The Life of George Borrow Part 37

8th April 1857.

My Dear Borrow,--When I have done anything towards you deserving of apology I will not hesitate to offer one. As it is, I have acted loyally towards you, and with a view to maintain your interests.

I agreed to publish your present work solely with the object of obliging you, and in a great degree at the strong recommendation of Cooke. I meant (as was my duty) to do my very best to promote its success. You on your side promised to listen to me in regard to any necessary omissions; and on the faith of this, I pointed out one omission, which I make the indispensable condition of my proceeding further with the book. I have asked nothing unfair nor unreasonable- -nay, a compliance with the request is essential for your own character as an author and a man.

You are the last man that I should ever expect to "frighten or bully"; and if a mild but firm remonstrance against an offensive pa.s.sage in your book is interpreted by you into such an application, I submit that the grounds for the notion must exist nowhere but in your own imagination. The alternative offered to you is to omit or publish elsewhere. Nothing shall compel me to PUBLISH what you have written. Think calmly and dispa.s.sionately over this, and when you have decided let me know.

Yours very faithfully, JOHN MURRAY.

The reference that had so offended Murray and Elwin had, in all probability been interpolated in proof form, otherwise it would have been discovered either when Murray read the ma.n.u.script or Elwin the proofs. By return of post came the following reply from Borrow, then at Great Yarmouth:-

Dear Sir,--Yesterday I received your letter. You had better ask your cousin [Robert Cooke] to come down and talk about matters. AFTER Monday I shall be disengaged and shall be most happy to see him. And now I must tell you that you are exceedingly injudicious. You call a chapter heavy, and I, not wishing to appear unaccommodating, remove or alter two or three pa.s.sages for which I do not particularly care, whereupon you make most unnecessary comments, obtruding your private judgment upon matters with which you have no business, and of which it is impossible that you should have a competent knowledge. If you disliked the pa.s.sages you might have said so, but you had no right to say anything more. I believe that you not only meant no harm, but that your intentions were good; unfortunately, however, people with the best of intentions occasionally do a great deal of harm. In your language you are frequently in the highest degree injudicious; for example, in your last letter you talk of obliging me by publishing my work. Now is not that speaking very injudiciously? Surely you forget that I could return a most cutting answer were I disposed to do so.

I believe, however, that your intentions are good, and that you are disposed to be friendly.--Yours truly,

GEORGE BORROW.

The tone of this letter is strangely reminiscent of some of the Rev Andrew Brandram's admonitions to Borrow himself, during his a.s.sociation with the Bible Society. Borrow bowed to the wind, and the offending pa.s.sage was deleted, and The Romany Rye eventually appeared on 30th April 1857, in an edition of a thousand copies. The public, or such part of it as had not forgotten Borrow, had been kept waiting six years to know what had happened on the morning after the storm. Lavengro had ended by the postilion concluding his story with "Young gentleman, I will now take a spell on your blanket--young lady, good-night," and presumably the three, Borrow, Isopel Berners and their guest had lain down to sleep, and a great quiet fell upon the dingle, and the moon and the stars shone down upon it, and the red glow from the charcoal in the brazier paled and died away.

The Romany Rye is a puzzling book. The latter portion, at least, seems to suggest "spiritual autobiography." It reveals the man, his atmosphere, his character, and nowhere better than among the jockeys at Horncastle. It gives a better and more convincing picture of Borrow than the most accurate list of dates and occurrences, all vouched for upon unimpeachable authority. It is impressionism applied to autobiography, which has always been considered as essentially a subject for photographic treatment. Borrow thought otherwise, with the result that many people decline to believe that his picture is a portrait, because there is a question as to the dates.

Among the reviews, which were on the whole unfriendly, was the remarkable notice in The Quarterly Review, by the Rev. Whitwell Elwin:- {435a}

"n.o.body," he wrote, "sympathises with wounded vanity, and the world only laughs when a man angrily informs it that it does not rate him at his true value. The public to whom he appeals must, after all, be the judge of his pretensions. Their verdict at first is frequently wrong, but it is they themselves who must reverse it, and not the author who is upon his trial before them. The attacks of critics, if they are unjust, invariably yield to the same remedy. Though we do not think that Mr Borrow is a good counsel in his own cause, we are yet strongly of the opinion that Time in this case has some wrongs to repair, and that Lavengro has NOT obtained the fame which was its due. It contains pa.s.sages which in their way are not surpa.s.sed by anything in English Literature."

The value of these prophetic words lies in the fine spirit of fatherly reproof in which the whole review was written. It is the work of a critic who regarded literature as a thing to be approached, both by author and reviewer, with grave and deliberate ceremony, not with enthusiasm or prejudice. From any other source the following words would not have possessed the significance they did, coming from a man of such sane ideas with the courage to express them:-

"Various portions of the history are known to be a faithful narrative of Mr Borrow's career, while we ourselves can testify, as to many other parts of his volumes, that nothing can excel the fidelity with which he has described both men and things. Far from his showing any tendency to exaggeration, such of his characters as we chance to have known, and they are not a few, are rather within the truth than beyond it. However picturesquely they may be drawn, the lines are invariably those of nature. Why under these circ.u.mstances he should envelop the question in mystery is more than we can divine. There can be no doubt that the larger part, and possibly the whole, of the work is a narrative of actual occurrences." {436a}

The Appendix itself, which had drawn from Elwin the grave declaration that "Mr Borrow is very angry with his critics," is a fine piece of rhetorical denunciation. It opens with the deliberate restraint of a man who feels the fury of his wrath surging up within him. It tells again the story of Lavengro, pointing morals as it goes. Then the studied calm is lost--Priestcraft, "Foreign Nonsense," "Gentility Nonsense," "Canting Nonsense," "Pseudo-Critics," "Pseudo-Radicals" he flogs and pillories mercilessly until, arriving at "The Old Radical,"

he throws off all restraint and lunges out wildly, mad with hate and despair. As a piece of literary folly, the Appendix to The Romany Rye has probably never been surpa.s.sed. It alienated from Borrow all but his personal friends, and it sealed his literary fate as far as his own generation was concerned. In short, he had burnt his boats.

Borrow had sent a copy of The Romany Rye to FitzGerald, which is referred to by him in a letter written from Gorleston to Professor Cowell (5th June 1857):-

"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." {437a}

Borrow was bitterly disappointed at the effect produced by The Romany Rye. On someone once saying that it was the finest piece of literary invective since Swift, he replied, "Yes, I meant it to be; and what do you think the effect was? No one took the least notice of it!"

{437b}

The Romany Rye was not a success. The thousand copies lasted a year.

When it appeared likely that a second edition would be required, Borrow wrote to John Murray urging him not to send the book to the press again until he "was quite sure the demand for it will at least defray all attendant expenses." He saw that whatever profits had resulted from the publication of the first edition, were in danger of being swallowed up in the preparation of a second. When this did eventually make its appearance in 1858, it was limited to 750 copies, which lasted until 1872.

Borrow's own att.i.tude with regard to the work and his wisdom in publishing it is summed up in a letter to John Murray (17th Sept.

1857):-

"I was very anxious to bring it out," he writes; "and I bless G.o.d that I had the courage and perseverance to do so. It is of course unpalatable to many; for it scorns to foster delusion, to cry 'peace where there is no peace,' and denounces boldly the evils which are hurrying the country to destruction, and which have kindled G.o.d's anger against it, namely, the pride, insolence, cruelty, covetousness, and hypocrisy of its people, and above all the rage for gentility, which must be indulged in at the expense of every good and honourable feeling."

The writing of the Appendix had aroused in Borrow all his old enthusiasm, and he appears to have come to the determination to publish a number of works, including a veritable library of translations. At the end of The Romany Rye appeared a lengthy list of books in preparation. {438a}

In August 1857 Borrow paid a second visit to Wales, walking "upwards of four hundred miles." Starting from Laugharne in Carmarthenshire, he visited Tenby, Pembroke, Milford Haven, Haverford, St David's, Fishguard, Newport, Cardigan, Lampeter; pa.s.sing into Brecknockshire, he eventually reached Mortimer's Cross in Hereford and thence to Shrewsbury. In October he was at Leighton, Donnington and Uppington, where he found traces of Gronwy Owen, the one-time curate and all- time poet.

Throughout his life Borrow had shown by every action and word written about her, the great love he bore his mother. When his wife wrote to her and he was too restless to do so himself, he would interpolate two or three lines to "My dear Mamma." She was always in his thoughts, and he never wavered in his love for her and devotion to her comfort; whilst she looked upon him as only a mother so good and so tender could look upon a son who had become her "only hope."

For many years of her life it had been ordained that this brave old lady should live alone. {439a} In the middle of August 1858 the news reached Borrow that his mother had been taken suddenly ill. She was in her eighty-seventh year, and at such an age all illnesses are dangerous. Borrow hastened to Oulton, and arrived just in time to be with her at the last.

Thus on 16th August 1858, of "pulmonary congestion," died Anne Borrow, who had followed her husband about with his regiment, and had reared and educated her two boys under circ.u.mstances of great disadvantage. She had lost one; but the other, her youngest born, whom she had so often shielded from his father's reproaches, had been spared to her, and she had seen him famous. Upon her grave in Oulton Churchyard the son caused to be inscribed the words, "She was a good wife and a good mother," than which no woman can ask more. {440a}

The death of his mother was a great shock to Borrow. "He felt the blow keenly," Mrs Borrow wrote to John Murray, "and I advised a tour in Scotland to recruit his health and spirits." Accordingly he went North early in October, leaving his wife and Henrietta at Great Yarmouth. He visited the Highlands, walking several hundred miles.

Mull struck him as "a very wild country, perhaps the wildest in Europe." Many of its place-names reminded him strongly of the Isle of Man. At the end of November he finished up the tour at Lerwick in Shetland, where he bought presents for his "loved ones," having seen Greenock, Glasgow, Perth, Aberdeen, Inverness, Wick, Thurso among other places. His impressions were not altogether favourable to the Scotch. "A queerer country I never saw in all my life," he wrote later . . . "a queerer set of people than the Scotch you would scarcely see in a summer's day." {440b}

In the following year (1859) an excursion was made to Ireland by Borrow and his family. Making Dublin his headquarters, where he left his wife and Henrietta comfortably settled, he tramped to Connemara and the Giant's Causeway, the expedition being full of adventure and affording him "much pleasure," in spite of the fact that he was "frequently wet to the skin, and indifferently lodged."

Borrow had inherited from his mother some property at Mattishall Burgh, one and a half miles from his birth-place, consisting of some land, a thatched house and outbuildings, now demolished. This was let to a small-holder named Henry Hill. Borrow thought very highly of his tenant, and for hours together would tramp up and down beside him as he ploughed the land, asking questions, and hearing always something new from the amazing stores of nature knowledge that Henry Hill had acquired. This Norfolk worthy appears to have been possessed of a genius for many things. He was well versed in herbal lore, a self-taught 'cellist, playing each Sunday in the Congregational Chapel at Mattishall, and an equally self-taught watch-repairer; but his chief claim to fame was as a bee-keeper, local tradition crediting him with being the first man to keep bees under gla.s.s. He would solemnly state that his bees, whom he looked upon as friends, talked to him. On Sundays the country folk for miles round would walk over to Mattishall Burgh to see old Henry Hill's bees, and hear him expound their lore. It was perforce Sunday, there was no other day for the Norfolk farm-labourer of that generation, who seemed always to live on the verge of starvation.

Borrow himself expressed regret to Henry Hill that it had not been possible to add the education of the academy to that of the land. He saw that the combination would have produced an even more remarkable man.

In Norfolk all strangers are regarded with suspicion. Lifelong friendships are not contracted in a day. The East Anglian is shrewd, and requires to know something about those whom he admits to the sacred inner circle of his friendship. Borrow was well-known in the Mattishall district, and was looked upon with more than usual suspicion. He was unquestionably a strange man, in speech, in appearance, in habits. He could and would knock down any who offended him; but, worst of all, he was the intimate of gypsies, sat by their fires, spoke in their tongue. The population round about was entirely an agricultural one, and all united in hating the gypsies as their greatest enemies, because of their depredations.

Add to this the fact that Borrow was a frequenter of public-houses, of which there were SEVEN in the village, and was wont to boast that you could get at the true man only after he had been mellowed into speech by good English ale. Then he would open his heart and unburden his mind of all the acc.u.mulated knowledge that he possessed, and add something to the epic of the soil. Borrow's overbearing manner made people shy of him. On one occasion he told John, the son and successor of Henry Hill, that he ought to be responsible for the debt of his half-brother; the debt, it may be mentioned, was to Borrow.

There is no better ill.u.s.tration of the suspicion with which Borrow was regarded locally, than an incident that occurred during one of his visits to Mattishall. He called upon John Hill at Church Farm to collect his rent. The evening was spent very agreeably. Borrow recited some of his ballads, quoted Scripture and languages, and sang a song. He was particularly interested on account of Mrs Hill being from London, where she knew many of his haunts. He remained the whole evening with the family and partook of their meal; but was allowed to go to one of the seven public-houses for a bed, although there were spare bedrooms in the house that he might have occupied.

Such was the suspicion that Borrow's habits created in the minds of his fellow East Anglians. {442a}

CHAPTER XXVIII: JULY 1859-JANUARY 1869

After his second tour in Wales, Borrow had submitted to John Murray the ma.n.u.script of his translation of The Sleeping Bard, which in 1830 had so alarmed the little Welsh bookseller of Smithfield. "I really want something to do," Borrow wrote, "and seeing the work pa.s.sing through the press might amuse me." Murray, however, could not see his way to accept the offer, and the ma.n.u.script was returned. Borrow decided to publish the book at his own expense, and accordingly commissioned a Yarmouth man to print him 250 copies, upon the t.i.tle- page of which John Murray permitted his name to appear.

In the note in which he tells of the Welsh bookseller's doubts and fears, Borrow goes on to a.s.sure his readers that there is no harm in the book.

"It is true," he says, "that the Author is any thing but mincing in his expressions and descriptions, but there is nothing in the Sleeping Bard which can give offence to any but the over fastidious.

There is a great deal of squeamish nonsense in the world; let us hope however that there is not so much as there was. Indeed can we doubt that such folly is on the decline, when we find Albemarle Street in '60, willing to publish a harmless but plain speaking book which Smithfield shrank from in '30."

The edition was very speedily exhausted, largely on account of an article ent.i.tled, The Welsh and Their Literature, written years before, that Borrow adapted as a review of the book, and published anonymously in The Quarterly Review (Jan. 1861). The Sleeping Bard was not reprinted.