Chapter 28

"Lavengro" in 1851 and "The Romany Rye" in 1857 failed to impress the critics or the public. Men were disappointed because "Lavengro" was "not an autobiography." They said that the adventures did not bear "the impress of truth." They suggested that the anti-Papistry was "added and interpolated to suit the occasion of the recent Papal aggression." They laughed at its mystery-making. They said that it gave "a false dream in the place of reality." Ford regretted that Borrow had "told so little about himself." Two friends praised it and foretold long life for it. Whitwell Elwin in 1857 said that "the truth and vividness of the descriptions both of scenes and persons, coupled with the purity, force and simplicity of the language, should confer immortality upon many of its pages." "The Saturday Review" found that he had humour and romance, and that his writing left "a general impression of the scenery and persons introduced so strongly vivid and life-like," that it reminded them of Defoe rather than of any contemporary author; they called the books a "strange cross between a novel and an autobiography." In 1857 also, Emile Montegut wrote a study of "The Gypsy Gentleman," which he published in his "Ecrivains Modernes de l'Angleterre." He said that Borrow had revived a neglected literary form, not artificially, but as being the natural frame for the scenes of his wandering life: he even went so far as to say that the form and manner of the picaresque or rogue novel, like "Gil Blas," is the inevitable one for pictures of the low and vagabond life. This form, said he, Borrow adopted not deliberately but intuitively, because he had a certain attitude to express: he rediscovered it, as Cervantes and Mendoza invented it, because it was the most appropriate clothing for his conceptions. Borrow had, without any such ambition, become the Quevedo and the Mendoza of modern England.

The autobiography resembles the rogue novel in that it is well peppered with various isolated narratives strung upon the thread of the hero's experience. It differs chiefly in that the study of the hero is serious and without roguery. The conscious attempt to make it as good as a rogue novel on its own ground caused some of the chief faults of the book, the excess of recognitions and re-appearances, the postillion's story, and the visits of the Man in Black.

When Borrow came to answer his critics in the Appendix to "The Romany Rye," he assumed that they thought him vulgar for dealing in Gypsies and the like. He retorted:

"Rank, wealth, fine clothes and dignified employments, are no doubt very fine things, but they are merely externals, they do not make a gentleman, they add external grace and dignity to the gentleman and scholar, but they make neither; and is it not better to be a gentleman without them than not a gentleman with them? Is not Lavengro, when he leaves London on foot with twenty pounds in his pocket, entitled to more respect than Mr. Flamson flaming in his coach with a million? And is not even the honest jockey at Horncastle, who offers a fair price to Lavengro for his horse, entitled to more than the scroundrel lord, who attempts to cheat him of one-fourth of its value. . . ."

He might have said the books were a long tract to prove that many waters cannot quench gentlemanliness, or "once a gentleman always a gentleman." As a rule, when Borrow gets away from life and begins to think about it, he ceases to be an individual and becomes a tame and entirely convenient member of society, fit for the Commission of the Peace or a berth at the British Museum. After he has made 20 pounds by pen-slavery and saved himself from serious poverty, he exclaims:

"Reader, amidst the difficulties and dangers of this life, should you ever be tempted to despair, call to mind these latter chapters of the life of Lavengro. There are few positions, however difficult, from which dogged resolution and perseverance may not liberate you."

When he comes to discuss his own work he says that "it represents him, however, as never forgetting that he is the son of a brave but poor gentleman, and that if he is a hack author, he is likewise a scholar. It shows him doing no dishonourable jobs, and proves that if he occasionally associates with low characters, he does so chiefly to gratify the curiosity of a scholar. In his conversations with the apple-woman of London Bridge, the scholar is ever apparent, so again in his acquaintance with the man of the table, for the book is no raker up of the uncleanness of London, and if it gives what at first sight appears refuse, it invariably shows that a pearl of some kind, generally a philological one, is contained amongst it; it shows its hero always accompanied by his love of independence, scorning in the greatest poverty to receive favours from anybody, and describes him finally rescuing himself from peculiarly miserable circumstances by writing a book, an original book, within a week, even as Johnson is said to have written his 'Rasselas,' and Beckford his 'Vathek,' and tells how, leaving London, he betakes himself to the roads and fields.

"In the country it shows him leading a life of roving adventure, becoming tinker, Gypsy, postillion, ostler; associating with various kinds of people, chiefly of the lower classes, whose ways and habits are described; but, though leading this erratic life, we gather from the book that his habits are neither vulgar nor vicious, that he still follows to a certain extent his favourite pursuits, hunting after strange characters, or analysing strange words and names. At the conclusion of