Part 3 (2/2)
To this gentleman Borrow was introduced by a young farmer, no doubt Mr.
Skepper, of Oulton Hall, on December 27th, 1832. It is believed that it was through the Batemans, of Norwich (of whom the late Sir Frederic Bateman, M.D., was best known), that the acquaintance with the Skeppers began, as the families had intermarried. On the very day of the introduction Mr. Cunningham wrote to the Rev. Andrew Brandram, Secretary of the Bible Society, recommending Borrow as one who could read the Bible in thirteen languages--a very produceable person, of no very defined denomination of Christians, but, thought Mr. Cunningham, of certain Christian principle. Dr. Knapp errs in stating that Borrow owed this introduction to J. J. Gurney (”Life of Borrow,” i. p. 152). Anyway, he was invited to interview the Bible Society secretaries, and when one of them hoped he had slept well, replied: ”I am not aware that I fell asleep on the road; I have walked from Norwich to London.” He records that he did the hundred and twelve miles in twenty-seven hours, his outlay on the journey being 5.5d. for one pint of ale, half-pint of milk, a roll of bread, and two apples. Thus began the period of Bible distribution in Russia and Spain, still a life crowded with adventures and risky situations--the tall, handsome, young Englishman now in a prison, and anon kissing his hands to a group of t.i.ttering nuns. ”The Bible in Spain” was the chief enduring result of these experiences, a work which secured immediate popularity; moreover, the halo of the Bible Society shed a glamour of unquestionable respectability on Borrow's head. At Seville, in some inexplicable way, Borrow met Mrs. Clarke (born Mary Skepper), the widow of Lieut. Clarke, by whom she had the daughter Henrietta, the ”Hen” of ”Wild Wales,” who in 1865 married Dr. MacOubrey, apparently both a physician and a barrister. Accompanied by her daughter, now about twenty-two, Mrs. Clarke arrived at Seville, and their _menage_ there with Borrow was certainly curious; but on April 3rd, 1840, the whole party, including Hayim Ben Attar, his body servant, and Sidi Habismilk, his Arab steed, boarded the ”Royal Adelaide,” bound for London, where she berthed on April 16th. The Borrow party at once proceeded to the Spread Eagle Inn, Gracechurch Street, and on April 23rd, George Henry Borrow, ”gentleman, of the City of Norwich,” was married at St. Peter's, Cornhill, in the City of London to Mary Clarke, ”widow, daughter of Edmund Skepper, Esquire.” One of the witnesses was Mr. John Pilgrim, a Norwich solicitor. About May 5th the little family left London for Oulton, long to be the home of Lav-engro, and of his faithful and most helpful wife, who had an a.s.sured income of 450 pounds, with something over from the estate.
[Picture: George Borrow. From a Photograph by Mr. Pulley, taken in 1848.
Lent by Mr. Simms Reeve]
[Picture: George Borrow. Painted by John T. Borrow, a pupil of Old Crome]
_Section IV_.
(1840-81)--OULTON--AUTHORs.h.i.+P--BORROW'S APPEARANCE AND LEADING CHARACTERISTICS--TWILIGHT, AND THE END.
Our Ulysses had now found a haven of refuge, and a permanent Calypso who worthily held his heart to the end.
Oulton Cottage, with its banded firs and solemn solitary lake, alive with wild fowl, was an ideal place for Borrow. He had, in his early days, loved Norwich well, and might have settled here but for what Harriet Martineau styles the shout of laughter from all who remembered the old Norwich days, when he appeared ”as a devout agent of the Bible Society.”
It is unquestionable that the jog-trot ”daily-round-and-common-task”
citizens of Norwich looked askance at him as a sort of _lusus naturae_, what naturalists call a ”sport”--not in the slangy sense. Mr. Egmont Hake (”Macmillan's Magazine,” 1882, Vol. XLV.) went so far as to say that Borrow was ”perhaps the handsomest man of his day.” On the other hand, Caroline Fox, the Quakeress, who called on Borrow in October, 1843, described him as ”a tall, ungainly man, with great physical strength, quick, penetrating eye, a confident manner, and a disagreeable tone and p.r.o.nunciation.” It was on April 11th, 1843, that Sir Robert Peel p.r.o.nounced his striking eulogy on ”The Bible in Spain.”
Any appreciation of Borrow's works is out of the question in this outline survey. He professed a great liking for his ”Lives and Trials”--how full were the Lives ”of wild and racy adventures, and in what racy, genuine language they were told.” These words are closely applicable to Borrow's own writings; many of the critics fell foul of them, though Lockhart said Borrow had ”a true eye for the picturesque, and a fund of real racy humour,” while Elwin, fourteen years later (1857), praised his descriptions ”as accurate as they are picturesque. They abound in dramatic and delicate strokes of nature, of which no extracts give an adequate idea, and are painted with a force that brings men, events and prospects before the eye with the vividness of reality. In this power of verbal delineation Mr. Borrow has never been outdone. . . . His descriptions of scenery have a peculiar sublimity and grace.” A little later, W. Bodham Donne, a Norfolk man and acute critic, said, ”We all read Mr. Borrow's books,” but lamented his ”plunge into the worse than Irish bogs of Polemical Protestantism.” Mr. Saintsbury, one of our foremost literary essayists, while a.s.serting, in 1886, that Borrow was not a popular author, stated that ”his works greatly influenced Longfellow and Merimee, especially the latter.” Blackwood naturally disliked Borrow, said gypsies const.i.tuted nine-tenths of his stock-in-trade, and that his chief credential to London was a letter from ”an eccentric German teacher”! To-day where will you find a competent scholarly critic who is not a whole-hearted admirer of Borrow's style?
His grave and gay pictures of persons and places, are etched in with instinctive faithfulness, and clarity of atmosphere; always excepting such characters as were under the ban of his capricious hatred: ”Mr.
Flamson,” ”the Old Radical,” Scott and his ”gentility nonsense,” and so forth. It is doubtful if any but lovers of the open road, can thoroughly enter into the Borrow fellows.h.i.+p, but only such as Mr. E. V. Lucas, Mr.
Hilaire Belloc, of the comity of wayfaring men--initiates in the charities of the roads--men who love the dewy perfume of the meadows when the day is young, the blazing splendours of noon on the highway, and the magic of moonlight in many a dale, on many a hill. Men, moreover, who find nothing ”low” in listening to the tapestried talk of wayside taverns, where, indeed, even to-day many a sc.r.a.p of folk-lore and remnant of age-old superst.i.tions may be learned. The spirit of Borrow has inspired and evolved the n.o.ble army of caravanners, with Lady Grosvenor and Mr. J. Harris Stone at their head. The people who cannot appreciate Borrow are those who will not lift their eyes from the pavement to be rapt in admiration of a glorious sunset, to whom, indeed, Borrow would appear a silly enigma, or a boor. For, when ”the Heavens declare the glory of G.o.d; and the firmament showeth his handy work,” comes that rare time when the spirit--unconsciously wors.h.i.+pping--is uplifted in an ecstasy of wonder and joy, who then can but pity the dull eye ever abased to the grime of the trodden path?
”In matters of taste you never are sure-- Your curry's a poison, your tastelessness pure!”
Borrow's st.u.r.dy forthrightness, his abhorrence of suave ambiguities and formal inanities, found vent in most vigorous and unmistakeable language; dogmatic _obiter dicta_ came from his mouth or his pen like so many cudgel-thwacks. His nature was tense and intense, very excitable and subject to aberrant moods--and he was often the victim of a false ply, as the French would say. It cannot be gainsaid that his suspicions of society ways, and of ordinarily conventional literary men, often betrayed him into tactless discourtesies. It is needless to repeat the anecdotes in which he appears in an unfavourable light, some of them probably exaggerations, as, for instance, the well-known story of Borrow snubbing Thackeray, as told by Dr. Hake. Miss Jay, whose father was of the firm of Jay and Pilgrim, told me (November 22nd, 1893) that Borrow was loud in his denunciation of Thackeray's meanness on a certain occasion, and she utterly refused to believe Dr. Hake's version of the alleged boorishness at Hardwick Hall. Borrow was a man of many moods, and Miss Jay seems to have seen him only in his brighter hours: she described him to me as open-hearted and generous, always thought highly of good old ale, and liked Burgundy. ”It puts fire into your veins,” he would say; if he poured out wine for anyone, he was angry if they did not drink it. But she never knew him to exceed, and, though she often saw him highly excited, never heard him swear. Very similar accounts appeared in the _Eastern Daily Press_, of October 1st, 1892, over the signature ”E.H.”
[Picture: Corner of George Borrow's Bedroom, showing a view of city roofs. By C. M. Nichols, R.E.]
Another friend of Borrow's with whom I had many talks was the late Rev.
Whitwell Elwin, at Booton Rectory. He was editor of the _Quarterly Review_ (1854-60), and in 1857 had reviewed ”Lavengro” and ”The Romany Rye” in excellent style, under the heading ”Roving Life in England.” Mr.
Elwin and his wife were a most delightful couple, models of old-fas.h.i.+oned courtesy and heart-kindness. He knew Borrow well, and quite discredited the innuendoes and insinuations of many Norwich folk about him. It was a joke with the Murray circle that ”big Borrow was second fiddle at his home, and there is ample testimony that his wife was a capable manager and looked after his affairs, literary as well as domestic.” Though Borrow boasted of his proficiency in the Norfolk dialect, Mr. Elwin told him that he had not cultivated it with his usual success. Mr. Elwin died January 1st, 1900, aged eighty-three.
Quite naturally old Mrs. Borrow grew lonely, and weary of the dilapidated house in Willow Lane, so she was removed to Oulton in September, 1849, and there she died August 16th, 1858. Under imperative orders from Dr.
Hake, the Borrows left Oulton and got to Yarmouth, where they lived 1853-5 at John Sharman's, 169, King Street; 1856-7 at 37, Camperdown Place; 1858-9 at 39, Camperdown Place; and finally, November, 1859, to June 30th, 1860, at 24, Trafalgar Place. These tarryings were, however, broken by many excursions--a most interesting one to his kinsfolk in Cornwall in 1853, to Wales in 1854, and the Isle of Man in 1855.
In 1860 Borrow, his wife, and step-daughter, Henrietta Clarke, took up their abode at 22, Hereford Square, Brompton, now distinguished by a County Council tablet. There Borrow remained fourteen years. From there, in 1865, his step-daughter, Henrietta, married Dr. MacOubrey, and then came the most crus.h.i.+ng blow of all--the death of his wife, January 30th, 1869.
One is reminded of the epitaph which I have seen on Mrs. Carlyle's tombstone, in Haddington cemetery, in which Carlyle records that the light of his life is gone out; so Borrow's life was shadowed after his wife pa.s.sed away--she who wrote his letters, staved off the ”Horrors,”
and conducted his financial affairs. Borrow stayed on at Hereford Square until towards the end of 1874. A meeting with C. G. Leland prompted him to issue his last book worth notice--”The Romano-Y-Lavo-Lil”; or Word Book of the English Gypsy Language. This, in the light of the advance made in philology, and very notably in gypsy lore, proved conclusively that Borrow could now no longer be reckoned a ”deep 'Gyptian,” though the impulse of his work undoubtedly stirred up many scholars to pursue the study of the Romany language. In his latter days in London he sometimes had pleasant intercourse with such kindred spirits as Mr. Watts-Dunton, Mr. Hindes Groome, and he was still robust enough at seventy to plunge into an ice-covered pond on a bitterly cold March morning. When he finally retired to his Oulton cottage, where a Mrs. Barbour was his housekeeper until Dr. and Mrs. MacOubrey joined him in 1878, he began to spend much of his time in Norwich. A life-long friend of his was Miss Lucy Brightwell, a prolific writer and most skilful etcher, who died at her house, No. 3, Surrey Street, April 17th, 1875. Here we must perforce quote Dr. Knapp: ”Miss Brightwell was an intimate and constant visitor at the Willow Lane house from her early years. Old Mrs. Borrow mentions her in her letters as 'the child' and 'Lucy,' and the latter in her correspondence calls Mrs. Borrow 'mother.' . . . It was in the garden of Miss Brightwell's house in Surrey Street, Norwich, that the only _photograph_ existing of Mr. Borrow was taken by her brother 'Tom' in 1848. This picture is now so faded that it has defied all attempts to reproduce it in this book.” The fact is that Dr. Knapp was refused the use of the photograph, which was not taken by Tom Brightwell, but by Mr.
Pulley, a solicitor, of the firm of Field, Son, & Pulley. This picture is now the property of Mrs. Simms Reeve, of Norwich and Brancaster Hall.
Her own portrait as a girl is one of several separate figures framed together, Borrow occupying a place in the top row. Fortunately, by the courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. Simms Reeve, this interesting portrait of Borrow, when he was forty-five years of age, has now been reproduced, and it is, perhaps, the most valuable item in this souvenir, it also is lent by Mrs. Simms Reeve for the temporary collection of Borrow relics in Norwich Castle Museum. When he came to Norwich in these later days Borrow used to lodge at Mrs. Church's, in Lady Lane, off Bethel Street, known as Ivy House, and much frequented by theatrical people, now adapted to be a Dispensary. A grand-daughter of Borrow's friend W. Bodham Donne wrote me, in 1902, that ”Borrow once lodged at Ivy Cottage, Lady's Lane, where a dear old Miss Donne was living.” From Lady Lane it is only a few hundred yards to the well-loved little house in Willow Lane, at which his father died, and where his mother lived till her removal to Oulton as stated above.
Little remains to record. Some there are who remember Borrow's tall figure in the streets of Norwich. The old city--”the Norwich I love”--seemed to draw him irresistibly from his hermitage. Nor is this to be wondered at; for all accounts I have seen, and heard also, of the Oulton domestic arrangements during the last few years of his life, agree that they were deplorable. Mr. Elwin told me that, after the death of Borrow's wife, the home was not well looked after, and that Mr. Cooke (Murray's cousin and partner) ”told him with tears in his eyes how neglected the home was, and how the n.o.ble old man was broken up.” Miss Jay also informed me that ”after Mrs. Borrow's death Mrs. MacOubrey was wanting in tact to manage him and the affairs of the family, hence the gradual decline of household matters into the disorder and neglect referred to by visitors to Oulton in Borrow's latter days.” No wonder the weary old Lav-engro was glad to revisit the scenes of his youth, and found it restful to spend much of his time in the Norfolk Hotel (which stood where the Hippodrome now is), talking with his friends, with a gla.s.s before him--”of course to pay for the seat,” remarks Dr. Knapp, with an apparent attempt at sarcasm. I know a gentleman in Norwich now who remembers Borrow's visits to the Subscription Library opposite the Guildhall, and his adjournments to the ”Norfolk” after asking my informant to join him in a gla.s.s of brandy and water.
Borrow's death, July 26th, 1881, was very sudden. Left alone in the house, he was found dead when Dr. and Mrs. MacOubrey returned from a drive to Lowestoft. ”It seems fitting,” says Mr. Jenkins, ”that he should die alone”; but he justly adds, ”whatever the facts, it was strange to leave so old and so infirm a man quite unattended.” Dr. Knapp affirms that Borrow ”had earnestly requested them not to go away, because he felt that he was in a dying state.” The corpse of the worn-out veteran was detained in Oulton from July 26th to August 4th--”by reason of the absence of a physician's certificate,” says Dr. Knapp. Borrow was buried in Brompton Cemetery beside his wife.
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