Part 3 (1/2)
W. Bodham Donne, a well-known critic, even went so far as to rank them above Macaulay's ”Lays of Ancient Rome.” A fine facsimile edition of Borrow's ”Romantic Ballads” was brought out by Messrs. Jarrold in the early part of this year.
A rupture with Phillips, almost inevitable, set Borrow wandering, and very soon he became acquainted with the old fruit-woman who found a valid defence for theft in the history of ”the blessed Mary Flanders,” a dog's-eared volume of ”Moll Flanders,” wherein Borrow found ”the air, the style, the spirit of the writer of the book” which first taught him to read--Defoe, of course. This cla.s.sic is ”supreme as a realistic picture of low life in the large.”
A quite different figure appears in the person of Francis Arden, a handsome young Irishman with whom Borrow became acquainted in the coffee-room of an hotel, and with him obtained some knowledge of ”the strange and eccentric places of London.” When Arden burst out laughing one day Borrow said he would, perhaps, have joined if it were ever his wont to laugh, and his friends said that, though he enjoyed a joke, he did not seem to have the power of laughing. But in Borrow we expect contrarieties, so we find him saying that when he detected a man poking fun at him in Welsh he flung back his head, closed his eyes, and laughed aloud; and later on, walking in Wales with the rain at his back, he flung his umbrella over his shoulder and laughed. ”Oh, how a man laughs who has a good umbrella when he has the rain at his back” (”Wild Wales,” pp.
301, 470).
Pa.s.sing by Borrow's meetings with the Armenian merchant, we come to the time when, as he says, he found himself reduced to his last half-crown, and set about writing the ”Life and Adventures of Joseph Sell, the Great Traveller,” an entirely fict.i.tious personage. This was completed within a week, towards the end of May, 1825, and the story brought the author a welcome twenty pounds. Such is the record. Dr. Knapp believes that there was such a story, probably part of a series, but Mr. Jenkins gives good reasons for thinking that ”Joseph Sell” was not written till 1829, when Borrow would more probably be in want of money than just after payment for his ”Trials” (in every sense trials) from Phillips. Anyway, on May 24th, 1825, Borrow left London. At starting he encountered Arden driving a cabriolet, who asked him whither he was bound. ”I don't know,”
replied Borrow, ”all I can say is that I am about to leave London.”
Being out of condition, he tired of walking, mounted a coach, ”tipped the blunt” to the driver, and alighted at Amesbury, near Stonehenge, whence he began a ramble which became a perfect Iliad of strange happenings.
His health improved, his spirits rose, as he tramped on, his journeyings varying from twenty to twenty-five miles a day. On the fifth day of his tramp he met at an inn the mysterious stranger who ”touched,” as Borrow himself did, against the evil eye; Dr. Johnson was an habitual toucher, and even Macaulay owned to a kindred feeling. While a guest of the ”touching” gentleman, Borrow was introduced to the Rev. Mr. Plat.i.tude, a notable character in his literary portrait gallery--”he did not go to college a gentleman; he went an a.s.s and returned a prig,” writes Borrow fiercely. No biographer, so far as I know, has identified Plat.i.tude, but Mr. Donne evidently knew him, for he calls Borrow's account a ”gross and unfair caricature.” I believe I have identified ”the rascally Unitarian minister who went over to the High Church,” with the Rev. Theophilus Browne, Fellow and Tutor of Peterhouse, Cambridge, who quitted the Church for conscience sake, obtained an appointment at the York Unitarian College, and was minister at the Octagon Chapel in 1809, but was paid to resign the following year. He died at Bath in May, 1835. The historian of the Octagon applies Milton's line to him:
”New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large.”
Arriving at Tamworth, Borrow entered a cottage inn, and, as was his custom, called ”House!” as loud as he could. Whilst drinking his beer he cheered the heart of the sorrowful Jack Slingsby by buying his whole tinker's stock-in-trade--beat, plant, pony, and all--concluding that ”a tinker is his own master, a scholar is not.” Poor Slingsby had been driven off the road by the great Flaming Tinman, ”Black Jack,” whose clan name was Anselo Herne, who, thrusting a Bible into Slingsby's mouth, forced him to swear his Bible oath that he would surrender his beat.
Here was a truly picturesque situation after Borrow's own taste, and, no doubt with a joyful heart, he paid Slingsby five pounds ten s.h.i.+llings for his tinker's outfit, bought a wagoner's frock from the landlady, and felt ready enough to encounter the dreaded ”Black Jack.”
[Picture: A quaint corner in Borrow's House. By C. M. Nichols, R.E.]
Borrow avers that he fled from London ”from fear of consumption,” that he must do something or go mad, so, having a knowledge of smithing that enabled him to acquire the tinkering craft, he became a sort of Petulengro himself. A few days after pitching his tent in Mumper's Dingle, near Willenhall, as he slept against an ash tree, a voice seemed to cry in his ear Danger! Danger! and he awoke to see Leonora, a pretty gypsy girl of thirteen, wearing a handsome necklace of corals and gold.
She offered him a _manricli_, or cake, saying ”Eat, pretty brother, grey-haired brother.” After some demur, he ate part of it; it was poisoned, and he fell into a swoon. Soon he heard the voice of the malicious old hag Mrs. Herne, who, gloating over her enemy, told him he had taken _drows_, as, however he began to move they set their _juggal_ (dog) at him; but the animal, fled from the flash of the tinker's eye, and Mrs. Herne realised that he would live--the _dook_ (spirit of divination) told her so. The arrival of the Welsh preacher Peter Williams, and his wife Winifred, in their cart put the gypsy witch-wife and her daughter to flight. The Welshman administered some oil, which, after two hours of suspense, and with the help of an opiate, saved the life of Lavengro. During this companions.h.i.+p Borrow found that Williams suffered excruciating spiritual terrors from the conviction that he had committed the sin against the Holy Ghost--_pechod Ysprydd Glan_!
Borrow left his Welsh friends to join no less a personage than Jasper Petulengro, ”one of the clibberty-clabber,” quoted Peter from a Welsh poet; Borrow's pal had a wondrous story to tell of Mrs. Herne, of the ”drows,” who had ”been her own hinjiri,” _i.e._ hanged herself. The girl Leonora told Jasper that she had tracked Borrow and found him, alive and well, 'discussing religion with a Methody, and that when she told the old woman, Mrs. Herne said it was all up with her, and she must take a long journey. In March, 1911, died Isaac Herne, of the same family, son of beautiful Sinfi; he was known as ”King of the Gypsies,” and to the last would tell of his meetings and talks with the ”Romany Rye.” Unlike his clanswoman, who was buried ”like a Roman woman of the old blood,” he was buried in gorgious fas.h.i.+on--in the graveyard of Manston Church, near Leeds.
Borrow soon parted from Jasper, and settled himself in the beautiful Mumper's Dingle, where he had the historic fight with the ”Flaming Tinman,” getting the victory by using his ”Long Melford,” on the advice of that towering and handsome female bearing the name of Isopel Berners, who now comes on the scene, and who will ever remain one of the most fascinating figures in the wonderful gallery of Borrovian characters.
”I never saw such a face and figure,” exclaims Borrow, ”both regal--why, you look like Ingeborg, Queen of Norway; she had twelve brothers, you know, and could lick them all, though they were heroes--
”'On Dovrefeld in Norway, Were once together seen, The twelve heroic brothers Of Ingeborg the queen.'”
(See ”Romantic Ballads,” p. 59.)
In Chapter XV. of ”The Romany Rye,” Borrow thus describes the last farewell to Belle, as he called her: ”I found the Romany party waiting for me, and everything in readiness for departing. Mr. Petulengro and Tawno Chikno were mounted on two old horses. The rest, who intended to go to the fair, amongst whom were two or three women, were on foot. On arriving at the extremity of the plain, I looked towards the dingle.
Isopel Berners stood at the mouth, the beams of the early morning sun shone full on her n.o.ble face and figure. I waved my hand towards her.
She slowly lifted up her right arm. I turned away, and never saw Isopel Berners again.”
This little book, concerned chiefly with Norwich, cannot follow the wayfarings of Borrow, so enchantingly described in ”Lavengro” and ”The Romany Rye,” in chapters which justify to the full Mr. Birrell's enthusiastic admiration when he wrote: ”The delightful, the bewitching, the never sufficiently to be praised George Borrow--Borrow, the Friend of Man, at whose bidding la.s.situde and languor strike their tents and flee; and health and spirits, adventure and human comrades.h.i.+p, take up the reins of life, whistle to the horses and away you go!”
It is much to be hoped that the Borrow Celebration, to which this booklet is a modest contribution, may lead to a warmer appreciation in Norwich of one of the greatest men who ever trod her streets. ”The Romany Rye” has a thoroughly Borrovian ending, much in the manner of Sterne, as many of Borrow's pa.s.sages are. His pilgrimage of tinkering and adventurous vagrancy between May and August, 1825, came to an end at Boston--”a large town, situate at the entrance of an extensive firth”--where a recruiting sergeant wished to enlist him for the service of the Honourable East India Company. But his references to Petulengro and Tawno Chikno disgusted the soldier, who exclaimed: ”Young fellow, I don't like your way of speaking; no, nor your way of looking. You are mad, sir; you are mad; and what's this? Why your hair is grey! You won't do for the Honourable Company--they like red. I'm glad I didn't give you the s.h.i.+lling.” Then Borrow soliloquizes: ”I shouldn't wonder if Mr.
Petulengro and Tawno Chikno came originally from India. I think I'll go there.” So ends one of the most amazing fragments of autobiography that the world has ever seen; many readers we know leave these unwillingly and return to them again and again with unquenchable zest. Borrow was twenty-three when in the autumn of 1825 he was making his way to Norwich from Lincolns.h.i.+re, and from then till his employment by the Bible Society in 1833, his movements were very uncertain. The intervening years have been called ”the veiled period”--gloomy and mysterious, says Mr. Jenkins, but not utterly dark. He was in Norwich at Tombland Fair in April, 1827, the real date of his doffing his hat to that celebrated horse, ”Marshland Shales,” and towards the end of the year he was still in Willow Lane, as is proved by entries in his mother's cash book, seen by Dr. Knapp.
Tired of inactivity, Borrow was in London in December, 1829, at 17, Great Russell Street, W.C., eagerly seeking work, scheming for a work on the Songs of Scandinavia, jointly with Bowring, which came to nothing.
It is curious that in a letter to Bowring of September 14th, 1830, he proposes to call on him one evening, as early rising kills him. Quite a strange expression for so open-air a wanderer. That Borrow could not secure employment in the ordinary avenues of the professions and commerce is hardly to be wondered at; he preferred the society of vagabonds, into which he had been driven by his own inclinations as much as, or more than, by force of circ.u.mstances. His brother John told him that his want of success in life was more owing to his being unlike other people than to any other cause. His isolating and aggressive pride engendered a tactlessness which often spoilt any chances of advancement that came his way. But he had dogged determination, which, to quote Mr. Jenkins, ”was to carry him through the most critical period of his life, enable him to earn the approval of those in whose interests he worked, and eventually achieve fame and an una.s.sailable place in English literature.”
It does not come within the scope of this local souvenir to follow Borrow in his career under the Bible Society in Russia and the Peninsula; but we must just note that he obtained his appointment with that society through the Rev. Francis Cunningham, a brother-in-law of the great banker J. J.
Gurney, of Earlham, having married his sister Richenda at Earlham Church in 1816. He became Rector of Pakefield in 1814, and of Lowestoft from 1830 till his death in August, 1863.
[Picture: William Taylor]
[Picture: George Borrow's House, Oulton, near Lowestoft]