Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration Part 1

Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration.

by James Hooper.

FOREWORD.

The Committee are indebted to numerous Borrovians for the loan of Ill.u.s.trations and Contributions of literary items to the text, to Miss C.

M. Nichols, R.E., for her charming Pen Pictures of nooks and corners of Borrow's old home in Willow Lane, the Rev. F. W. Orde Ward for his appreciative stanzas, and Mr. E. Peake for his Ode to the Flower, whilst special mention must be made of Mr. A. J. Munnings' inspiring design of George Borrow and Petulengro overlooking the City of Norwich for the cover.

George Borrow.

1

Man of the Book, thou Pilgrim of the Road, The love of travel Drave thee on ever with pursuing goad; Trust was thy burning light, Truth was thy load-- Sweet riddles for the weary to unravel, Within thy breast Glowed the pure fire of an Eternal Quest.

2

The Bible was thy chart, the open sky Thy roof and rafter Often, and thou didst learn night's mystery; Learning some tale from each poor pa.s.ser-by, Some gracious secret for the grand Hereafter.

Master of lore Occult, and wanderer on the wildest sh.o.r.e.

3

What country was not trodden by thy feet, Nor bared its bosom And fragrance to the life it leapt to greet?

From field and upland or where waters meet Was stolen, the virgin dew, the veiled blossom.

Its native tongue On stranger lips, in every climate hung.

4

Pursuer of shy paths, all hunted things All creatures lonely, Gypsy and fox and hawk with slanted wings; These drank with thee at the same cosmic springs, These were thy teachers and thy playmates only.

Nature gave up To them and thee alike, her hidden cup.

5

Who brought its glory back to cloistered Wales, And wrung their treasure From sacred books and dim sequestered vales?

Who found the gold in haunted heights and dales, And showed a wondering world its pride and pleasure?

Divine and strong Stood out the altar, with its flame of song.

6

Thy bardlike power, the pa.s.sion of thy thirst For something greater, Awoke old Cymric melodies the first; Till all the mountains into music burst, And their lost glory crowned the recreator.

Outpoured as wine Thy magic words made every shade a shrine.

7

Priest of the portals into the Unknown, Taught by no college, And free of every fountain but thine own; A waif, an exile, by the breezes blown Hither and thither to fresh fields of knowledge, That giant form, Fearless, and still no moment, rode the storm.

8

From land to land a pilgrim, yet at home Where'er thy journey Thou didst a dweller in the Eternal come; The dust thy floor, the heaven of stars thy dome, To break a lance for Truth in some new tourney.

With Nature blent Art thou, and the wide world thy monument.

9

Thou gypsy of all time, no lot seems strange, No life was sterile To that free spirit, wrought by rugged change; Thy heart found rest in strife, and did outrange The farthest fancy, and woo the sorest peril.

Hardships and lack Were comrades, and the milestones on thy track.

F. W. ORDE WARD.

GEORGE HENRY BORROW.

The time is ripe, and over ripe, for a commemorative celebration of George Borrow in a city with which he was so long, and so intimately, a.s.sociated as he was with Norwich. His increasing fame as a foremost literary man of the nineteenth century is amply witnessed to by the various biographies of him, and the numerous appreciations of him by writers of repute, and Mr. Clement Shorter's forthcoming "Life of Borrow"

will certainly add to the cult.

The following sketch of this wayward genius is mainly devoted to outstanding characteristics, with necessarily brief accounts of his works and journeyings. It seems convenient to sum up his career in the four divisions which follow.

_Section I_.

(1803-15)--EARLY WANDERING DAYS.

Borrow's father, Thomas Borrow, was a patriotic, pugnacious, but G.o.d-fearing Cornishman, born at an old homestead known as Trethinnick, in the parish of St. Cleer, in which his forbears had been settled well back in the seventeenth century, probably earlier. To quote Dr. Knapp: "They feared G.o.d, honoured the king, and believed in 'piskies' and Holy Wells."

Thomas Borrow, handsome, tall, and muscular, was an adept in the athletic sports for which Cornwall is famous, and early signalised himself by his prowess as a boxer. As he grew up, George Borrow himself became an ardent admirer of "the Fancy," and when asked "What is the best way to get through life quietly?" was wont to say, "Learn to box, and keep a civil tongue in your head."

In 1778, when nineteen years of age, Thomas Borrow was articled for five years to a maltster; but just as that period expired, at Menheniot Fair a bicker arose in which Borrow and other young heroes triumphed over the braves of that town. Constables appeared, but were promptly felled by the brawny Borrow, and, to crown his misdeeds, he knocked over the head-borough, who happened to be his maltster master. He wisely fled, and shortly after enlisted as a private soldier in the Coldstream Guards, and was soon quartered in London. In 1792, as a sergeant, he was transferred to the West Norfolk Regiment of Militia, with headquarters at East Dereham. A company of players from Norwich frequently visited that nice little town, and in one of them appeared, as a supernumerary, Ann Perfrement, the pretty daughter of a small farmer of Dumpling Green, on the outskirts of the town. This maiden, of Huguenot descent, fascinated the Cornish soldier, and the two were married at Dereham Church on February 11th, 1793. The regiment was then about to start a wandering course over the highways of England--at Colchester; in Norfolk; then at Sheerness, Sandgate, and Dover; at Colchester once more; in Kent; Ess.e.x again, and then, in 1802-3, at East Dereham, where George was born July 5th, 1803, in the house of his maternal grandparents. On July 17th he was baptized George Henry, names of the king and of the eldest brother of Captain Thomas Borrow.

[Picture: Plan of Dumpling Green, East Dereham. By permission of Mr.

Murray]

As a mere infant Borrow was gloomy and fond of solitude, "ever conscious," he says, "of a peculiar heaviness within me, and at times of a strange sensation of fear, which occasionally amounted to horror, and for which I could a.s.sign no real cause whatever." Of this earliest period he tells a characteristic story of drawing strange lines in the dust with his fingers, when a Jew pedlar came up and said: "The child is a sweet child, and he has all the look of one of our own people"; but when he leaned forward to inspect the lines in the dust, "started back, and grew white as a sheet; then, taking off his hat, he made some strange gestures to me, cringing, chattering, . . . and shortly departed, muttering something about 'holy letters,' and talking to himself in a strange tongue." This, in the first chapter of "Lavengro," is in the true Borrovian mystery-man style.

[Picture: George Borrow's birthplace, Dumpling Green, East Dereham]

Again and again Borrow, throughout his life, suffered from some nervous ailment which defied definition; thus, when he was fifteen, his strength and appet.i.te deserted him and he pined and drooped, but an ancient female, a kind of doctress, who had been his nurse in his infancy, gave him a decoction of a bitter root growing on commons and desolate places, from which he took draughts till he was convalescent. In any estimate of Borrow's life the strange attacks of what he called "the Fear" or "the Horrors" must be taken into account. At times they even produced a suicidal tendency, as when, in 1824, he wrote to his friend Roger Kerrison, "Come to me immediately; I am, I believe, dying." The facsimile of this note in Knapp's "Life of Borrow" is as tremulous as if the writer was suffering from delirium tremens, which, of course, he was not.

[Picture: Roger Kerrison]

We have in "Lavengro" a very interesting account of the boy Borrow being taken twice every Sunday to the fine parish church at East Dereham, where, from a corner of a s.p.a.cious pew, he would fix his eyes on the dignified high-Church rector and the dignified high-Church clerk, "from whose lips would roll many a portentous word descriptive of the wondrous works of the Most High." The rector was the Rev. F. J. H. Wollaston, B.D., who was himself patron of the living, which reverted to the Crown in 1841. At East Dereham, too, he came in touch with that exquisite old gentlewoman, Lady Fenn, widow of Sir John Fenn, editor of the "Paston Letters," as she pa.s.sed to and fro from her mansion on some errand of bounty or of mercy, leaning on her gold-headed cane, whilst the sleek old footman walked at a respectful distance behind. But Borrow's admiration for Philo, the clerk, was greatest--"Peace to thee, thou fine old chap, despiser of dissenters, and hater of papists, as became a dignified and high-Church clerk."