, it may be mentioned, contained on its title-page a description of the author as 'late agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society in Spain.'[145] There is very marked compression in the edition now in circulation, and a perusal of the first edition reveals many interesting features that deserve to be restored for the benefit of the curious. But nothing can make The Zincali a great piece of literature. It was summarised by the Edinburgh Review at the time as 'a hotch-potch of the jockey, tramper, philologist, and missionary.' That description, which was not intended to be as flattering as it sounds to-day, appears more to apply to The Bible in Spain. But The Zincali is too confused, too ill-arranged a book to rank with Borrow's four great works. There are passages in it, indeed, so eloquent, so romantic, that no lover of Borrow's writings can afford to neglect them. But this was not the book that gypsy-loving Borrow, with the temperament of a Romany, should have written, or could have written had he not been obsessed by the 'science' of his subject. His real work in gypsydom was to appear later in Lavengro and The Romany Rye. For Borrow was not a man of science—a philologist, a folk-lorist of the first order.

No one, indeed, who had read only The Zincali among Borrow's works could see in it any suspicion of the writer who was for all time to throw a glamour over the gypsy, to make the 'children of the open air' a veritable cult, to earn for him the title of 'the walking lord of gypsy lore,' and to lay the foundations of an admirable succession of books both in fact and fiction—but not one as great as his own. The city of Seville, it is clear, with sarcastic letters from Bible Society secretaries on one side, and some manner of love romance on the other, was not so good a place for an author to produce a real book as Oulton was to become. Richard Ford hit the nail on the head when he said with quite wonderful prescience:

How I wish you had given us more about yourself, instead of the extracts from those blunder-headed old Spaniards, who knew nothing about gypsies! I shall give you the rap, on that, and a hint to publish your whole adventures for the last twenty years.[146]

Henceforth Borrow was to write about himself and to become a great author in consequence. For in writing about himself as in Lavengro and The Romany Rye he was to write exactly as he felt about the gypsies, and to throw over them the glamour of his own point of view, the view of a man who loved the broad highway and those who sojourned upon it. In The Gypsies of Spain we have a conventional estimate of the gypsies. 'There can be no doubt that they are human beings and have immortal souls,' he says, even as if he were writing a letter to the Bible Society. All his anecdotes about the gypsies are unfavourable to them, suggestive only of them as knaves and cheats. From these pictures it is a far cry to the creation of Jasper Petulengro and Isopel Berners. The most noteworthy figure in The Zincali is the gypsy soldier of Valdepenas, an unholy rascal. 'To lie, to steal, to shed human blood'—these are the most marked characteristics with which Borrow endows the gypsies of Spain. 'Abject and vile as they have ever been, the gitanos have nevertheless found admirers in Spain,' says the author who came to be popularly recognised as the most enthusiastic admirer of the gypsies in Spain and elsewhere. Read to-day by the lover of Borrow's other books The Zincali will be pronounced a readable collection of anecdotes, interspersed with much dull matter, with here and there a piece of admirable writing. But the book would scarcely have lived had it not been followed by four works of so fine an individuality. Well might Ford ask Borrow for more about himself and less of the extracts from 'blunder-headed old Spaniards.' When Borrow came to write about himself he revealed his real kindness for the gypsy folk. He gave us Jasper Petulengro and the incomparable description of 'the wind on the heath.' He kindled the imagination of men, proclaimed the joys of vagabondage in a manner that thrilled many hearts. He had some predecessors and many successors, but 'none could then, or can ever again,' says the biographer of a later Rye, 'see or hear of Romanies without thinking of Borrow.'[147] In her biography of one of these successors in gypsy lore, Charles Godfrey Leland, Mrs. Pennell discusses the probability that Borrow and Leland met in the British Museum. That is admitted in a letter from Leland to Borrow in my possession. To this letter Borrow made no reply. It was wrong of him. But he was then—in 1873—a prematurely old man, worn out and saddened by neglect and a sense of literary failure. For this and for the other vagaries of those latter years Borrow will not be judged harshly by those who read his story here. Nothing could be more courteous than Borrow's one letter to Leland, written in the failing handwriting—once so excellent—of the last sad decade of his life:



22 HEREFORD SQUARE, BROMPTON, Nov. 2, 1871.

SIR,—I have received your letter and am gratified by the desire you express to make my acquaintance. Whenever you please to come I shall be happy to see you.—Yours truly,

GEORGE BORROW.[148]

The meeting did not, through Leland's absence from London, then take place. Two years later it was another story. The failing powers were more noteworthy. Borrow was by this time dead to the world, as the documents before me abundantly testify. It is not, therefore, necessary to assume, as Leland's friends have all done, that Borrow never replied because he was on the eve of publishing a book of his own about the gypsies. There seems no reason to assume, as Dr. Knapp does and as Leland does, that this was the reason for the unanswered letter:

To George Borrow, Esq.

LANGHAM HOTEL, PORTLAND PLACE, March 31st, 1873.

DEAR SIR,—I sincerely trust that the limited extent of our acquaintanceship will not cause this note to seem to you too presuming. Breviter, I have thrown the results of my observations among English gypsies into a very unpretending little volume consisting almost entirely of facts gathered from the Romany, without any theory. As I owe all my interest in the subject to your writings, and as I am sincerely grateful to you for the impulse which they gave me, I should like very much to dedicate my book to you. Of course if your kindness permits I shall submit the proofs to you, that you may judge whether the work deserves the honour. I should have sent you the MS., but not long after our meeting at the British Museum I left for Egypt, whence I have very recently returned, to find my publisher clamorous for the promised copy.

It is not—God knows—a mean and selfish desire to help my book by giving it the authority of your name, which induces this request. But I am earnestly desirous for my conscience' sake to publish nothing in the Romany which shall not be true and sensible, even as all that you have written is true and sensible. Therefore, should you take the pains to glance over my proof, I should be grateful if you would signify to me any differences of opinion should there be ground for any. Dr. A. F. Pott in his Zigeuner (vol. ii. p. 224), intimates very decidedly that you took the word shastr (Exhastra de Moyses) from Sanskrit and put it into Romany; declaring that it would be very important if shaster were Romany. I mention in my book that English gypsies call the New Testament (also any MS.) a shaster, and that a betting-book on a racecourse is called a shaster 'because it is written.' I do not pretend in my book to such deep Romany as you have achieved—all that I claim is to have collected certain words, facts, phrases, etc., out of the Romany of the roads—corrupt as it is—as I have found it to-day. I deal only with the gypsy of the Decadence. With renewed apology for intrusion should it seem such, I remain, yours very respectfully,

CHARLES G. LELAND.

Francis Hindes Groome remarked when reviewing Borrow's Word Book in 1874,[149] that when The Gypsies of Spain was published in 1841 'there were not two educated men in England who possessed the slightest knowledge of Romany.' In the intervening thirty-three years all this was changed. There was an army of gypsy scholars or scholar gypsies of whom Leland was one, Hindes Groome another, and Professor E. H. Palmer a third, to say nothing of many scholars and students of Romany in other lands. Not one of them seemed when Borrow published his Word Book of the Romany to see that he was the only man of genius among them. They only saw that he was an inferior philologist to them all. And so Borrow, who prided himself on things that he could do indifferently quite as much as upon things that he could do well, suffered once again, as he was so often doomed to suffer, from the lack of appreciation which was all in all to him, and his career went out in a veritable blizzard. He published nothing after his Romano Lavo-Lil appeared in 1874.[150] He was then indeed a broken and a bitter man, with no further interest in life. Dedications of books to him interested him not at all. In any other mood, or a few years earlier, Leland's book, The English Gypsies,[151] would have gladdened his heart. In his preface Leland expresses 'the highest respect for the labours of Mr. George Borrow in this field,' he quotes Borrow continually and with sympathy, and renders him honour as a philologist, that has usually been withheld. 'To Mr. Borrow is due the discovery that the word Jockey is of gypsy origin and derived from chuckiri, which means a whip,' and he credits Borrow with the discovery of the origin of 'tanner' for sixpence; he vindicates him as against Dr. A. F. Pott,—a prince among students of gypsydom—of being the first to discover that the English gypsies call the Bible the Shaster. But there is a wealth of scientific detail in Leland's books that is not to be found in Borrow's, as also there is in Francis Hindes Groome's works. What had Borrow to do with science? He could not even give the word 'Rumani' its accent, and called it 'Romany.' He 'quietly appropriated,' says Groome, 'Bright's Spanish gypsy words for his own work, mistakes and all, without one word of recognition. I think one has the ancient impostor there.'[152] 'His knowledge of the strange history of the gypsies was very elementary, of their manners almost more so, and of their folk-lore practically nil,' says Groome elsewhere.[153] Yet Mr. Hindes Groome readily acknowledges that Borrow is above all writers on the gypsies. 'He communicates a subtle insight into gypsydom'—that is the very essence of the matter.[154] Controversy will continue in the future as in the present as to whether the gypsies are all that Borrow thought them. Perhaps 'corruption has crept in among them' as it did with the prize-fighters. They have intermarried with the gorgios, thrown over their ancient customs, lost all their picturesque qualities, it may be. But Borrow has preserved in literature for all time, as not one of the philologists and folk-lore students has done, a remarkable type of people. But this is not to be found in his first original work, The Zincali, nor in his last, The Romano Lavo-Lil. This glamour is to be found in Lavengro and The Romany Rye, to which books we shall come in due course. Here we need only refer to the fact that Borrow had loved the gypsies all his life—from his boyish meeting with Petulengro until in advancing years the prototype of that wonderful creation of his imagination—for this the Petulengro of Lavengro undoubtedly was—came to visit him at Oulton. Well might Leland call him 'the Nestor of Gypsydom.'

We find the following letter to Dr. Bowring accompanying a copy of The Zincali:

To Dr. John Bowring.

58 JERMYN STREET, ST. JAMES, April 14, 1841.

MY DEAR SIR,—I have sent you a copy of my work by the mail. If you could contrive to notice it some way or other I should feel much obliged. Murray has already sent copies to all the journals. It is needless to tell you that despatch in these matters is very important, the first blow is everything. Lord Clarendon is out of town. So I must send him his presentation copy through Murray, and then write to him. I am very unwell, and must go home. My address is George Borrow, Oulton Hall, Oulton, Lowestoft, Suffolk. Your obedient servant,

GEORGE BORROW.

Two years later we find Borrow writing to an unknown correspondent upon a phase of folk-lore:

OULTON, LOWESTOFT, SUFFOLK, August 11, 1843.

MY DEAR SIR,—Many thanks for your interesting and kind letter in which you do me the honour to ask my opinion respecting the pedigree of your island goblin, le feu follet Belenger; that opinion I cheerfully give with a premise that it is only an opinion; in hunting for the etymons of these fairy names we can scarcely expect to arrive at anything like certainty.

I suppose you are aware that the name of Bilenger or Billinger is of occasional though by no means of frequent occurrence both in England and France. I have seen it; you have heard of Billings-gate and of Billingham, the unfortunate assassin of poor Percival,—all modifications of the same root; Belingart, Bilings home or Billing ston. But what is Billin-ger? Clearly that which is connected in some way or other with Billing. You will find ger, or something like it, in most European-tongues—Boulanger, horologer, talker, walker, baker, brewer, beggar. In Welsh it is of frequent occurrence in the shape of ur or gwr—henur (an elder), herwr (a prowler); in Russian the ger, gwr, ur, er, appears in the shape of ik or k—sapojgnik, a shoemaker, Chinobuik, a man possessed of rank. The root of all these, as well as of or in senator, victor, etc., is the Sanscrit ker or kir, which means lord, master, maker, doer, possessor of something or connected with something.

We want now to come at the meaning of Beling or Billing, which probably means some action, or some moral or personal attribute; Bolvile in Anglo-Saxon means honest, Danish Bollig; Wallen, in German, to wanken or move restlessly about; Baylan, in Spanish, to dance (Ball? Ballet?), connected with which are to whirl, to fling, and possibly Belinger therefore may mean a Billiger or honest fellow, or it may mean a Walterger, a whirlenger, a flinger, or something connected with restless motion.

Allow me to draw your attention to the word 'Will' in the English word will-o-the-wisp; it must not be supposed that this Will is the abbreviation of William; it is pure Danish, 'Vild'—pronounced will,—and signifies wild; Vilden Visk, the wild or moving wisp. I can adduce another instance of the corruption of the Danish vild into will: the rustics of this part of England are in the habit of saying 'they are led will' (vild or wild) when from intoxication or some other cause they are bewildered at night and cannot find their way home. This expression is clearly from the old Norse or Danish. I am not at all certain that 'Bil' in Bilinger may not be this same will or vild, and that the word may not be a corruption of vilden, old or elder, wild or flying fire. It has likewise occurred to me that Bilinger may be derived from 'Volundr,' the worship of the blacksmith or Northern Vulcan. Your obedient servant,

GEORGE BORROW.

FOOTNOTES:

[144] There were 750 copies of the first edition of The Zincali in two vols. in 1841. 750 of the second edition in 1843, and a third issue of 750 in the same year. A fourth edition of 7,500 copies appeared in the cheap Home and Colonial Library in 1846, and there was a fifth edition of 1000 copies in 1870. These were all the editions published in England during Borrow's lifetime. Dr. Knapp traced three American editions during the same period.

[145] The Zincali; or an Account of the Gypsies of Spain. With an original collection of their songs and poetry, and a copious dictionary of their language. By George Borrow, Late Agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society in Spain. 'For that which is unclean by nature, thou canst entertain no hope; no washing will turn the gypsy white.'—Ferdousi. In two volumes. London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1841.

[146] Knapp's Life, vol. i. p. 378.

[147] Mrs. Pennell. See Charles Godfrey Leland: a Biography, by Elizabeth Robins Pennell. 2 vols. 1906.

[148] Given in Mrs. Pennell's Leland: a Biography, vol. ii. pp. 142-3. The letter to which it is a reply is given in Knapp's Borrow, vol. ii. pp. 228-9.

[149] The Academy, June 13, 1874.

[150] Romano Lavo-Lil: Word Book of the Romany; or, English Gypsy Language. By George Borrow. London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1874.

[151] Charles Godfrey Leland (1824-1903) better known as 'Hans Breitmann' of the popular ballads, was born in Philadelphia and died in Florence. He was always known among his friends as 'The Rye,' in consequence of his enthusiasm for the gypsies concerning whom he wrote four books, the best known being: The English Gypsies and their Language, by Charles G. Leland: Truebner. The Gypsies, by Charles G. Leland: Truebner.

[152] See Groome's In Gipsy Tents (W. P. Nimmo, 1880), and Gipsy Folk-Tales (Hurst & Blackett, 1899). Francis Hindes Groome (1851-1902), whom it was my privilege to know, was the son of Archdeacon Groome, the friend of Edward FitzGerald. He was the greatest English authority of his time on gypsy language and folk-lore. He celebrated his father's friendship with the paraphraser of Omar Khayyam in Two Suffolk Friends, 1895, and wrote a good novel of gypsydom in Kriegspiel, 1896. He also edited an edition of Lavengro (Methuen), 1901.

[153] Groome to Leland in Charles Godfrey Leland: a Biography, by E. R. Pennell, vol. ii. p. 141.

[154] Introduction to Lavengro (Methuen), 1901.



CHAPTER XXII

THE BIBLE IN SPAIN

In an admirable appreciation of our author, the one in which he gives the oft-quoted eulogy concerning him as 'the delightful, the bewitching, the never-sufficiently-to-be-praised George Borrow,' Mr. Birrell records the solace that may be found by small boys in the ambiguities of a title-page, or at least might have been found in it in his youth and in mine. In those days in certain Puritan circles a very strong line was drawn between what was known as Sunday reading, and reading that might be permitted on week-days. The Sunday book must have a religious flavour. There were magazines with that particular flavour, every story in them having a pious moral withal. Very closely watched and scrutinised was the reading of young people in those days and in those circles. Mr. Birrell, doubtless, speaks from autobiographical memories when he tells us of a small boy with whose friends The Bible in Spain passed muster on the strength of its title-page. For Mr. Birrell is the son of a venerated Nonconformist minister; and perhaps he, or at least those who were of his household, had this religious idiosyncrasy. It may be that the distinction which pervaded the evangelical circles of Mr. Birrell's youth as to what were Sunday books, as distinct from books to be read on week-days, has disappeared. In any case think of the advantage of the boy of that generation who was able to handle a book with so unexceptionable a title as The Bible in Spain. His elders would succumb at once, particularly if the boy had the good sense to call their attention to the sub-title—'The Journeys, Adventures, and Imprisonments of an Englishman in an Attempt to Circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula.' Nothing could be said by the most devout of seniors against so prepossessing a title-page.[155] But what of the boy who had thus passed the censorship? What a revelation of adventure was open to him! Perhaps he would skip the 'preachy' parts in which Borrow was doubtless sincere, although the sincerity has so uncertain a ring to-day. Here are five passages, for example, which do not seem to belong to the book:

In whatever part of the world I, a poor wanderer in the Gospel's cause, may chance to be

* * * * *

very possibly the fate of St. Stephen might overtake me; but does the man deserve the name of a follower of Christ who would shrink from danger of any kind in the cause of Him whom he calls his Master? 'He who loses his life for my sake shall find it,' are words which the Lord Himself uttered. These words were fraught with consolation to me, as they doubtless are to every one engaged in propagating the Gospel, in sincerity of heart, in savage and barbarian lands.

* * * * *

Unhappy land! not until the pure light of the Gospel has illumined thee, wilt thou learn that the greatest of all gifts is charity!

* * * * *

and I thought that to convey the Gospel to a place so wild and remote might perhaps be considered an acceptable pilgrimage in the eyes of my Maker. True it is that but one copy remained of those which I had brought with me on this last journey; but this reflection, far from discouraging me in my projected enterprise, produced the contrary effect, as I called to mind that, ever since the Lord revealed Himself to man, it has seemed good to Him to accomplish the greatest ends by apparently the most insufficient means; and I reflected that this one copy might serve as an instrument for more good than the four thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine copies of the edition of Madrid.

* * * * *

I shall not detain the course of my narrative with reflections as to the state of a Church which, though it pretends to be founded on scripture, would yet keep the light of scripture from all mankind, if possible. But Rome is fully aware that she is not a Christian Church, and having no desire to become so, she acts prudently in keeping from the eyes of her followers the page which would reveal to them the truths of Christianity.

All this does not ring quite true, and in any case it is too much on the lines of 'Sunday reading' to please the small boy, who must, however, have found a thousand things in that volume that were to his taste—some of the wildest adventures, hairbreadth escapes, extraordinary meetings again and again with unique people—with Benedict Mol, for example, who was always seeking for treasure. Gypsies, bull-fighters, quaint and queer characters of every kind, come before us in rapid succession. Rarely, surely, have so many adventures been crowded into the same number of pages. Only when Borrow remembers, as he has to do occasionally, that he is an agent of the Bible Society does the book lose its vigour and its charm. We have already pointed out that the foundations of the volume were contained in certain letters written by Borrow during his five years in Spain to the secretaries of the Bible Society in London. The recent publication of these letters has revealed to us Borrow's methods. When he had settled down at Oulton he took down his notebooks, one of which is before me, but finding this was not sufficient, he asked the Bible Society for the loan of his letters to them.[156] Other letters that he hoped to use were not forthcoming, as the following note from Miss Gurney to Mrs. Borrow indicates:

To Mrs. George Borrow

EARLHAM, 12th June 1840.

DEAR MRS. BORROW,—I am sorry I cannot find any of Mr. Borrow's letters from Spain. I don't think we ever had any, but my brother is from home and I therefore cannot inquire of him. I send you the only two I can find. I am very glad he is going to publish his travels, which I have no doubt will be very interesting. It must be a pleasant object to assist him by copying the manuscripts. If I should visit Lowestoft this summer I shall hope to see you, but I have no immediate prospect of doing so. With kind regards to all your party, I am, Dear Mrs. Borrow, Yours sincerely,

C. GURNEY.[157]

The Bible Society applied to in the same manner lent Borrow all his letters to that organisation and its secretaries. Not all were returned. Many came to Dr. Knapp when he purchased the half of the Borrow papers that were sold after Borrow's death; the remainder are in my possession. It is a nice point, seventy years after they were written, as to whom they belong. In any case the Bible Society must have kept copies of everything, for when, in 1911, they came to publish the Letters[158] the collection was sufficiently complete. That publication revealed some interesting sidelights. It proved on the one hand that Borrow had drawn more upon his diaries than upon his letters, although he frequently reproduced fragments of his diaries in his letters. It revealed further the extraordinary frankness with which Borrow wrote to his employers. But the main point is in the discovery revealed to us that Borrow was not an artist in his letters. Borrow was never a good letter writer, although I think that many of the letters that appear for the first time in these pages will prove that his letters are very interesting as contributions to biography. If some of the letters that helped to make up The Bible in Spain are interesting, it is because in them Borrow incorporated considerable fragments of anecdote and adventure from his notebooks. It is quite a mistake to assume, as does Dr. Knapp, that the 'Rev. and Dear Sir' at the head of a letter was the only variation. You will look in vain in the Bible Society correspondence for many a pearl that is contained in The Bible in Spain, and you will look in vain in The Bible in Spain for many a sentence which concludes some of the original letters. In one case, indeed, a letter concludes with Heber's hymn—

'From Greenland's Icy Mountains,'

with which Borrow's correspondent must already have been sufficiently familiar. But Borrow could not be other than Borrow, and the secretaries of the Bible Society had plentiful matter with which to astonish them. The finished production, however, is a fascinating book. You read it again and it becomes still more entertaining. No wonder that it took the world by storm and made its author the lion of a season. 'A queer book will be this same Bible in Spain,' wrote Borrow to John Murray in August 1841, 'containing all my queer adventures in that queer country ... it will make two nice foolscap octavo volumes.'[159] It actually made three volumes, and Borrow was as irritated at Mr. Murray's delay in publishing as that publisher afterwards became at Borrow's own delay over Lavengro. The whole book was laboriously copied out by Mrs. Borrow. When this copy was sent to Mr. Murray, it was submitted to his 'reader,' who reported 'numerous faults in spelling and some in grammar,' to which criticism Borrow retorted that the copy was the work of 'a country amanuensis.' The book was published in December 1842, but has the date 1843 on its title-page.[160] In its three-volumed form 4750 copies of the book were issued by July 1843, after which countless copies were sold in cheaper one-volumed form. Success had at last come to Borrow. He was one of the most talked-of writers of the day. His elation may be demonstrated by his discussion with Dawson Turner as to whether he should leave the manuscript of The Bible in Spain to the Dean and Chapter's Library at Norwich or to the British Museum, by his gratification at the fact that Sir Robert Peel referred to his book in the House of Commons, and by his pleasure in the many appreciative reviews which, indeed, were for the most part all that an ambitious author could desire. 'Never,' said The Examiner, 'was book more legibly impressed with the unmistakable mark of genius.' 'There is no taking leave of a book like this,' said the Athenaeum. 'Better Christmas fare we have never had it in our power to offer our readers.'