I was with Borrow a week ago at Donne's, and also at Yarmouth three months ago: he is well, but not yet agreed with Murray. He read me a long translation he had made from the Turkish: which I could not admire, and his taste becomes stranger than ever.[207]

But Borrow's genius if not his taste was always admired by FitzGerald, as the following letter among my Borrow Papers clearly indicates. Borrow had published The Romany Rye at the beginning of May:



To George Borrow, Esq., Oulton Hall.

GOLDINGTON HALL, BEDFORD, May 24/57[208]

MY DEAR SIR,—Your Book was put into my hands a week ago just as I was leaving London; so I e'en carried it down here, and have been reading it under the best Circumstances:—at such a Season—in the Fields as they now are—and in company with a Friend I love best in the world—who scarce ever reads a Book, but knows better than I do what they are made of from a hint.

Well, lying in a Paddock of his, I have been travelling along with you to Horncastle, etc.,—in a very delightful way for the most part; something as I have travelled, and love to travel, with Fielding, Cervantes, and Robinson Crusoe—and a smack of all these there seems to me, with something beside, in your book. But, as will happen in Travel, there were some spots I didn't like so well—didn't like at all: and sometimes wished to myself that I, a poor 'Man of Taste,' had been at your Elbow (who are a Man of much more than Taste) to divert you, or get you by some means to pass lightlier over some places. But you wouldn't have heeded me, and won't heed me, and must go your own way, I think—And in the parts I least like, I am yet thankful for honest, daring, and original Thought and Speech such as one hardly gets in these mealy-mouthed days. It was very kind of you to send me your book.

My Wife is already established at a House called 'Albert's Villa,' or some such name, at Gorlestone—but a short walk from you: and I am to find myself there in a few days. So I shall perhaps tell you more of my thoughts ere long. Now I shall finish this large Sheet with a Tetrastich of one Omar Khayyam who was an Epicurean Infidel some 500 years ago:

[Persian][209]

and am yours very truly, EDWARD FITZGERALD.

In a letter to Cowell about the same time—June 5, 1857—FitzGerald writes that he is about to set out for Gorleston, Great Yarmouth:

Within hail almost lives George Borrow, who has lately published, and given me, two new volumes of Lavengro called Romany Rye, with some excellent things, and some very bad (as I have made bold to write to him—how shall I face him!) You would not like the book at all I think.[210]

It was Cowell, it will be remembered, who introduced FitzGerald to the Persian poet Omar, and afterwards regretted the act. The first edition of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam appeared two years later, in 1859. Edward Byles Cowell was born in Ipswich in 1826, and he was educated at the Ipswich Grammar School. It was in the library attached to the Ipswich Library Institution that Cowell commenced the study of Oriental languages. In 1842 he entered the business of his father and grandfather as a merchant and maltster. When only twenty years of age he commenced his friendship with Edward FitzGerald, and their correspondence may be found in Dr. Aldis Wright's FitzGerald Correspondence. In 1850 he left his brother to carry on the business and entered himself at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, where he passed six years. At intervals he read Greek with FitzGerald and, later, Persian. FitzGerald commenced to learn this last language, which was to bring him fame, when he was forty-four years of age. In 1856 Cowell was appointed to a Professorship of English History at Calcutta, and from there he sent FitzGerald a copy of the manuscript of Omar Khayyam, afterwards lent by FitzGerald to Borrow. Much earlier than this—in 1853—FitzGerald had written to Borrow:

At Ipswich, indeed, is a man whom you would like to know, I think, and who would like to know you; one Edward Cowell: a great scholar, if I may judge.... Should you go to Ipswich do look for him! a great deal more worth looking for (I speak with no sham modesty, I am sure) than yours,—E. F. G.[211]

Twenty-six years afterwards—in 1879—we find FitzGerald writing to Dr. Aldis Wright to the effect that Cowell had been seized with 'a wish to learn Welsh under George Borrow':

And as he would not venture otherwise, I gave him a Note of Introduction, and off he went, and had an hour with the old Boy, who was hard of hearing and shut up in a stuffy room, but cordial enough; and Cowell was glad to have seen the Man, and tell him that it was his Wild Wales which first inspired a thirst for this language into the Professor.[212]

This introduction and meeting are described by Professor Cowell in the following letter:[213]

CAMBRIDGE, December 10, 1892.

DEAR SIR,—I fear I cannot help you much by my reminiscences of Borrow. I never had the slightest interest in the gipsies, but I always had a corner in my heart for Spain and Wales, and consequently The Bible in Spain and Wild Wales have always been favourite books. But though Borrow's works were well known to me, I never saw him but once, and what I saw of him then made me feel that he was one of those men who put the best part of themselves into their books. We get the pure gold there without the admixture of alloy which daily life seemed to impart.

I was staying one autumn at Lowestoft some ten years or more ago when I asked my dear old friend, Mr. Edward FitzGerald, to give me a letter of introduction to Mr. George Borrow. Armed with this I started on my pilgrimage and took a chaise for Oulton Hall. I remember as we drew near we turned into a kind of drift road through the fields where the long sweeping boughs of the trees hung so low that I lost my hat more than once as we drove along. My driver remarked that the old gentleman would not allow any of his trees to be cut. When we reached the hall I went in at the gate into the farmyard, but I could see nobody about anywhere. I walked up to the front door, but nobody answered my knock except some dogs, who began barking from their kennels. At last in answer to a very loud knock, the door was opened by an old gentleman whom I at once recognised by the engraving to be Borrow himself. I gave him my letter and introduced myself. He replied in a tone of humorous petulance, 'What is the good of your bringing me a letter when I haven't got my spectacles to read it?' However, he took me into his room, where I fancy my knock had roused him from a siesta. We soon got into talk. He began by some unkind remarks about one or two of our common friends, but I soon turned the subject to books, especially Spanish and Welsh books. Here I own I was disappointed in his conversation. I talked to him about Ab Gwilym, whom he speaks so highly of in Wild Wales, but his interest was languid. He did not seem interested when I told him that the London Society of Cymmrodorion were publishing in their journal the Welsh poems of Iolo Goch, the bard of Owen Glendower who fought with our Henry v., two of whose poems Borrow had given spirited translations of in Wild Wales. He told me he had heaps of translations from Welsh books somewhere in his cupboards but he did not know where to lay his hand on them. He did not show me one Welsh or Spanish book of any kind. You may easily imagine that I was disappointed with my interview and I never cared to visit him again. Borrow was a man of real genius, and his Bible in Spain and Wild Wales are unique books in their way, but with all his knowledge of languages he was not a scholar. I should be the last person to depreciate his Sleeping Bard, for I owe a great deal to it as it helped me to read the Welsh original, but it is full of careless mistakes. The very title is wrong; it should not be the Visions of the Sleeping Bard but the Visions of the Bard Sleep, as the bard or prophet Sleep shows the author in a series of dreams—his visions of life, death, and hell, which form the three chapters of the book.

Borrow knew nothing of philology. His strange version of 'Om mani padme hum' (Oh! the gem in the lotus ho!) must have been taken from some phonetic representation of the sounds as heard by an ignorant traveller in China or Mongolia.

I have written this long letter lured on by my recollections, but after all I can tell you nothing. Surely it is best that Borrow should remain a name; we have the best part of him still living in his best books.

'He gave the people of his best; His worst he kept, his best he gave.'

I don't see why we should trouble ourselves about his 'worst.' He had his weaker side like all of us, the foolish part of his nature as well as the wise; but 'de mortuis nil nisi bonum' especially applies in such cases.—I remain, dear sir, yours sincerely,

E. B. COWELL.

There is one short letter from FitzGerald to Borrow in Dr. Aldis Wright's FitzGerald Letters. It is dated June 1857 and from it we learn that FitzGerald lent Borrow the Calcutta manuscript of Omar Khayyam, upon which he based his own immortal translation, and from a letter to W. H. Thompson in 1861 we learn that Cowell, who had inspired the writing of FitzGerald's Omar Khayyam, Donne and Borrow were the only three friends to whom he had sent copies of his 'peccadilloes in verse' as he calls his remarkable translation,[214] and this two years after it was published. A letter, dated July 6, 1857,[215] asks for the return of FitzGerald's copy of the Ouseley manuscript of Omar Khayyam, Borrow having clearly already returned the Calcutta manuscript. This letter concludes on a pathetic note:

My old Parson Crabbe is bowing down under epileptic fits, or something like, and I believe his brave old white head will soon sink into the village church sward. Why, our time seems coming. Make way, gentlemen!

Borrow comes more than once into the story of FitzGerald's great translation of Omar Khayyam, which in our day has caused so great a sensation, and deserves all the enthusiasm that it has excited as the

'... golden Eastern lay, Than which I know no version done In English more divinely well,'

to quote Tennyson's famous eulogy. Cowell, to his after regret, for he had none of FitzGerald's dolce far niente paganism, had sent FitzGerald from Calcutta, where he was, the manuscript of Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat in Persian, and FitzGerald was captured by it. Two years later, as we know, he produced the translation, which was so much more than a translation. 'Omar breathes a sort of consolation to me,' he wrote to Cowell. 'Borrow is greatly delighted with your MS. of Omar which I showed him,' he says in another letter to Cowell (June 23, 1857), 'delighted at the terseness so unusual in Oriental verse.'[216]

The next two letters by FitzGerald from my Borrow Papers are of the year 1859, the year of the first publication of the Rubaiyat:

To George Borrow, Esq.

10 MARINE PARADE, LOWESTOFT.

MY DEAR BORROW,—I have come here with three nieces to give them sea air and change. They are all perfectly quiet, sensible, and unpretentious girls; so as, if you will come over here any day or days, we will find you board and bed too, for a week longer at any rate. There is a good room below, which we now only use for meals, but which you and I can be quite at our sole ease in. Won't you come?

I purpose (and indeed have been some while intentioning) to go over to Yarmouth to look for you. But I write this note in hope it may bring you hither also.

Donne has got his soldier boy home from India—Freddy—I always thought him a very nice fellow indeed. No doubt life is happy enough to all of them just now. Donne has been on a visit to the Highlands—which seems to have pleased him—I have got an MS. of Bahram and his Seven Castles (Persian), which I have not yet cared to look far into. Will you? It is short, fairly transcribed, and of some repute in its own country, I hear. Cowell sent it me from Calcutta; but it almost requires his company to make one devote one's time to Persian, when, with what remains of one's old English eyes, one can read the Odyssey and Shakespeare.

With compliments to the ladies, believe me, Yours very truly,

EDWARD FITZGERALD.

I didn't know you were back from your usual summer tour till Mr. Cobb told my sister lately of having seen you.

To George Borrow, Esq.

BATH HOUSE, LOWESTOFT, October 10/59.

DEAR BORROW,—This time last year I was here and wrote to ask about you. You were gone to Scotland. Well, where are you now? As I also said last year: 'If you be in Yarmouth and have any mind to see me I will go over some day; or here I am if you will come here. And I am quite alone. As it is I would bus it to Yarmouth but I don't know if you and yours be there at all, nor if there, whereabout. If I don't hear at all I shall suppose you are not there, on one of your excursions, or not wanting to be rooted out; a condition I too well understand. I was at Gorleston some months ago for some while; just after losing my greatest friend, the Bedfordshire lad who was crushed to death, coming home from hunting, his horse falling on him. He survived indeed two months, and I had been to bid him eternal adieu, so had no appetite for anything but rest—rest—rest. I have just seen his widow off from here. With kind regards to the ladies, Yours very truly,

EDWARD FITZGERALD.

In a letter to George Crabbe the third, and the grandson of the poet, in 1862, FitzGerald tells him that he has just been reading Borrow's Wild Wales, 'which I like well because I can hear him talking it. But I don't know if others will like it.' 'No one writes better English than Borrow in general,' he says. But FitzGerald, as a lover of style, is vexed with some of Borrow's phrases, and instances one: '"The scenery was beautiful to a degree," What degree? When did this vile phrase arise?' The criticism is just, but Borrow, in common with many other great English authors whose work will live was not uniformly a good stylist. He has many lamentable fallings away from the ideals of the stylist. But he will, by virtue of a wonderful individuality, outlive many a good stylist. His four great books are immortal, and one of them is Wild Wales.

We have a glimpse of FitzGerald in the following letter in my possession, by the friend who had introduced him to Borrow, William Bodham Donne:[217]

To George Borrow, Esq.

40 WEYMOUTH STREET, PORTLAND PLACE, W., November 28/62.

MY DEAR BORROW,—Many thanks for the copy of Wild Wales reserved for and sent to me by Mr. R. Cooke.[218] Before this copy arrived I had obtained one from the London Library and read it through, not exactly stans pede in uno, but certainly almost at a stretch. I could not indeed lay it down, it interested me so much. It is one of the very best records of home travel, if indeed so strange a country as Wales is can properly be called home, I have ever met with.

Immediately on closing the third volume I secured a few pages in Fraser's Magazine for Wild Wales, for though you do not stand in need of my aid, yet my notice will not do you a mischief, and some of the reviewers of Lavengro were, I recollect, shocking blockheads, misinterpreting the letter and misconceiving the spirit of that work. I have, since we met in Burlington Arcade, been on a visit to FitzGerald. He is in better spirits by far than when I saw him about the same time in last year. He has his pictures and his chattels about him, and has picked up some acquaintance among the merchants and mariners of Woodbridge, who, although far below his level, are yet better company than the two old skippers he was consorting with in 1861. They—his present friends—came in of an evening, and sat and drank and talked, and I enjoyed their talk very much, since they discussed of what they understood, which is more than I can say generally of the fine folks I occasionally (very occasionally now) meet in London. I should have said more about your book, only I wish to keep it for print: and you don't need to be told by me that it is very good.—With best regards to Mrs. Borrow and Miss Clarke, I am, yours ever truly,

W. B. DONNE.

The last letter from FitzGerald to Borrow is dated many years after the correspondence I have here printed,[219] and from it we gather that there had been no correspondence in the interval.[220] FitzGerald writes from Little Grange, Woodbridge, in January 1875, to say that he had received a message from Borrow that he would be glad to see him at Oulton. 'I think the more of it,' says FitzGerald, 'because I imagine, from what I have heard, that you have slunk away from human company as much as I have.' He hints that they might not like one another so well after a fifteen years' separation. He declares with infinite pathos that he has now severed himself from all old ties, has refused the invitations of old college friends and old schoolfellows. To him there was no companionship possible for his declining days other than his reflections and verses. It is a fine letter, filled with that graciousness of spirit that was ever a trait in FitzGerald's noble nature. The two men never met again. When Borrow died, in 1881, FitzGerald, who followed him two years later, suggested to Dr. Aldis Wright, afterwards to be his (FitzGerald's) executor, who was staying with him at the time, that he should look over Borrow's books and manuscripts if his stepdaughter so desired. If this had been arranged, and Dr. Aldis Wright had written Borrow's life, there would have been no second biographer.[221]

FOOTNOTES:

[205] This was said by FitzGerald to his friend Frederick Spalding.

[206] Edward FitzGerald to George Borrow, in Knapp's Life, vol. ii. p. 346.

[207] The Works of Edward FitzGerald, vol. ii. p. 59 (Macmillan).

[208] FitzGerald was staying with his friends Mr. and Mrs. W. K. Browne. There is no letter other than this one to Borrow to recall that visit, which is, however, referred to in the FitzGerald Correspondence (Works, vol. ii. p. 75) by the following sentence:—'When in Bedfordshire I put away almost all Books except Omar Khayyam! which I could not help looking over in a Paddock covered with Buttercups and brushed by a delicious Breeze, while a dainty racing Filly of Browne's came startling up to wonder and to snuff about me.' The 'friend' of the letter was of course Mr. W. K. Browne, who was more of an open air man than a bookman.

[209] I am indebted to Mr. Edward Heron-Allen for the information that this is the original of the last verse but one in FitzGerald's first version of the Rubaiyat:

r 74. Ah Moon of my Delight, who knowest no wane, The Moon of Heaven is rising once again, How oft, hereafter rising, shall she look Through this same Garden after me—in vain.

The literal translation is:

[Persian] Since no one will guarantee thee a to-morrow, [Persian] Make thou happy now this lovesick heart; [Persian] Drink wine in the moonlight, O Moon, for the Moon [Persian] Shall seek us long and shall not find us.

[210] The Works of Edward FitzGerald, vol. ii. p. 74 (Macmillan).

[211] Letters of Edward FitzGerald, vol. ii. p. 15.

[212] Ibid., vol. iv. p. 85 (Macmillan).

[213] First published in The Sphere, October 31, 1903. The letter was written to Mr. James Hooper of Norwich.

[214] Works of Edward FitzGerald, vol. ii. p. 135 (Macmillan).

[215] Published by Dr. Knapp in Borrow's Life, vol. ii. p. 348 (Murray).

[216] We learn from FitzGerald that Borrow's eyesight gave way about this time, and his wife had to keep all books from him.

[217] There are two or three references to Borrow in William Bodham Donne and his Friends, edited by Catharine B. Johnson (Methuen). The most important of these is in a letter from Donne to Bernard Barton, dated from Bury St. Edmunds, September 12th, 1848:

'We have had a great man here, and I have been walking with him and aiding him to eat salmon and mutton and drink port—George Borrow; and what is more, we fell in with some gypsies and I heard the speech of Egypt, which sounded wonderously like a medley of broken Spanish and dog Latin. Borrow's face lighted by the red turf fire of the tent was worth looking at. He is ashy white now, but twenty years ago, when his hair was like a raven's wing, he must have been hard to discriminate from a born Bohemian. Borrow is best on the tramp, if you can walk four and a half miles per hour—as I can with ease and do by choice—and can walk fifteen of them at a stretch—which I can compass also—then he will talk Iliads of adventures even better than his printed ones. He cannot abide those amateur pedestrians who saunter, and in his chair he is given to groan and be contradictory. But on Newmarket Heath, in Rougham Woods, he is at home, and specially when he meets with a thorough vagabond like your present correspondent.'

In June 1874 FitzGerald writes to Donne:

'I saw in some Athenaeum a somewhat contemptuous notice of G. B.'s Rommany Lil or whatever the name is. I can easily understand that B. should not meddle with science of any sort; but some years ago he would not have liked to be told so; however, old age may have cooled him now.'

[218] Mr. Robert Cooke was a partner in John Murray's firm at this time.

[219] It is to be found in Dr. Knapp's Life, vol. ii. pp. 248-9.

[220] I have a copy of FitzGerald's.

[221] Dr. Aldis Wright tells me that he did go over to Oulton to see Mrs. MacOubrey, and gave her the best advice he could, but it was neglected.



CHAPTER XXXII

WILD WALES

The year 1854 was an adventurous one in Borrow's life, for he, so essentially a Celt, as Mr. Watts-Dunton has more than once reminded us,[222] had in that year two interesting experiences of the 'Celtic Fringe.' He spent the first months of the year in Cornwall, as we have seen, and from July to November he was in Wales. That tour he recorded in pencilled notebooks, four of which are in the Knapp Collection in New York, and are duly referred to in Dr. Knapp's biography, and two of which are in my possession. In addition to this I have the complete manuscript of Wild Wales in Borrow's handwriting, and many variants of it in countless, carefully written pages. Therein lie the possibilities of a singularly interesting edition of Wild Wales should opportunity offer for its publication. When I examine the manuscript, with its demonstration of careful preparation, I do not wonder that it took Borrow eight years—from 1854 to 1862—to prepare this book for the press. Assuredly we recognise here, as in all his books, that he realised Carlyle's definition of genius—'the transcendent capacity of taking trouble—first of all.'



It was on 27th July 1854 that Borrow, his wife and her daughter, Henrietta Clarke, set out on their journey to North Wales. Dr. Knapp prints two kindly letters from Mrs. Borrow to her mother-in-law written from Llangollen on this tour. 'We are in a lovely quiet spot,' she writes, 'Dear George goes out exploring the mountains.... The poor here are humble, simple, and good.' In the second letter Mrs. Borrow records that her husband 'keeps a daily journal of all that goes on, so that he can make a most amusing book in a month.' Yet Borrow took eight years to make it. The failure of The Romany Rye, which was due for publication before Wild Wales, accounts for this, and perhaps also the disappointment that another book, long since ready, did not find a publisher. In the letter from which I have quoted Mary Borrow tells Anne Borrow that her son will, she expects at Christmas, publish The Romany Rye, 'together with his poetry in all the European languages.' This last book had been on his hands for many a day, and indeed in Wild Wales he writes of 'a mountain of unpublished translations' of which this book, duly advertised in The Romany Rye, was a part.[223]

After an ascent of Snowdon arm in arm with Henrietta, Mrs. Borrow remaining behind, Borrow left his wife and daughter to find their way back to Yarmouth, and continued his journey, all of which is most picturesquely described in Wild Wales. Before that book was published, however, Borrow was to visit the Isle of Man, Scotland, and Ireland. He was to publish Lavengro (1857); to see his mother die (1858); and to issue his very limited edition of The Sleeping Bard (1860); and, lastly, to remove to Brompton (1860). It was at the end of the year 1862 that Wild Wales was published. It had been written during the two years immediately following the tour in Wales, in 1855 and 1856. It had been announced as ready for publication in 1857, but doubtless the chilly reception of The Romany Rye in that year, of which we have written, had made Borrow lukewarm as to venturing once more before the public. The public was again irresponsive. The Cornhill Magazine, then edited by Thackeray, declared the book to be 'tiresome reading.' The Spectator reviewer was more kindly, but nowhere was there any enthusiasm. Only a thousand copies were sold,[224] and a second edition did not appear until 1865, and not another until seven years after Borrow's death. Yet the author had the encouragement that comes from kindly correspondents. Here, for example, is a letter that could not but have pleased him:

WEST HILL LODGE, HIGHGATE, Dec. 29th, 1862.

DEAR SIR,—We have had a great Christmas pleasure this year—the reading of your Wild Wales, which has taken us so deliciously into the lovely fresh scenery and life of that pleasant mountain-land. My husband and myself made a little walking tour over some of your ground in North Wales this year; my daughter and her uncle, Richard Howitt, did the same; and we have been ourselves collecting material for a work, the scenes of which will be laid amidst some of our and your favourite mountains. But the object of my writing was not to tell you this; but after assuring you of the pleasure your work has given us—to say also that in one respect it has tantalised us. You have told over and over again to fascinated audiences, Lope de Vega's ghost story, but still leave the poor reader at the end of the book longing to hear it in vain.

May I ask you, therefore, to inform us in which of Lope de Vega's numerous works this same ghost story is to be found? We like ghost stories, and to a certain extent believe in them, we deserve therefore to know the best ghost story in the world:

Wishing for you, your wife and your Henrietta, all the compliments of the season in the best and truest of expression.—I am, dear sir, yours sincerely,

MARY HOWITT.[225]



The reference to Lope de Vega's ghost story is due to the fact that in the fifty-fifth chapter of Wild Wales, Borrow, after declaring that Lope de Vega was 'one of the greatest geniuses that ever lived,' added, that among his tales may be found 'the best ghost story in the world.' Dr. Knapp found the story in Borrow's handwriting among the manuscripts that came to him, and gives it in full. In good truth it is but moderately interesting, although Borrow seems to have told it to many audiences when in Wales, but this perhaps provides the humour of the situation. It seems clear that Borrow contemplated publishing Lope de Vega's ghost story in a later book. We note here, indeed, a letter of a much later date in which Borrow refers to the possibility of a supplement to Wild Wales, the only suggestion of such a book that I have seen, although there is plenty of new manuscript in my Borrow collection to have made such a book possible had Borrow been encouraged by his publisher and the public to write it.



To J. Evan Williams, Esq.

22 HEREFORD SQUARE, BROMPTON, Decr. 31, 1863.

DEAR SIR,—I have received your letter and thank you for the kind manner in which you are pleased to express yourself concerning me. Now for your questions. With respect to Lope De Vega's ghost story, I beg to say that I am thinking of publishing a supplement to my Wild Wales in which, amongst other things, I shall give a full account of the tale and point out where it is to be found. You cannot imagine the number of letters I receive on the subject of that ghost story. With regard to the Sclavonian languages, I wish to observe that they are all well deserving of study. The Servian and Bohemian contain a great many old traditionary songs, and the latter possesses a curious though not very extensive prose literature. The Polish has, I may say, been rendered immortal by the writings of Mickiewicz, whose 'Conrad Wallenrod' is probably the most remarkable poem of the present century. The Russian, however, is the most important of all the Sclavonian tongues, not on account of its literature but because it is spoken by fifty millions of people, it being the dominant speech from the Gulf of Finland to the frontiers of China. There is a remarkable similarity both in sound and sense between many Russian and Welsh words, for example 'tchelo' ([Russian]) is the Russian for forehead, 'tal' is Welsh for the same; 'iasnhy' (neuter 'iasnoe') is the Russian for clear or radiant, 'iesin' the Welsh, so that if it were grammatical in Russian to place the adjective after the noun as is the custom in Welsh, the Welsh compound 'Taliesin' (Radiant forehead) might be rendered in Russian by 'Tchelōiasnoe,' which would be wondrously like the Welsh name; unfortunately, however, Russian grammar would compel any one wishing to Russianise 'Taliesin' to say not 'Tchelōiasnoe' but 'Iasnoetchelo.'—Yours truly,

GEORGE BORROW.



Another letter that Borrow owed to his Wild Wales may well have place here. It will be recalled that in his fortieth chapter he waxes enthusiastic over Lewis Morris, the Welsh bard, who was born in Anglesey in 1700 and died in 1765. Morris's great-grandson, Sir Lewis Morris (1833-1907), the author of the once popular Epic of Hades, was twenty-nine years of age when he wrote to Borrow as follows:—

To George Borrow, Esq.

REFORM CLUB, Dec. 29, 1862.

SIR,—I have just finished reading your work on Wild Wales, and cannot refrain from writing to thank you for the very lifelike picture of the Welsh people, North and South, which, unlike other Englishmen, you have managed to give us. To ordinary Englishmen the language is of course an insurmountable bar to any real knowledge of the people, and the result is that within six hours of Paddington or Euston Square is a country nibbled at superficially by droves of holiday-makers, but not really better known than Asia Minor. I wish it were possible to get rid of all obstacles which stand in the way of the development of the Welsh people and the Welsh intellect. In the meantime every book which like yours tends to lighten the thick darkness which seems to hang round Wales deserves the acknowledgments of every true Welshman. I am, perhaps, more especially called upon to express my thanks for the very high terms in which you speak of my great-grandfather, Lewis Morris. I believe you have not said a word more than he deserves. Some of the facts which you mention with regard to him were unknown to me, and as I take a very great interest in everything relating to my ancestor I venture to ask you whether you can indicate any source of knowledge with regard to him and his wife, other than those which I have at present—viz. an old number of the Cambrian Register and some notices of him in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1760-70. There is also a letter of his in Lord Teignmouth's Life of Sir William Jones in which he claims kindred with that great scholar. Many of his manuscript poems and much correspondence are now in the library of the British Museum, most of them I regret to say a sealed book to one who like myself had yet to learn Welsh. But I am not the less anxious to learn all that can be ascertained about my great ancestor. I should say that two of his brothers, Richard and William, were eminent Welsh scholars.

With apologies for addressing you so unceremoniously, and with renewed thanks, I remain, Sir, your obedient servant,

LEWIS MORRIS.

An interesting letter to Borrow from another once popular writer belongs to this period:

To George Borrow, Esq.

THE 'PRESS' OFFICE, STRAND, WESTMINSTER, Thursday.

One who has read and delighted in everything Mr. Borrow has yet published ventures to say how great has been his delight in reading Wild Wales. No philologist or linguist, I am yet an untiring walker and versifier: and really I think that few things are pleasanter than to walk and to versify. Also, well do I love good ale, natural drink of the English. If I could envy anything, it is your linguistic faculty, which unlocks to you the hearts of the unknown races of these islands—unknown, I mean, as to their real feelings and habits, to ordinary Englishmen—and your still higher faculty of describing your adventures in the purest and raciest English of the day. I send you a Danish daily journal, which you may not have seen. Once a week it issues articles in English. How beautiful (but of course not new to you) is the legend of Queen Dagmar, given in this number! A noble race, the Danes: glad am I to see their blood about to refresh that which runs in the royal veins of England. Sorry and ashamed to see a Russell bullying and insulting them.

MORTIMER COLLINS.[226]

How greatly Borrow was disappointed at the comparative failure of Wild Wales may be gathered from a curt message to his publisher which I find among his papers:

Mr. Borrow has been applied to by a country bookseller, who is desirous of knowing why there is not another edition of Wild Wales, as he cannot procure a copy of the book, for which he receives frequent orders. That it was not published in a cheap form as soon as the edition of 1862 was exhausted has caused much surprise.

Borrow, it will be remembered, left Wales at Chepstow, as recorded in the hundred and ninth and final chapter of Wild Wales, 'where I purchased a first class ticket, and ensconcing myself in a comfortable carriage, was soon on my way to London, where I arrived at about four o'clock in the morning.' In the following letter to his wife there is a slight discrepancy, of no importance, as to time:

To Mrs. George Borrow

53A PALL MALL, LONDON.

DEAR WIFE CARRETA,—I arrived here about five o'clock this morning—time I saw you. I have walked about 250 miles. I walked the whole way from the North to the South—then turning to the East traversed Glamorganshire and the county of Monmouth, and came out at Chepstow. My boots were worn up by the time I reached Swansea, and was obliged to get them new soled and welted. I have seen wonderful mountains, waterfalls, and people. On the other side of the Black Mountains I met a cartload of gypsies; they were in a dreadful rage and were abusing the country right and left. My last ninety miles proved not very comfortable, there was so much rain. Pray let me have some money by Monday as I am nearly without any, as you may well suppose, for I was three weeks on my journey. I left you on a Thursday, and reached Chepstow yesterday, Thursday, evening. I hope you, my mother, and Hen. are well. I have seen Murray and Cooke.—God bless you, yours,

GEORGE BORROW.

(Keep this.)

Before Borrow put the finishing touches to Wild Wales he repeated his visit of 1854. This was in 1857, the year of The Romany Rye. Dr. Knapp records the fact through a letter to Mr. John Murray from Shrewsbury, in which he discusses the possibility of a second edition of The Romany Rye: 'I have lately been taking a walk in Wales of upwards of five hundred miles,' he writes. This tour lasted from August 23rd to October 5th. I find four letters to his wife that were written in this holiday. He does not seem to have made any use of this second tour in his Wild Wales, although I have abundance of manuscript notes upon it in my possession.

To Mrs. George Borrow

TENBY, Tuesday, 25.

MY DEAR CARRETA,—Since writing to you I have been rather unwell and was obliged to remain two days at Sandypool. The weather has been horribly hot and affected my head and likewise my sight slightly; moreover one of the shoes hurt my foot. I came to this place to-day and shall presently leave it for Pembroke on my way back. I shall write to you from there. I shall return by Cardigan. What I want you to do is to write to me directed to the post office, Cardigan (in Cardiganshire), and either inclose a post office order for five pounds or an order from Lloyd and Co. on the banker of that place for the same sum; but at any rate write or I shall not know what to do. I would return by railroad, but in that event I must go to London, for there are no railroads from here to Shrewsbury. I wish moreover to see a little more. Just speak to the banker and don't lose any time. Send letter, and either order in it, or say that I can get it at the bankers. I hope all is well. God bless you and Hen.

GEORGE BORROW.

To Mrs. George Borrow

TRECASTLE, BRECKNOCKSHIRE, SOUTH WALES, August 17th.

DEAR CARRETA,—I write to you a few words from this place; to-morrow I am going to Llandovery and from there to Carmarthen; for the first three or four days I had dreadful weather. I got only to Worthen the first day, twelve miles—on the next to Montgomery, and so on. It is now very hot, but I am very well, much better than at Shrewsbury. I hope in a few days to write to you again, and soon to be back to you. God bless you and Hen.

G. BORROW.

To Mrs. George Borrow

LAMPETER, 3rd September 1857.

MY DEAR CARRETA,—I am making the best of my way to Shrewsbury (My face is turned towards Mama). I write this from Lampeter, where there is a college for educating clergymen intended for Wales, which I am going to see. I shall then start for Badnor by Tregaron, and hope soon to be in England. I have seen an enormous deal since I have been away, and have walked several hundred miles. Amongst other places I have seen St. David's, a wonderful half ruinous cathedral on the S. Western end of Pembrokeshire, but I shall be glad to get back. God bless you and Hen.

GEORGE BORROW.

Henrietta! Do you know who is handsome?

To Mrs. George Borrow

PRESTEYNE, RADNORSHIRE, Monday morning.

DEAR CARRETA,—I am just going to start for Ludlow, and hope to be at Shrewsbury on Tuesday night if not on Monday morning. God bless you and Hen.

G. BORROW.

When I get back I shall have walked more than 400 miles.

In Wild Wales we have George Borrow in his most genial mood. There are none of the hairbreadth escapes and grim experiences of The Bible in Spain, none of the romance and the glamour of Lavengro and its sequel, but there is good humour, a humour that does not obtain in the three more important works, and there is an amazing amount of frank candour of a biographical kind. We even have a reference to Isopel Berners, referred to by Captain Bosvile as 'the young woman you used to keep company with ... a fine young woman and a virtuous.' It is the happiest of Borrow's books, and not unnaturally. He was having a genuine holiday, and he had the companionship during a part of it of his wife and daughter, of whom he was, as this book is partly written to prove, very genuinely fond. He also enjoyed the singularly felicitous experience of harking back upon some of his earliest memories. He was able to retrace the steps he took in the Welsh language during his boyhood:

That night I sat up very late reading the life of Twm O'r Nant, written by himself in choice Welsh.... The life I had read in my boyhood in an old Welsh magazine, and I now read it again with great zest, and no wonder, as it is probably the most remarkable autobiography ever penned.

It is in this ecstatic mood that he passes through Wales. Let me recall the eulogy on 'Gronwy' Owen, and here it may be said that Borrow rarely got his spelling correct of the proper names of his various literary heroes, in the various Norse and Celtic tongues in which he delighted.[227] But how much Borrow delighted in his poets may be seen by his eulogy on Goronwy Owen, which in its pathos recalls Carlyle's similar eulogies over poor German scholars who interested him, Jean Paul Richter and Heyne, for example. Borrow ignored Owen's persistent intemperance and general impracticability. Here and here only, indeed, does he remind one of Carlyle.[228] He had a great capacity for hero-worship, although the two were not interested in the same heroes. His hero-worship of Owen took him over large tracks of country in search of that poet's birthplace. He writes of the delight he takes in inspecting the birth-places and haunts of poets. 'It is because I am fond of poetry, poets, and their haunts, that I am come to Anglesey.'[229] 'I proceeded on my way,' he says elsewhere, 'in high spirits indeed, having now seen not only the tomb of the Tudors, but one of those sober poets for which Anglesey has always been so famous.' And thus it is that Wild Wales is a high-spirited book, which will always be a delight and a joy not only to Welshmen, who, it may be hoped, have by this time forgiven 'the ecclesiastical cat' of Llangollen, but to all who rejoice in the great classics of the English tongue.

FOOTNOTES:

[222] 'Not one drop of East Anglian blood was in the veins of Borrow's father, and very little in the veins of his mother. Borrow's ancestry was pure Cornish on one side, and on the other mainly French.'—Theodore Watts-Dunton: Introduction to The Romany Rye (Ward and Lock).

[223] The advertisement describes it thus: 'In two volumes, Songs of Europe: or Metrical Translations from all the European Languages; With Brief Prefatory Remarks on each Language and its Literature.'

[224] Wild Wales: Its People, Language, and Scenery. By George Borrow. 3 vols. John Murray, 1862.

[225] Mary Botham (1799-1888) was born at Coleford, Gloucestershire, and married William Howitt in 1821. The pair compiled many books together. The statement in the Dictionary of National Biography that 'nothing that either of them wrote will live' is quite unwarranted. William Howitt's Homes and Haunts of the most eminent British Poets (Bentley, 2 vols., 1847) is still eagerly sought after for every good library. In Mary Howitt: An Autobiography (Isbister, 2 vols., 1889), a valuable book of reminiscences, there is no mention of Borrow.

[226] Edward James Mortimer Collins (1827-1876), once bore the title of 'King of the Bohemians' among his friends; wrote Sweet and Twenty and many other novels once widely popular.

[227] Goronwy or Gronow Owen (1723-1769), born at Rhos Fawr in Anglesey, and died at St. Andrews, Brunswick County, Virginia.

[228] Borrow had at many points certain affinities to Carlyle's hero Johnson, but lacked his epigrammatic wit—and much else. But he seems to have desired to emulate Johnson in one particular, as we find in the following dialogue:—

'I wouldn't go on foot there this night for fifty pounds.'

'Why not?' said I.

'For fear of being knocked down by the colliers, who will be all out and drunk.'

'If not more than two attack me,' said I, 'I shan't so much mind. With this book I am sure I can knock down one, and I think I can find play for the other with my fists.'

[229] When searching for the home of Goronwy Owen Borrow records a meeting with one of his descendants—a little girl of seven or eight years of age, named Ellen Jones, who in recent years has been interviewed as to her impressions of Borrow's visit. 'He did speak funny Welsh,' she says, '... he could not pronounce the "ll." 'He had plenty of words, but bad pronunciation.'—Herbert Jenkins: Life of Borrow, p. 418. But Borrow in Wild Wales frequently admits his imperfect acquaintance with spoken Welsh.



CHAPTER XXXIII

LIFE IN LONDON, 1860-1874

George Borrow's earlier visits to London are duly recorded, with that glamour of which he was a master, in the pages of Lavengro. Who can cross London Bridge even to-day without thinking of the apple-woman and her copy of Moll Flanders; and many passages of Borrow's great book make a very special appeal to the lover of London. Then there was that visit to the Bible Society's office made on foot from Norwich, and the expedition a few months later to pass an examination in the Manchu language. When he became a country squire and the author of the very successful Bible in Spain Borrow frequently visited London, and his various residences may be traced from his letters. Take, for example, these five notes to his wife, the first apparently written in 1848, but all undated:

To Mrs. George Borrow

Tuesday afternoon.

MY DEAR WIFE,—I just write you a line to tell you that I am tolerably well as I hope you are. Every thing is in confusion abroad. The French King has disappeared and will probably never be heard of, though they are expecting him in England. Funds are down nearly to eighty. The Government have given up the income tax and people are very glad of it. I am not. With respect to the funds, if I were to sell out I should not know what to do with the money. J. says they will rise. I do not think they will, they may, however, fluctuate a little.—Keep up your spirits, my heart's dearest, and kiss old Hen. for me.

G. B.

To Mrs. George Borrow

53a, PALL MALL.

DEAR WIFE CARRETA,—I write you a line as I suppose you will be glad to have one. I dine to-night with Murray and Cooke, and we are going to talk over about The Sleeping Bard; both are very civil. I have been reading hard at the Museum and have lost no time. Yesterday I went to Greenwich to see the Leviathan. It is almost terrible to look at, and seems too large for the river. It resembles a floating town—the paddle is 60 feet high. A tall man can stand up in the funnel as it lies down. 'Tis sad, however, that money is rather scarce. I walked over Blackheath and thought of poor dear Mrs. Watson. I have just had a note from FitzGerald. We have had some rain but not very much. London is very gloomy in rainy weather. I was hoping that I should have a letter from you this morning. I hope you and Hen. have been well.—God bless you,

GEORGE BORROW.

To Mrs. George Borrow

PALL MALL, 53a, Saturday.

DEAR CARRETA,—I am thinking of coming to you on Thursday. I do not know that I can do anything more here, and the dulness of the weather and the mists are making me ill. Please to send another five pound note by Tuesday morning. I have spent scarcely anything of that which you sent except what I owe to Mrs. W., but I wish to have money in my pocket, and Murray and Cooke are going to dine with me on Tuesday; I shall be glad to be with you again, for I am very much in want of your society. I miss very much my walks at Llangollen by the quiet canal; but what's to be done? Everything seems nearly at a standstill in London, on account of this wretched war, at which it appears to me the English are getting the worst, notwithstanding their boasting. They thought to settle it in an autumn's day; they little knew the Russians, and they did not reflect that just after autumn comes winter, which has ever been the Russians' friend. Have you heard anything about the rent of the Cottage? I should have been glad to hear from you this morning. Give my love to Hen. and may God bless you, dear.

(Keep this.)

GEORGE BORROW.

To Mrs. George Borrow

No. 53a PALL MALL.

DEAR CARRETA,—I hope you received my last letter written on Tuesday. I am glad that I came to London. I find myself much the better for having done so. I was going on in a very spiritless manner. Everybody I have met seems very kind and glad to see me. Murray seems to be thoroughly staunch. Cooke, to whom I mentioned the F.T., says that Murray was delighted with the idea, and will be very glad of the 4th of Lavengro. I am going to dine with Murray to-day, Thursday. W. called upon me to-day. I wish you would send me a blank cheque, in a letter so that if I want money I may be able to draw for a little. I shall not be long from home, but now I am here I wish to do all that's necessary. If you send me a blank cheque, I suppose W. or Murray would give me the money. I hope you got my last letter. I received yours, and Cooke has just sent the two copies of Lavengro you wrote for, and I believe some engravings of the picture. I shall wish to return by the packet if possible, and will let you know when I am coming. I hope to write again shortly to tell you some more news. How is mother and Hen., and how are all the creatures? I hope all well. I trust you like all I propose—now I am here I want to get two or three things, to go to the Museum, and to arrange matters. God bless you. Love to mother and Hen.

GEORGE BORROW.

To Mrs. George Borrow

No. 58 JERMYN STREET, ST. JAMES.

DEAR CARRETA,—I got here safe, and upon the whole had not so bad a journey as might be expected. I put up at the Spread Eagle for the night for I was tired and hungry; have got into my old lodgings as you see, those on the second floor, they are very nice ones, with every convenience; they are expensive, it is true, but they are cheerful, which is a grand consideration for me. I have as yet seen nobody, for it is only now a little past eleven. I can scarcely at present tell you what my plans are, perhaps to-morrow I shall write again. Kiss Hen., and God bless you.

G. B.

It was in the year 1843 that Borrow, on a visit to London following upon the success of The Bible in Spain, sat to Henry Wyndham Phillips for his portrait at the instigation of Mr. Murray, who gave Borrow a replica, retaining for himself Phillips's more finished picture, which has been reproduced again and again in the present Mr. Murray's Borrow productions.[230]

Borrow was in London in 1845 and again in 1848. There must have been other occasional visits on the way to this or that starting point of his annual holiday, but in 1860 Borrow took a house in London, and he resided there until 1874, when he returned to Oulton. In a letter to Mr. John Murray, written from Ireland in November 1859, Mrs. Borrow writes to the effect that in the spring of the following year she will wish to look round 'and select a pleasant holiday residence within three to ten miles of London.' There is no doubt that a succession of winters on Oulton Broad had been very detrimental to Mrs. Borrow's health, although they had no effect upon Borrow, who bathed there with equal indifference in winter as in summer, having, as he tells us in Wild Wales, 'always had the health of an elephant.' And so Borrow and his wife arrived in London in June, and took temporary lodgings at 21 Montagu Street, Portman Square. In September they went into occupation of a house in Brompton—22 Hereford Square, which is now commemorated by a County Council tablet. Here Borrow resided for fourteen years, and here his wife died on January 30, 1869. She was buried in Brompton Cemetery, where Borrow was laid beside her twelve years later. For neighbour, on the one side, the Borrows had Mr. Robert Collinson and, on the other, Miss Frances Power Cobbe and her companion, Miss M. C. Lloyd. From Miss Cobbe we have occasional glimpses of Borrow, all of them unkindly. She was of Irish extraction, her father having been grandson of Charles Cobbe, Archbishop of Dublin. Miss Cobbe was an active woman in all kinds of journalistic and philanthropic enterprises in the London of the 'seventies and 'eighties of the last century, writing in particular in the now defunct newspaper, the Echo, and she wrote dozens of books and pamphlets, all of them forgotten except her Autobiography,[231] in which she devoted several pages to her neighbour in Hereford Square. Borrow had no sympathy with fanatical women with many 'isms,' and the pair did not agree, although many neighbourly courtesies passed between them for a time. Here is an extract from Miss Cobbe's Autobiography:

George Borrow, who, if he were not a gypsy by blood, ought to have been one, was for some years our near neighbour in Hereford Square. My friend[232] was amused by his quaint stories and his (real or sham) enthusiasm for Wales, and cultivated his acquaintance. I never liked him, thinking him more or less of a hypocrite. His missions, recorded in The Bible in Spain, and his translations of the Scriptures into the out-of-the-way tongues, for which he had a gift, were by no means consonant with his real opinions concerning the veracity of the said Bible.

One only needs to quote this by the light of the story as told so far in these pages to see how entirely Miss Cobbe misunderstood Borrow, or rather how little insight she was able to bring to a study of his curious character. The rest of her attempt at interpretation is largely taken up to demonstrate how much more clever and more learned she was than Borrow. Altogether it is a sorry spectacle this of the pseudo-philanthropist relating her conversations with a man broken by misfortune and the death of his wife. Many of Miss Cobbe's statements have passed into current biographies and have doubtless found acceptance.[233] I do not find them convincing. Archdeacon Whately on the other hand tells us that he always found Borrow 'most civil and hospitable,' and his sister gives us the following 'impression':

When Mr. Borrow returned from this Spanish journey, which had been full, as we all know, of most entertaining adventures, related with much liveliness and spirit by himself, he was regarded as a kind of 'lion' in the literary circles of London. When we first saw him it was at the house of a lady who took great pleasure in gathering 'celebrities' in various ways around her, and our party was struck with the appearance of this renowned traveller—a tall, thin, spare man with prematurely white hair and intensely dark eyes, as he stood upright against the wall of one of the drawing-rooms and received the homage of lion-hunting guests, and listened in silence to their unsuccessful attempts to make him talk.'[234]

Another reminiscence of Borrow in London is furnished by Mr. A. T. Story, who writes:[235]

I had the pleasure of meeting Borrow on several occasions in London some forty years ago. I cannot be quite certain of the year, but I think it was either in 1872 or '73. I saw him first in James Burns's publishing office in Southampton Row. I happened to call just as a tall, strongly-built man with an unforgettable face was leaving. When he had gone, Mr. Burns asked: 'Do you know who that gentleman was?' and when I said I did not, he said: 'He is the man whose book, The Bible in Spain, I saw you take down from the shelf there the other day and read.' 'What, George Borrow?' I exclaimed. He nodded, and then said Borrow had called several times.

A few days later I had an opportunity of making the good man's acquaintance and hearing a conversation between him and Mr. Burns. They talked about Spiritualism, with which Borrow had very little patience, though, after some talk he consented to attend a seance to be held that evening in Burns's drawing-room. We sat together, and I had the pleasure of hearing from time to time his grunts of disapproval. When the discourse—'in trance'—was over, he asked me if I believed in 'this sort of thing,' and when I said I was simply an investigator he remarked, 'That's all right, I, too, am an investigator—of things in general—and it would not take me long to sum up that little man (the medium) as a humbug, but a very clever humbug.'

That evening I had a long walk and a talk with him, and after that several other opportunities of talk, the last being one night when I chanced upon him on Westminster Bridge. It was a superb starlight night, and he was standing about midway over the bridge gazing down into the river. When I approached him he said: 'I have been standing here for twenty minutes looking round and meditating. There is not another city like this in the world, nor another bridge like this, nor a river, nor a Parliament House like that—with its little men making little laws—which the Lawgiver that made yonder stars—look at them!—is continually confounding—and will confound. O, we little men! How long before we are dust? And the stars there, how they smile at our puny lives and tricks—here to-day, gone to-morrow. And yet to-night how glorious it is to be here!'

So he rhapsodised. And then it was, 'Where can we get a bite and sup? I've been footing it all day among the hills there—the Surrey Hills—for a breath of fresh air.'

In appearance, at the time I knew him, Borrow was neither thin nor stout, but well proportioned and apparently of great strength.

During this sojourn in London, which was undertaken because Oulton and Yarmouth did not agree with his wife, Borrow suffered the tragedy of her loss. Borrow dragged on his existence in London for another five years, a much broken man. It is extraordinary how little we know of Borrow during that fourteen years' sojourn in London; how rarely we meet him in the literary memoirs of this period. Happily one or two pleasant friendships relieved the sadness of his days; and in particular the reminiscences of Walter Theodore Watts-Dunton assist us to a more correct appreciation of the Borrow of these last years of London life. Of Mr. Watts-Dunton's 'memories,' we shall write in our next chapter. Here it remains only to note that Borrow still continued to interest himself in his various efforts at translation, and in 1861 and 1862 the editor of Once a Week printed various ballads and stories from his pen. The volumes of this periodical are before me, and I find illustrations by Sir John Millais, Sir E. J. Poynter, Simeon Solomon and George Du Maurier; stories by Mrs. Henry Wood and Harriet Martineau, and articles by Walter Thornbury.

In 1862 Wild Wales was published, as we have seen. In 1865 Henrietta married William MacOubrey, and in the following year, Borrow and his wife went to visit the pair in their Belfast home. In the beginning of the year 1869 Mrs. Borrow died, aged seventy-three. There are few records of the tragedy that are worth perpetuating.[236] Borrow consumed his own smoke. With his wife's death his life was indeed a wreck. No wonder he was so 'rude' to that least perceptive of women, Miss Cobbe. Some four or five years more Borrow lingered on in London, cheered at times by walks and talks with Gordon Hake and Watts-Dunton, and he then returned to Oulton—a most friendless man:—

What land has let the dreamer from its gates, What face beloved hides from him away? A dreamer outcast from some world of dreams, He goes for ever lonely on his way.

Like a great pine upon some Alpine height, Torn by the winds and bent beneath the snow Half overthrown by icy avalanche, The lone of soul throughout the world must go.

Alone among his kind he stands alone, Torn by the passions of his own strange heart, Stoned by continual wreckage of his dreams, He in the crowd for ever is apart.

Like the great pine that, rocking no sweet rest, Swings no young birds to sleep upon the bough, But where the raven only comes to croak— 'There lives no man more desolate than thou!'

FOOTNOTES:

[230] The frontispiece to the present volume is from the replica in the possession of Borrow's executor, who has kindly permitted me to have it photographed for the purpose. There are slight and interesting variations from Mr. Murray's portrait. Phillips (1820-1868), the artist of these pictures, is often confused with his father, Thomas (1770-1845), the Royal Academician and a much superior painter, who, by the way, painted many portraits of authors for Mr. John Murray. Henry Phillips was never an R.A. A letter from Phillips to Borrow in my possession shows that he visited the latter at Oulton. The portrait of Borrow is pronounced by Henry Dalrymple, his schoolfellow, from whose manuscript we have already quoted, to be 'very like him.' This fact is the more remarkable as the only photograph of Borrow that is known, one taken in a group with Mrs. Simms Reeve of Norwich in 1848—five years later—has many points of difference. The reader will here be able to compare the two portraits in this book. A third portrait of Borrow—a crude painting by his brother John taken in his early years, is now in the London National Portrait Gallery.

[231] Life of Frances Power Cobbe as told by Herself. With Additions by the Writer and Introduction by Blanche Atkinson. 2 vols., 1904. Frances Power Cobbe was born in Dublin in 1822, and died at Hengwrt in 1904.

[232] Miss Lloyd, who was a Welshwoman. Miss Cobbe lived with her and was doubtless a jealous woman. There are many kindly letters from Miss Lloyd to Borrow in my collection. She seems always to be anxious to invite him to her house.

[233] About three months before her death Miss Cobbe replied to an inquiry made by Mr. James Hooper of Norwich concerning her estimate of Borrow. As it is all but certain that Borrow was never intoxicated in his life, we may find the letter of interest only as giving a point of view:

'HENGWRT, DOLGELLEY, N. WALES, Jan. 26, 1904.

'I can have no objection to your asking me if my little sketch of George Borrow in my Life is my dernier mot about him. If I were to give my dernier mot, it would be much more to his disadvantage than anything I liked to insert in my biography. I see his American biographer has accused me of 'bitterness.' I do not think that what is contained in my book is 'bitter' at all. But if I were to have told my last interview with him,—when I was driven practically to drive him out of our house, more or less drunk, or mad with some opiate—the charge might have had some colour. He was not a good man, and not a true or honourable one, by any manner of means.'

Here assuredly we miss the fine charity which led Goethe's friend, the Duchess of Weimar, to urge that there was a special moral law for poets. Not for one moment does it occur to Miss Cobbe that her neighbour was a man of genius who had written four imperishable contributions to English literature. To her he was merely a conceited, brusque old man. Concerning the adage that 'no man is a hero to his valet,' well may Carlyle remark that that is more often the fault of the valet than of the hero.

[234] Personal and Family Glimpses of Remarkable People. By Edward W. Whately. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1889.

[235] London Daily Chronicle, July 9, 1913.

[236] There is an interview between Borrow and his wife's medical attendant, Dr. Playfair, recorded in Herbert Jenkins's Life, that is full of poignancy.



CHAPTER XXXIV

FRIENDS OF LATER YEARS

We should know little enough of George Borrow's later years, were it not for his friendship with Thomas Gordon Hake and Theodore Watts-Dunton. Hake was born in 1809 and died in 1895. In 1839 he settled at Bury St. Edmunds as a physician, and he resided there until 1853. Here he was frequently visited by the Borrows. We have already quoted his prophecy concerning Lavengro that 'its roots will strike deep into the soil of English letters.' In 1853 Dr. Hake and his family left Bury for the United States, where they resided for some years. Returning to England they lived at Roehampton and met Borrow occasionally in London. During these years Hake was, according to Mr. W. M. Rossetti, 'the earthly Providence of the Rossetti family,' but he was not, as his Memoirs show, equally devoted to Borrow. In 1872, however, he went to live in Germany and Italy for a considerable period. Concerning the relationship between Borrow and Hake, Mr. Watts-Dunton has written:

After Hake went to live in Germany, Borrow told me a good deal about their intimacy, and also about his own early life: for, reticent as he naturally was, he and I got to be confidential and intimate. His friendship with Hake began when Hake was practising as a physician in Norfolk. It lasted during the greater part of Borrow's later life. When Borrow was living in London his great delight was to walk over on Sundays from Hereford Square to Coombe End, call upon Hake, and take a stroll with him over Richmond Park. They both had a passion for herons and for deer. At that time Hake was a very intimate friend of my own, and having had the good fortune to be introduced by him to Borrow I used to join the two in their walks. Afterwards, when Hake went to live in Germany, I used to take those walks with Borrow alone. Two more interesting men it would be impossible to meet. The remarkable thing was that there was between them no sort of intellectual sympathy. In style, in education, in experience, whatever Hake was, Borrow was not. Borrow knew almost nothing of Hake's writings, either in prose or in verse. His ideal poet was Pope, and when he read, or rather looked into, Hake's World's Epitaph, he thought he did Hake the greatest honour by saying, 'there are lines here and there that are nigh as good as Pope'!

On the other hand, Hake's acquaintance with Borrow's works was far behind that of some Borrovians who did not know Lavengro in the flesh, such as Saintsbury and Mr. Birrell. Borrow was shy, angular, eccentric, rustic in accent and in locution, but with a charm for me, at least, that was irresistible. Hake was polished, easy and urbane in everything, and, although not without prejudice and bias, ready to shine generally in any society.

So far as Hake was concerned the sole link between them was that of reminiscence of earlier days and adventures in Borrow's beloved East Anglia. Among many proofs I would adduce of this I will give one. I am the possessor of the MS. of Borrow's Gypsies of Spain, written partly in a Spanish notebook as he moved about Spain in his colporteur days. It was my wish that Hake would leave behind him some memorial of Borrow more worthy of himself and his friend than those brief reminiscences contained in Memoirs of Eighty Years. I took to Hake this precious relic of one of the most wonderful men of the nineteenth century, in order to discuss with him differences between the MS. and the printed text. Hake was writing in his invalid chair,—writing verses. 'What does it all matter?' he said. 'I do not think you understand Lavengro,' I said. Hake replied, 'And yet Lavengro had an advantage over me, for he understood nobody. Every individuality with which he was brought into contact had, as no one knows better than you, to be tinged with colours of his own before he could see it at all.' That, of course, was true enough; and Hake's asperities when speaking of Borrow in Memoirs of Eighty Years,—asperities which have vexed a good many Borrovians,—simply arose from the fact that it was impossible for two such men to understand each other. When I told him of Mr. Lang's angry onslaught upon Borrow in his notes to the Waverley Novels, on account of his attacks upon Scott, he said, 'Well, does he not deserve it?' When I told him of Miss Cobbe's description of Borrow as a poseur, he said to me, 'I told you the same scores of times. But I saw Borrow had bewitched you during that first walk under the rainbow in Richmond Park. It was that rainbow, I think, that befooled you.' Borrow's affection for Hake, however, was both strong and deep, as I saw after Hake had gone to Germany and in a way dropped out of Borrow's ken. Yet Hake was as good a man as ever Borrow was, and for certain others with whom he was brought in contact as full of a genuine affection as Borrow was himself.[237]

Mr. Watts-Dunton refers here to Hake's asperities when speaking of Borrow. They are very marked in the Memoirs of Eighty Years, and nearly all the stories of Borrow's eccentricities that have been served up to us by Borrow's biographers are due to Hake. It is here we read of his snub to Thackeray. 'Have you read my Snob Papers in Punch?' Thackeray asked him. 'In Punch?' Borrow replied. 'It is a periodical I never look at.' He was equally rude, or shall we say Johnsonian, according to Hake, when Miss Agnes Strickland asked him if she might send him her Queens of England. He exclaimed, 'for God's sake don't, madam; I should not know where to put them or what to do with them.' Hake is responsible also for that other story about the woman who, desirous of pleasing him, said, 'Oh, Mr. Borrow, I have read your books with so much pleasure!' On which he exclaimed, 'Pray, what books do you mean, madam? Do you mean my account books?'[238] Dr. Johnson was guilty of many such vagaries, and the readers of Boswell have forgiven him everything because they are conveyed to them through the medium of a hero-worshipper. Borrow never had a Boswell, and despised the literary class so much that he never found anything in the shape of an apologist until he had been long dead. The most competent of these, because writing from personal knowledge, was Walter Theodore Watts-Dunton, who is known in literature as Theodore Watts, the author of Aylwin and The Coming of Love, and the writer of many acute and picturesque criticisms. Mr. Watts-Dunton—who added his mother's name of Dunton to his own in later life—was the son of a solicitor of St. Ives in Huntingdonshire. In early life he was himself a solicitor, which profession he happily abandoned for literature. His friendship with Algernon Charles Swinburne is one of the romances of the Victorian era. His affectionate solicitude doubtless kept that great poet alive for many a year beyond what would otherwise have been his lot. Watts-Dunton was, as we have seen, introduced to Borrow by Hake. He has written a romance which, if he could be persuaded to publish it, would doubtless command the same attention as Aylwin, in which Borrow is introduced as 'Dereham' and Hake as 'Gordon,' and here he tells the story of that introduction:

One day when I was sitting with him in his delightful home, near Roehampton, whose windows at the back looked over Richmond Park, and in front over the wildest part of Wimbledon Common, one of his sons came in and said that he had seen Dereham striding across the common, evidently bound for the house.

'Dereham,' I said, 'is there a man in the world I should so like to see as Dereham?'

And then I told Gordon how I had seen him years before swimming in the sea off Yarmouth, but had never spoken to him.

'Why do you want so much to see him?' asked Gordon.

'Well, among other things, I want to see if he is a true Child of the Open Air.'[239]

I find no letter from Hake to Borrow among my papers, but three to his wife:

BURY ST. EDMUNDS, Jan. 27, '48. Evening.

MY DEAR MRS. BORROW,—It gave me great pleasure, as it always does, to see your handwriting; and as respects the subject of your note you may make yourself quite easy, for I believe the idea has crossed no other mind than your own. How sorry I am to learn that you have been so unwell since your visit to us. I hope that by care you will get strong during this bracing weather. I wish that you were already nearer to us, and cannot resign the hope that we shall yet enjoy the happiness of having you as our neighbours. I have felt a strong friendship for Mr. Borrow's mind for many years, and have ardently wished from time to time to know him, and to have realised my desire I consider one of the most happy events of my life. Until lately, dear Mrs. Borrow, I have had no opportunity of knowing you and your sweet simple-hearted child; but now I hope nothing will occur to interrupt a regard and friendship which I and Mrs. Hake feel most truly towards you all. Tell Mr. Borrow how much we should like to be his Sinbad. I wish he would bring you all and his papers and come again to look about him. There is an old hall at Tostock, which, I hear to-day, is quite dry; if so it is worthy of your attention. It is a mile from the Elmswell station, which is ten minutes' time from Bury. This hall has got a bad name from having been long vacant, but some friends of mine have been over it and they tell me there is not a damp spot on the premises. It is seven miles from Bury. Mrs. Hake has written about a house at Rougham, but had no answer. The cottage at Farnham is to let again. I know not whether Mr. Harvey will make an effort for it. A little change would do you all good, and we can receive Miss Clarke without any difficulty. Give our kindest regards to your party, and believe me, dear Mrs. Borrow, sincerely yours,

T. G. HAKE.

BURY ST. EDMUNDS, January 19th, '49.

MY DEAR MRS. BORROW,—The sight of your handwriting is always a luxury—but you say nothing about coming to see us. We are pleased to get good accounts of your party, and only wish you could report better of yourself. I must take you fairly in hand when you come again to the ancient quarters, for such they are becoming now from your long absence. You might try bismuth and extract of hop, which is often very strengthening to the stomach. Five grains of extract of hop and five grains of trisnitrate of bismuth made into two pills, which are to be taken at eleven and repeated at four—daily. I am so pleased to learn that Miss Clarke is better, as well as Mr. Borrow. I hope that on some occasion, the morphia may be of great comfort to him should his night watchings return. It is good news that the proofs are advancing—I hope towards a speedy end. Messrs. Oakes and Co.'s Bank is as safe as any in the kingdom and more substantial than any in this county. It must be safe, for the partners are men of large property, and of careful habits. I am happy to say we are all well here, but my brother's house in town is a scene of sad trouble. He is himself laid up with bad scarlet fever as well as five children, all severely attacked. One they have lost of this fearful complaint.

Give our kindest regards to Mr. Borrow and accept them yourselves. Ever, dear Mrs. Borrow, sincerely yours,

T. G. HAKE.

I send Beethoven's epitaph for Miss Clarke's album according to promise. It is not by Wordsworth.

BURY ST. EDMUNDS, June 24, '51.

MY DEAR MRS. BORROW,—I am very sorry to hear that you are not feeling strong, and that these flushes of heat are so frequent and troublesome. I will prescribe a medicine for you which I hope may prove serviceable. Let me hear again about your health, and be assured you cannot possibly give me any trouble.

I am also glad to hear of Mr. Borrow. I envy him his bath. I am looking out anxiously for the new quarterly reviews. I wonder whether the Quarterly will contain anything. Is there a prospect of vol. iv.? I really look to passing a day and two half days with you, and to bringing Mrs. Hake to your classic soil some time in August—if we are not inconveniencing you in your charming and snug cottage. I hope Miss Clarke is well. Our united kind regards to you all. George is quite brisk and saucy—Lucy and the infant have not been well. Mrs. Hake has better accounts from Bath. Believe me, dear Mrs. Borrow, very sincerely yours,

T. G. HAKE.

Mr. Donne was pleased that Mr. Borrow liked his notice in Tait. You can take a little cold sherry and water after your dinner.

Mr. A. Egmont Hake, one of Dr. Hake's sons, has also given us an interesting reminiscence of Borrow:[240]

Though he was a friend of my family before he wrote Lavengro, few men have ever made so deep an impression on me as George Borrow. His tall, broad figure, his stately bearing, his fine brown eyes, so bright yet soft, his thick white hair, his oval, beardless face, his loud rich voice, and bold heroic air, were such as to impress the most indifferent of lookers-on. Added to this there was something not easily forgotten in the manner in which he would unexpectedly come to our gates, singing some gipsy song, and as suddenly depart. His conversation, too, was unlike that of any other man; whether he told a long story or only commented on some ordinary topic, he was always quaint, often humorous.... It was at Oulton that the author of The Bible in Spain spent his happiest days. The menage in his Suffolk home was conducted with great simplicity, but he always had for his friends a bottle or two of wine of rare vintage, and no man was more hearty than he over the glass. He passed his mornings in his summer-house, writing on small scraps of paper, and these he handed to his wife who copied them on foolscap. It was in this way and in this retreat that the manuscript of Lavengro as well as of The Bible in Spain was prepared, the place of which he says, 'I hastened to my summer-house by the side of the lake and there I thought and wrote, and every day I repaired to the same place and thought and wrote until I had finished The Bible in Spain.' In this outdoor studio, hung behind the door, were a soldier's coat and a sword which belonged to his father; these were household gods on which he would often gaze while composing.

To Mr. Watts-Dunton we owe by far the best description of Borrow's personal appearance:

What Borrow lacked in adaptability was in great degree compensated by his personal appearance. No one who has ever walked with him, either through the streets of London or along the country roads, could fail to remark how his appearance arrested the attention of the passers-by. As a gypsy woman once remarked to the present writer, 'Everybody as ever see'd the white-headed Romany Rye never forgot him.' When he chanced to meet troops marching along a country road, it was noticeable that every soldier, whether on foot or horseback, would involuntarily turn to look at Borrow's striking figure. He stood considerably above six feet in height, was built as perfectly as a Greek statue, and his practice of athletic exercises gave his every movement the easy elasticity of an athlete under training. Those East Anglians who have bathed with him on the east coast, or others who have done the same in the Thames or the Ouse, can vouch for his having been an almost faultless model of masculine symmetry, even as an old man. With regard to his countenance, 'noble' is the only word which can be used to describe it. When he was quite a young man his thick crop of hair had become of a silvery whiteness.[241] There was a striking relation between the complexion, which was as luminous and sometimes rosy as an English girl's, and the features—almost perfect Roman-Greek in type, with a dash of Hebrew. To the dark lustre of the eyes an increased intensity was lent by the fair skin. No doubt, however, what most struck the observer was the marked individuality, not to say singularity, of his expression. If it were possible to describe this expression in a word or two, it might, perhaps, be called a self-consciousness that was both proud and shy.[242]

Here is another picture by Mr. Watts-Dunton of this London period:[243]

At seventy years of age, after breakfasting at eight o'clock in Hereford Square, he would walk to Putney, meet one or more of us at Roehampton, roam about Wimbledon and Richmond Park with us, bathe in the Fen Ponds with a north-east wind cutting across the icy water like a razor, run about the grass afterwards, like a boy to shake off some of the water-drops, stride about the park for hours, and then, after fasting for twelve hours, eat a dinner at Roehampton that would have done Sir Walter Scott's eyes good to see. Finally, he would walk back to Hereford Square, getting home late at night. And if the physique of the man was bracing, his conversation, unless he happened to be suffering from one of his occasional fits of depression, was still more so. Its freshness, raciness, and eccentric whim no pen could describe. There is a kind of humour, the delight of which is that while you smile at the pictures it draws, you smile quite as much to think that there is a mind so whimsical, crotchety, and odd as to draw them. This was the humour of Borrow.

And there is yet another description, equally illuminating, in which Mr. Watts-Dunton records how he won Borrow's heart by showing a familiarity with Douglas Jerrold's melodrama Ambrose Gwinett:

From that time I used to see Borrow often at Roehampton, sometimes at Putney, and sometimes, but not often, in London. I could have seen much more of him than I did had not the whirlpool of London, into which I plunged for a time, borne me away from this most original of men; and this is what I so greatly lament now: for of Borrow it may be said, as it was said of a greater man still, that 'after Nature made him she forthwith broke the mould.' The last time I ever saw him was shortly before he left London to live in the country. It was, I remember well, on Waterloo Bridge, where I had stopped to gaze at a sunset of singular and striking splendour, whose gorgeous clouds and ruddy mists were reeling and boiling over the West-End. Borrow came up and stood leaning over the parapet, entranced by the sight, as well he might be. Like most people born in flat districts, he had a passion for sunsets. Turner could not have painted that one, I think, and certainly my pen could not describe it; for the London smoke was flushed by the sinking sun, and had lost its dunness, and, reddening every moment as it rose above the roofs, steeples, and towers, it went curling round the sinking sun in a rosy vapour, leaving, however, just a segment of a golden rim, which gleamed as dazzlingly as in the thinnest and clearest air—a peculiar effect which struck Borrow deeply. I never saw such a sunset before or since, not even on Waterloo Bridge; and from its association with 'the last of Borrow' I shall never forget it.[244]

Mr. Watts-Dunton concludes his reminiscences—the most valuable personal record that we have of Borrow—with a sonnet that now has its place in literature:

We talked of 'Children of the Open Air' Who once in Orient valleys lived aloof, Loving the sun, the wind, the sweet reproof Of storms, and all that makes the fair earth fair, Till, on a day, across the mystic bar Of moonrise, came the 'Children of the Roof,' Who find no balm 'neath Evening's rosiest woof, Nor dews of peace beneath the Morning Star. We looked o'er London where men wither and choke, Roofed in, poor souls, renouncing stars and skies, And lore of woods and wild wind-prophecies— Yea, every voice that to their fathers spoke: And sweet it seemed to die ere bricks and smoke Leave never a meadow outside Paradise.

FOOTNOTES:

[237] Theodore Watts-Dunton's memoir of Thomas Gordon Hake in the Athenaeum, January 19, 1895.

An interesting letter that I have received from Mr. Watts-Dunton clears up several points and may well have place here:—

'THE PINES, 11 PUTNEY HILL, S.W., 31st May 1913.

'You ask me what I have written upon George Borrow. When Borrow died (26th July 1881), the first obituary notice of him in the Athenaeum was not by me, but by W. Elwin. This appeared on the 6th August 1881. At this time the general public had so forgotten that Borrow was alive that I remember once, at one of old Mrs. Procter's receptions, it had been discussed, as Lowell and Browning afterwards told me, as to whether I was or was not "an archer of the long bow" because I said that on the previous Sunday I had walked with Borrow in Richmond Park, and was frequently seeing him, and that on the Sunday before I had walked in the same beautiful park with Dr. Gordon Latham, another celebrity of the past "known to be dead." The fact is, Borrow's really great books were Lavengro and The Romany Rye, and the latter had fallen almost dead from the press, smothered by Victorian respectability and philistinism. He was thoroughly soured and angry, and no wonder! He fought shy of literary society. He quite resented being introduced to strangers.

'Elwin's article was considered very unsatisfactory. Knowing that the most competent man in England to write about Borrow was my old friend, Dr. Gordon Hake, I suggested that MacColl should ask the doctor (one of the few men whom Borrow really loved) to furnish the Athenaeum with another article. This was agreed to, and another article was written, either by Dr. Hake himself, or by one of his sons—I don't quite remember at this distance of time. It appeared in the Athenaeum of the 13th August 1881. But even this article did not seem to MacColl to vitalise one of the most remarkable personalities of the 19th century; and as I was then a leading writer in the literary department of the Athenaeum, MacColl asked me to give him an article upon Borrow whom I had known so well. I did so, and the article "caught on," as MacColl said, more than had any Athenaeum article for a long time. This appeared 3rd September 1881. When MacColl read the article he was so much pleased with it that he urged me to follow it up with an article on Borrow in connection with the Children of the Open Air—a subject upon which I had previously written a good deal in the Athenaeum. This appeared on the 10th September 1881, and became still more popular, and the Athenaeum containing it had quite an exceptional sale.

'The Hake whom you inquire about, Egmont Hake, has drifted out of my ken. He at one time lived in Paris, and wrote a book called Paris Originals. I know that he did, at one time, contemplate writing upon Borrow, and corresponded with Mrs. MacOubrey with this view; but the affair fell through. As a son of Dr. Hake's he could not fail to know Borrow. He wrote a brief article about him, in the Dictionary of National Biography. But the two Hakes who were thrown across Borrow most intimately were Thomas Hake and George Hake, the latter of whom lately died in Africa. Thomas Hake, the eldest of the family, knew Borrow in his own childhood, which the other members of the family did not. After Dr. Gordon Hake went to live in Germany, after the Roehampton home was broken up, I saw a good deal of Borrow. He always thought that no one sympathised with him and understood him so thoroughly as I did,—Ever most cordially yours,

'THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON.'

Since receiving this letter I have been in communication with Mr. Egmont Hake, who generously offered to place his Borrow material at my disposal, but this offer came too late to be of service. Mr. Hake will, however, shortly publish his Memoirs in which he will include some interesting impressions of George Borrow which it has been my privilege to read in manuscript.

[238] Dr. Hake was equally severe in his references to Thackeray, of whom scarcely any one has spoken ill. 'Thackeray spent a good deal of his time on stilts,' he says. '... He was a very disagreeable companion to those who did not want to boast that they knew him.'—Memoirs, p. 86. 'Thackeray,' he says elsewhere, 'as if under the impression that the party was invited to look at him, thought it necessary to make a figure.... Borrow knew better how to behave in good company.'—Memoirs, p. 166.

[239] Theodore Watts-Dunton: Poet, Novelist, Critic. By James Douglas. Hodder and Stoughton, 1904, p. 96.

[240] 'Recollections of George Borrow,' by A. Egmont Hake in The Athenaeum, Aug. 13, 1881.

[241] Borrow's hair was black until he was about twenty years of age, when it turned white.

[242] Chambers's Cyclopaedia of English Literature, vol. iii. p. 430.

[243] The Athenaeum, September 3, 1881.

[244] The Athenaeum, September 10, 1881. I am indebted to my friend Mr. John Collins Francis., of The Athenaeum newspaper, for generously placing the columns of that journal at my disposal for the purposes of this book.



CHAPTER XXXV

BORROW'S UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS

To many in our day, less utilitarian than those of an earlier era, Borrow must have been an interesting man of letters had he not written his four great books. Single-minded devotion to the less commercially remunerative languages has now become respectable and even estimable. Students of the Scandinavian languages, and of the Celtic, abound in our midst. Borrow was a forerunner with Bowring of much of this 'useless' learning. Borrow came to consider Bowring's apparent neglect of him to be unforgivable. But that time had not arrived, when in 1842 he wrote to him as follows:

To Dr. John Bowring

OULTON, LOWESTOFT, SUFFOLK, July 14th, 1842.

DEAR DEAR SIR,—Pray excuse my troubling you with a line. I wish you would send as many of the papers and manuscripts, which I left at yours some twelve years ago, as you can find. Amongst others there is an essay on Welsh poetry, a translation of the Death of Balder, etc. If I am spared to the beginning of next year, I intend to bring out a volume called Songs of Denmark, consisting of some selections from the Kaempe Viser and specimens from Ewald, Grundtvig, Oehlenschlaeger, and I suppose I must give a few notices of those people. Have you any history of Danish literature from which I could glean a few hints. I think you have a book in two volumes containing specimens of Danish poetry. It would be useful to me as I want to translate Ingemann's Dannebrog; and one or two other pieces. I shall preface all with an essay on the Danish language. It is possible that a book of this description may take, as Denmark is quite an untrodden field.

Could you lend me for a short time a Polish and French or Polish and German dictionary. I am going carefully through Makiewitz, about whom I intend to write an article.

The Bible in Spain is in the press, and with God's permission will appear about November in three volumes. I shall tell Murray to send a copy to my oldest, I may say my only friend. Pray let me know how you are getting on. I every now and then see your name in the Examiner, the only paper I read. Should you send the papers and the books it must be by the Yarmouth coach which starts from Fetter Lane. Address: George Borrow, Crown Inn, Lowestoft, Suffolk. With kindest remembrances to Mrs. Bowring, Miss Bowring, and family—I remain, Dear Sir, ever yours,