GEORGE BORROW THE MAN AND HIS BOOKS

by EDWARD THOMAS

Author of

“THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES,” “LIGHT AND TWILIGHT,” “REST AND UNREST,” “MAURICE MAETERLINCK,” Etc.

WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON CHAPMAN & HALL, Ltd. 1912

Printed by Jas. Truscott and Son, Ltd., London, E.C.

NOTE

The late Dr. W. I. Knapp’s Life (John Murray) and Mr. Watts-Dunton’s prefaces are the fountains of information about Borrow, and I have clearly indicated how much I owe to them. What I owe to my friend, Mr. Thomas Seccombe, cannot be so clearly indicated, but his prefaces have been meat and drink to me. I have also used Mr. R. A. J. Walling’s sympathetic and interesting “George Borrow.” The British and Foreign Bible Society has given me permission to quote from Borrow’s letters to the Society, edited in 1911 by the Rev. T. H. Darlow; and Messrs. T. C. Cantrill and J. Pringle have put at my disposal their publication of Borrow’s journal of his second Welsh tour, wonderfully annotated by themselves (“Y Cymmrodor,” 1910). These and other sources are mentioned where they are used and in the bibliography.

DEDICATION TO E. S. P. HAYNES

My Dear Haynes,

By dedicating this book to you, I believe it is my privilege to introduce you and Borrow. This were sufficient reason for the dedication. The many better reasons are beyond my eloquence, much though I have remembered them this winter, listening to the storms of Caermarthen Bay, the screams of pigs, and the street tunes of “Fall in and follow me,” “Yip-i-addy,” and “The first good joy that Mary had.”

Yours, EDWARD THOMAS.

Laugharne, Caermarthenshire, December, 1911.

p. 1CHAPTER I—BORROW’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

The subject of this book was a man who was continually writing about himself, whether openly or in disguise. He was by nature inclined to thinking about himself and when he came to write he naturally wrote about himself; and his inclination was fortified by the obvious impression made upon other men by himself and by his writings. He has been dead thirty years; much has been written about him by those who knew him or knew those that did: yet the impression still made by him, and it is one of the most powerful, is due mainly to his own books. Nor has anything lately come to light to provide another writer on Borrow with an excuse. The impertinence of the task can be tempered only by its apparent hopelessness and by that necessity which Voltaire did not see.

I shall attempt only a re-arrangement of the myriad details accessible to all in the writings of Borrow and about Borrow. Such re-arrangement will sometimes heighten the old effects and sometimes modify them. The total impression will, I hope, not be a smaller one, though it must inevitably be softer, less clear, less isolated, less gigantic. I do not wish, and I shall not try, to deface Borrow’s portrait of himself; I can only hope that I shall not do it by accident. There may be a sense in which that portrait can be called inaccurate. It may even be true that “lies—damned lies” {1} helped to make it. But nobody else knows anything like as much about the truth, and a peddling p. 2biographer’s mouldy fragment of plain fact may be far more dangerous than the manly lying of one who was in possession of all the facts. In most cases the fact—to use an equivocal term—is dead and blown away in dust while Borrow’s impression is as green as grass. His “lies” are lies only in the same sense as all clothing is a lie.

For example, he knew a Gypsy named Ambrose Smith, and had sworn brotherhood with him as a boy. He wrote about this Gypsy, man and boy, and at first called him, as the manuscripts bear witness, by his real name, though Borrow thought of him in 1842 as Petulengro. In print he was given the name Jasper Petulengro—Petulengro being Gypsy for shoesmith—and as Jasper Petulengro he is now one of the most unforgetable of heroes; the name is the man, and for many Englishmen his form and character have probably created quite a new value for the name of Jasper. Well, Jasper Petulengro lives. Ambrose Smith died in 1878, at the age of seventy-four, after being visited by the late Queen Victoria at Knockenhair Park: he was buried in Dunbar Cemetery. {2}

In the matter of his own name Borrow made another creative change of a significant kind. He was christened George Henry Borrow on July 17th (having been born on the 5th), 1803, at East Dereham, in Norfolk. As a boy he signed his name, George Henry Borrow. As a young man of the Byronic age and a translator of Scandinavian literature, he called himself in print, George Olaus Borrow. His biographer, Dr. William Ireland Knapp, says that Borrow’s first name “expressed the father’s admiration for the reigning monarch,” George III.; but there is no reason to believe this, and certainly Borrow himself made of the combination which he finally adopted—George Borrow—something that retains not the slightest flavour of any other p. 3George. Such changes are common enough. John Richard Jefferies becomes Richard Jefferies; Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson becomes Robert Louis Stevenson. But Borrow could touch nothing without transmuting it. For example, in his Byronic period, when he was about twenty years of age, he was translating “romantic ballads” from

the Danish. In the last verse of one of these, called “Elvir Hill,” he takes the liberty of using the Byronic “lay”:

’Tis therefore I counsel each young Danish swain who may ride in the forest so dreary, Ne’er to lay down upon lone Elvir Hill though he chance to be ever so weary.

Twenty years later he used this ballad romantically in writing about his early childhood. He was travelling with his father’s regiment from town to town and from school to school, and they came to Berwick-upon-Tweed: {3}

“And it came to pass that, one morning, I found myself extended on the bank of a river. It was a beautiful morning of early spring; small white clouds were floating in the heaven, occasionally veiling the countenance of the sun, whose light, as they retired, would again burst forth, coursing like a racehorse over the scene—and a goodly scene it was! Before me, across the water, on an eminence, stood a white old city, surrounded with lofty walls, above which rose the tops of tall houses, with here and there a church or steeple. To my right hand was a long and massive bridge, with many arches and of antique architecture, which traversed the river. The river was a noble one; the broadest that I had hitherto seen. Its waters, of a greenish tinge, poured with impetuosity beneath the narrow arches to meet the sea, close at hand, as the boom of the billows breaking distinctly upon a beach declared. There were songs upon the river from the fisher-barks; p. 4and occasionally a chorus, plaintive and wild, such as I had never heard

before, the words of which I did not understand, but which at the present time, down the long avenue of years, seem in memory’s ear to sound like ‘Horam, coram, dago.’ Several robust fellows were near me, some knee-deep in water, employed in hauling the seine upon the strand. Huge fish were struggling amidst the meshes—princely salmon—their brilliant mail of blue and silver flashing in the morning beam; so goodly and gay a scene, in truth, had never greeted my boyish eye.

“And, as I gazed upon the prospect, my bosom began to heave, and my tears to trickle. Was it the beauty of the scene which gave rise to these emotions? Possibly; for though a poor ignorant child—a half-wild creature—I was not insensible to the loveliness of nature, and took pleasure in the happiness and handiworks of my fellow-creatures. Yet, perhaps, in something more deep and mysterious the feeling which then pervaded me might originate. Who can lie down on Elvir Hill without experiencing something of the sorcery of the place? Flee from Elvir Hill, young swain, or the maids of Elle will have power over you, and you will go elf-wild!—so say the Danes. I had unconsciously laid myself down on haunted ground; and I am willing to imagine that what I then experienced was rather connected with the world of spirits and dreams than with what I actually saw and heard around me. Surely the elves and genii of the place were conversing, by some inscrutable means, with the principle of intelligence lurking within the poor uncultivated

clod! Perhaps to that ethereal principle the wonders of the past, as connected with that stream, the glories of the present, and even the history of the future, were at that moment being revealed! Of how many feats of chivalry had those old walls been witness, when hostile kings contended for their possession?—how many an army from the south and from the north had trod p. 5that old bridge?—what red and noble blood had crimsoned those rushing waters?—what strains had been sung, ay, were yet being sung on its banks?—some soft as Doric reed; some fierce and sharp as those of Norwegian Skaldaglam; some as replete with wild and wizard force as Finland’s runes, singing of Kalevale’s moors, and the deeds of Woinomoinen! Honour to thee, thou island stream! Onward mayst thou ever roll, fresh and green, rejoicing in thy bright past, thy glorious present, and in vivid hope of a triumphant future! Flow on, beautiful one!—which of the world’s streams canst thou envy, with thy beauty and renown? Stately is the Danube,

rolling in its might through lands romantic with the wild exploits of Turk, Polak, and Magyar! Lovely is the Rhine! on its shelvy banks grows the racy grape; and strange old keeps of robber-knights of yore are reflected in its waters, from picturesque crags and airy headlands!—yet neither the stately Danube, nor the beauteous Rhine, with all their fame, though abundant, needst thou envy, thou pure island stream!—and far less yon turbid river of old, not modern renown, gurgling beneath the walls of what was once proud Rome, towering Rome, Jupiter’s town, but now vile Rome, crumbling Rome, Batuscha’s town, far less needst thou envy the turbid Tiber of bygone fame, creeping sadly to the sea, surcharged with the abominations of modern Rome—how unlike to thee, thou pure island stream!”

In this passage Borrow concentrates upon one scene the feelings of three remote periods of his life. He gives the outward scene as he remembers it forty years after, and together with the thoughts which now come into his mind. He gives the romantic suggestion from one of the favourite ballads of his youth, “Elvir Hill.” He gives the child himself weeping, he knows not why. Yet the passage is one and indivisible.

These, at any rate, are not “lies—damned lies.”

p. 6CHAPTER II—HIS OWN HERO

Borrow’s principal study was himself, and in all his best books he is the chief subject and the chief object. Yet when he came to write confessedly and consecutively about himself he found it no easy task. Dr. Knapp gives an interesting account of the stages by which he approached and executed it. His first mature and original books, “The Zincali,” or “The Gypsies of Spain,” and “The Bible in Spain,” had a solid body of subject matter more or less interesting in itself, and anyone with a pen could have made it acceptable to the public which desires information. “The Bible of Spain” was the book of the year 1843, read by everybody in one or other of the six editions published in the first twelve months. These books were also full of himself. Even “The Zincali,” written for the most part in Spain, when he was a man of about thirty and had no reason for expecting the public to be interested in himself, especially in a Gypsy crowd—even that early book prophesied very different things. He said in the “preface” that he

bore the Gypsies no ill-will, for he had known them “for upwards of twenty years, in various countries, and they never injured a hair of his head, or deprived him of a shred of his raiment.” The motive for this forbearance, he said, was that they thought him a Gypsy. In his “introduction” he satisfied some curiosity, but raised still more, when speaking of the English Gypsies and especially of their eminence “in those disgraceful and brutalising exhibitions called pugilistic combats.”

“When a boy of fourteen,” he says, “I was present at a p. 7prize fight; why should I hide the truth? It took place on a green meadow, beside a running stream, close by the old church of E—, and within a league of the ancient town of N—, the capital of one of the eastern counties. The terrible Thurtell was present, lord of the concourse; for wherever he moved he was master, and whenever he spoke, even when in chains, every other voice was silent. He stood on the mead, grim and pale as usual, with his bruisers around. He it was, indeed, who got up the fight, as he had previously done with respect to twenty others; it being his frequent boast that he had first introduced bruising and bloodshed amidst rural scenes, and transformed a quiet slumbering town into a den of Jews and metropolitan thieves. Some time before the commencement of the combat, three men, mounted on wild-looking horses, came dashing down the road in the direction of the meadow, in the midst of which they presently showed themselves, their horses clearing the deep ditches with wonderful alacrity. ‘That’s

Gypsy Will and his gang,’ lisped a Hebrew pickpocket; ‘we shall have another fight.’ The word Gypsy was always sufficient to excite my curiosity, and I looked attentively at the new comers.

“I have seen Gypsies of various lands, Russian, Hungarian, and Turkish; and I have also seen the legitimate children of most countries of the world, but I never saw, upon the whole, three more remarkable individuals, as far as personal appearance was concerned, than the three English Gypsies who now presented themselves to my eyes on that spot. Two of them had dismounted, and were holding their horses by the reins. The tallest, and, at the first glance, the most interesting of the two, was almost a giant, for his height could not have been less than six feet three. It is impossible for the imagination to conceive any thing more perfectly beautiful than were the features of this man, and the most skilful sculptor of Greece might p. 8have taken them as his model for a hero and a god. The forehead was exceedingly lofty—a rare thing in a Gypsy; the nose less Roman than Grecian—fine yet delicate; the eyes large, overhung with long drooping lashes, giving them almost a melancholy expression; it was only when they were highly elevated that the Gypsy glance peered

out, if that can be called glance which is a strange stare, like nothing else in this world. His complexion—a beautiful olive; and his teeth of a brilliancy uncommon even amongst these people, who have all fine teeth. He was dressed in a coarse waggoner’s slop, which, however, was unable to conceal altogether the proportions of his noble and Herculean figure. He might be about twenty-eight. His companion and his captain, Gypsy Will, was, I think, fifty when he was hanged, ten years subsequently (for I never afterwards lost sight of him), in the front of the jail of Bury St. Edmunds. I have still present before me his bushy black hair, his black face, and his big black eyes, full and thoughtful, but fixed and staring. His dress consisted of a loose blue jockey coat, jockey boots and breeches; in his hand a huge jockey whip, and on his head (it struck me at the time for its singularity) a broad-brimmed, high-peaked Andalusian hat, or at least one very much resembling those generally worn in that province. In stature he was shorter than his more youthful companion, yet he must

have measured six feet at least, and was stronger built, if possible. What brawn!—what bone!—what legs!—what thighs! The third Gypsy, who remained on horseback, looked more like a phantom than any thing human. His complexion was the colour of pale dust, and of that same colour was all that pertained to him, hat and clothes. His boots were dusty of course, for it was midsummer, and his very horse was of a dusty dun. His features were whimsically ugly, most of his teeth were gone, and as to his age, he might be thirty or sixty. He p. 9was somewhat lame and halt, but an unequalled rider when once upon his steed, which he was naturally not very solicitous to quit. I subsequently discovered that he was considered the wizard of the gang.

“I have been already prolix with respect to these Gypsies, but I will not leave them quite yet. The intended combatants at length arrived; it was necessary to clear the ring—always a troublesome and difficult task. Thurtell went up to the two Gypsies, with whom he seemed to be acquainted, and, with his surly smile, said two or three words, which I, who was standing by, did not understand. The Gypsies smiled in return, and giving the reins of their animals to their mounted companion, immediately set about the task which the king of the flash-men had, as I conjecture, imposed upon them; this they soon accomplished. Who could stand against such fellows and such whips? The fight was soon over—then there was a pause. Once more Thurtell came up to the Gypsies and said something—the Gypsies looked at each other and conversed; but their words had then no meaning for my ears. The tall Gypsy shook his head. ‘Very well,’ said the other, in English, ‘I will—that’s all.’

“Then pushing the people aside, he strode to the ropes, over which he bounded into the ring, flinging his Spanish hat high into the air.

“Gypsy Will.—‘The best man in England for twenty pounds!’

“Thurtell.—‘I am backer!’

“Twenty pounds is a tempting sum, and there were men that day upon the green meadow who would have shed the blood of their own fathers for the fifth of the price. But the Gypsy was not an unknown man, his prowess and strength were notorious, and no one cared to encounter him. Some of the Jews looked eager for a moment; but their sharp eyes quailed quickly before his savage glances, as p. 10he towered in the ring, his huge form dilating, and his black features convulsed with excitement. The Westminster bravos eyed the Gypsy askance; but the comparison, if they made any, seemed by no means favourable to themselves. ‘Gypsy! rum chap.—Ugly customer,—always in training.’ Such were the exclamations which I heard, some of which at that period of my life I did not understand.

“No man would fight the Gypsy.—Yes! a strong country fellow wished to win the stakes, and was about to fling up his hat in defiance, but he was prevented by his friends, with—‘Fool! he’ll kill you!’

“As the Gypsies were mounting their horses, I heard the dusty phantom exclaim—

“‘Brother, you are an arrant ring-maker and a horse-breaker; you’ll make a hempen ring to break your own neck of a horse one of these days.’

“They pressed their horses’ flanks, again leaped over the ditches, and speedily vanished, amidst the whirlwinds of dust which they raised upon the road.

“The words of the phantom Gypsy were ominous. Gypsy Will was eventually executed for a murder committed in his early youth, in company with two English labourers, one of whom confessed the fact on his death-bed. He was the head of the clan Young, which, with the clan Smith, still haunts two of the eastern counties.”