Chapter 27

A VISIT TO CORNISH KINSMEN

If Borrow had been a normal man of letters he would have been quite satisfied to settle down at Oulton, in a comfortable home, with a devoted wife. The question of money was no longer to worry him. He had moreover a money-making gift, which made him independent in a measure of his wife's fortune. From _The Bible in Spain_ he must have drawn a very considerable amount, considerable, that is, for a man whose habits were always somewhat penurious. _The Bible in Spain_ would have been followed up, were Borrow a quite other kind of man, by a succession of books almost equally remunerative. Even for one so prone to hate both books and bookmen there was always the wind on the heath, the gypsy encampment, the now famous 'broad,' not then the haunt of innumerable trippers. But Borrow ever loved wandering more than writing. Almost immediately after his marriage--in 1840--he hinted to the Bible Society of a journey to China; a year later, in June 1841, he suggested to Lord Clarendon that Lord Palmerston might give him a consulship: he consulted Hasfeld as to a possible livelihood in Berlin, and Ford as to travel in Africa. He seems to have endured residence at Oulton with difficulty during the succeeding three years, and in 1844 we find him engaged upon the continental travel that we have already recorded. In 1847 he had hopes of the consulship at Canton, but Bowring wanted it for himself, and a misunderstanding over this led to an inevitable break of old friendship. Borrow's passionate love of travel was never more to be gratified at the expense of others. He tried hard, indeed, to secure a journey to the East from the British Museum Trustees, and then gave up the struggle. Further wanderings, which were many, were to be confined to Europe and indeed to England, Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Man. His first journey, however, was not at his own initiative. Mrs. Borrow's health was unequal to the severe winters at Oulton, and so the Borrows made their home at Yarmouth from 1853 to 1860. During these years he gave his vagabond propensities full play. No year passed without its record of wandering. His first expedition was the outcome of a burst of notoriety that seems to have done for Borrow what the success of his _Bible in Spain_ could not do--revealed his identity to his Cornish relations. The _Bury Post_ of 17th September 1853 recorded that Borrow had at the risk of his life saved at least one member of a boat's crew wrecked on the coast at Yarmouth:

The moment was an awful one, when George Borrow, the well-known author of _Lavengro_ and _The Bible in Spain_, dashed into the surf and saved one life, and through his instrumentality the others were saved. We ourselves have known this brave and gifted man for years, and, daring as was his deed, we have known him more than once to risk his life for others. We are happy to add that he has sustained no material injury.

I was quite sorry to find this extract from the _Bury Post_ among my Borrow Papers in Mrs. Borrow's handwriting. It a little suggests that she sent the copy to the journal in question, or at least inspired the paragraph, perhaps in a letter to her friend, Dr. Gordon Hake, who with his family then resided at Bury St. Edmunds. Borrow was a perfect swimmer, and there is no reason to suppose but that he did act heroically.[178] In my Borrow Papers I find in his handwriting his own account of the adventure:

I was seated on Yarmouth jetty; the weather was very stormy; there came a tremendous sea, which struck the jetty, and made it quiver; there was a boat on the lee-side of the jetty fastened by a painter; the surge snapped the painter like a thread, the boat was overset with two men in it, there was a cry, 'The men must be drowned.' I started up from my seat on the north side of the jetty, and saw the boat bottom upwards, and I heard some people say, 'The men are under it.' I ran a little way along the jetty, and then jumped upon the sand; before taking the leap I saw a man flung by the surge upon the shore; he crawled up upon the beach, and was, I believe, lifted up upon his legs by certain beachmen. I had my eye upon the boat, which was now near the shore; I had an idea that there was a man under it; I flung off my coat and hat, and went a little way into the sea, about parallel to some beachmen who were moving backwards and forwards as the waves advanced and receded. I now saw a man as a wave recoiled lying close by the boat in the reflux. I dashed forward and made a grip at the man, then came a tremendous wave which tumbled me heels over head; being an expert diver I did not attempt to rise, lest I should be flung on shore. When the wave receded, I found myself near the boat; the man was now nearer to the shore than myself. I believe a man or two were making towards him; another wave came which overwhelmed me, and flung me on the shore, to which I was now making with all my strength. I got on my legs for one moment, when the advanced guard, if I may call it so, of another wave, struck me on the back, and laid me upon my face, but I was now quite out of danger. A man now came and lifted me up, as others lifted up the other man, who seemed quite unable to exert himself. The above is a plain statement of facts. I was the only person, with the exception of the man in distress, who was in the deep water, or who confronted the billows, which were indeed monstrous, but which I cared little for, being, as I said before, an expert diver. Had I been alone the result of the affair would have been much the same; as it is, after the last wave I could easily have dragged the man up upon the beach. I am willing to give to the beachmen whatever credit is due to them; I am anxious to believe that one of them was once up to his middle in water, but truth compels me to state that I never saw one of them up to his knees. I received very uncivil language from one of them, but every species of respect and sympathy from the genteel part of the spectators. A gentleman, I believe from Norwich, and a policeman, attended me in a cab to my lodgings, where they undressed and dressed me. The kindness of these two individuals I shall never forget.

In any case this adventure had exceptional publicity. For example Mr. Robert Cooke of John Murray's firm wrote to Mrs. Borrow on 13th October 1853 to say that while travelling abroad he had read in _Galignani's Messenger_ an account of his friend Lavengro's 'daring and heroic act in rescuing so many from a watery grave.' 'I wish they had all been critics,' he adds; 'he would have done just the same, and they might perhaps have shown their gratitude when they got among his inky waves of literature.'

More than this, the paragraph in the Bury St. Edmunds newspaper was copied into the _Plymouth Mail_, and was there read by the Borrows of Cornwall, who had heard nothing of their relative, Thomas Borrow, the army captain and his family, for fifty years or more. One of Borrow's cousins by marriage, Robert Taylor of Penquite, invited him to his father's homeland, and Borrow accepted, glad, we may be sure, of any excuse for a renewal of his wanderings. And so on the 23rd of December 1853 Borrow made his way from Yarmouth to Plymouth by rail, and thence walked twenty miles to Liskeard, where quite a little party of Borrow's cousins were present to greet him. The Borrow family consisted of Henry Borrow of Looe Doun, the father of Mrs. Taylor, William Borrow of Trethinnick, Thomas Nicholas and Elizabeth Borrow, all first cousins, except Anne Taylor. Anne, talking to a friend, describes Borrow on this visit better than any one else has done:

A fine tall man of about six feet three; well-proportioned and not stout; able to walk five miles an hour successively; rather florid face without any hirsute appendages; hair white and soft; eyes and eyebrows dark; good nose and very nice mouth; well-shaped hands;--altogether a person you would notice in a crowd.[179]

Dr. Knapp possessed two 'notebooks' of this Cornish tour. Borrow stayed at Penquite with his cousins from 24th December to 9th January, then he went on a walking tour to Land's End, through Truro and Penzance; he was back at Penquite from 26th January to 1st February, and then took a week's tramp to Tintagel, King Arthur's Castle, and Pentire. Naturally he made inquiries into the language, already extinct, but spoken within the memory of the older inhabitants. 'My relations are most excellent people,' he wrote to his wife from London on his way back, 'but I could not understand more than half of what they said.'

I have only one letter to Mrs. Borrow written during this tour:

To Mrs. George Borrow

PENQUITE, _27th Janry. 1854._

MY DEAR CARRETA,--I just write you a line to inform you that I have got back safe here from the Land's End. I have received your two letters, and hope you received mine from the Land's End. It is probable that I shall yet visit one or two places before I leave Cornwall. I am very much pleased with the country. When you receive this if you please to write a line _by return of post_ I think you may; the Trethinnick people wish me to stay with them for a day or two. When you see the Cobbs pray remember me to them; I am sorry Horace has lost his aunt, he will _miss her_. Love to Hen. Ever yours, dearest,

G. BORROW.

(Keep this.)

One of Borrow's biographers, Mr. Walling, has given us the best account of that journey through Cornwall,[180] and his explanation of why Borrow did not write the Cornish book that he caused to be advertised in a fly-leaf of _The Romany Rye_, by the discouragement arising out of the dire failure of that book, may be accepted.[181] Borrow would have made a beautiful book upon Cornwall. Even the title, _Penquite and Pentyre; or, The Head of the Forest and the Headland_, has music in it. And he had in these twenty weeks made himself wonderfully well acquainted not only with the topography of the principality, but with its folklore and legend. The gulf that ever separated the Borrow of the notebook and of the unprepared letter from the Borrow of the finished manuscript was extraordinary, and we may deplore with Mr. Walling the absence of this among Borrow's many unwritten books.

Borrow was back in Yarmouth at the end of February 1854--he had not fled the country as Dalrymple had suggested--but in July he was off again for his great tour in Wales, in which he was accompanied by his wife and daughter. Of that tour we must treat in another and later chapter, for _Wild Wales_ was not published until 1862. The year following his great tour in Wales he went on a trip to the Isle of Man.

FOOTNOTES:

[178] It is thus that an old schoolfellow, Dalrymple, describes the episode in a fragment of manuscript in the possession of Mrs. James Stuart of Carrow Abbey, from which I have already quoted:

'In 1850/2/3 Borrow lived at Yarmouth; he here made rather a ludicrous exhibition of himself on the occasion of a wreck, when he ran into the sea through a full tide up to his knees, with the utmost apparent heroism, and retreated again as soon as he thought it might be dangerous. He incurred so much ridicule that he abruptly quitted the town, and I have not heard since of him.'

[179] Knapp's _Life_, vol. ii. p. 97. Letter from Mrs. Robert Taylor to Mrs. Wilkey.

[180] _George Borrow, The Man and His Work_. By R. A. J. Walling. Cassell, 1908.

[181] It is not generally known that not less than eleven books by Borrow were advertised in the first edition of _The Romany Rye_ in 1857, of which only two were published in his lifetime:

1. _Celtic Bards, Chiefs, and Kings._ 2 volumes.

2. _Wild Wales: Its People, Language, and Scenery._ 2 volumes.

3. _Songs of Europe, or Metrical Translations from all the European Languages._ 2 volumes.

4. _Kæmpe Viser. Songs about Giants and Heroes._ 2 volumes.

5. _The Turkish Jester._ 1 volume.

6. _Penquite and Pentyre; or, The Head of the Forest and the Headland. A Book on Cornwall._ 2 volumes.

7. _Russian Popular Tales._ 1 volume.

8. _The Sleeping Bard._ 1 volume.

9. _Norman Skalds, Kings, and Earls._ 2 volumes.

10. _The Death of Balder._ 1 volume.

11. _Bayr Jairgey and Glion Doo. Wanderings in Search of Manx Literature._ 1 volume.

Of these _The Sleeping Bard_ appeared in 1860 and _Wild Wales_ in 1862; and after Borrow's death _The Turkish Jester_ in 1884 and _The Death of Balder_ in 1889. The remaining seven books have not yet been published. Their manuscript is partly in the Knapp Collection now in the Hispanic Society's possession, partly in my Collection, while certain fragments and the manuscript of _Romano Lavo-Lil_ are in the possession of well-known Borrow enthusiasts.