CHAPTER XII

LONDON AGAIN

ON the return to Yarmouth, the trials of a crotchety temper were resumed. Murray’s reception of “The Romany Rye” so inflamed Borrow’s anger that in April, 1856, he recalled the precious manuscript in the curtest of curt notes. Murray, nothing loth to rid himself of this wild book, with its tigerish animadversions upon the literary world at large, packed it up and sent it to Yarmouth, where it remained for another year. Its author, in high dudgeon, kept his mind as far as possible off his grievances by tramping about East Anglia and endeavouring to reawaken the sensations of his youth upon the English roads. He rejoices in the sight of a coach, which even then seemed a strange anachronism, so thoroughly had the railway revolutionised the conditions of travel. He is carried back thirty years to the days of Thurtell by a meeting with an old man who remembered the mill between Painter and Oliver, and could call up visions of the concourse of pilfering rascals assembled on that occasion, so that the adjoining field was found next day to be strewn with empty pocket-books! He sees a horse fall down and refuse to rise in a street of King’s Lynn, and at once becomes the horse-doctor, advising the administration of reviving ale according to one story, and according to another administering it himself.

Among the visits he paid during these excursions was one to Miss Anna Gurney at North Repps; he took a speedy departure when she began to propound to him questions in Arabic grammar, and consoled himself with a dinner at “Tucker’s.” But this was the kind of life and experience which, sending his memory back to his early exploits by grassy lane and windy heath, was bound to turn his thoughts again to the manuscript stowed away at Yarmouth in which so many of those adventures were depicted. In the following February he withdrew it from its hiding-place, read it over afresh with great relish, and decided that it must be published. Such good stuff should be withheld from the public no longer, Murray or no Murray.

Thus an ultimatum was despatched to Albemarle Street. The eminent publisher was informed that, if he did not bring out “The Romany Rye,” some less eminent publisher would be applied to. The firm, always excellent friends to Borrow, resolved to humour him, but in the letter in which the bargain was clinched Mr. Murray could not resist a sly dig; he said the work would be published “to oblige him.” Whereat Borrow told him that he believed his intentions were good, but that “people with the best of intentions occasionally do a great deal of harm.” “The Romany Rye” appeared in May.

If the reception of “Lavengro” disappointed its author, no less can be said of the reception of its sequel. The majority of the critics did not like it any better than Borrow liked them. Even his friend Whitwell Elwin, who reviewed it for the _Quarterly_, reproved him vigorously for the violence and vulgarity of the Appendix, and threw Bentley at him in this wise: “No author was ever written down except by himself.” But Elwin was fair, and more prescient than most of his contemporaries. He admitted that “Lavengro” had not had its due, and said that it contained “passages which, in their way, are not surpassed by anything in English literature.” He spoke with warmth of the truth and vividness of the descriptions of both scenes and persons, the purity, force, and simplicity of the language, which “should confer immortality upon many of its pages.” Elwin did not write without knowledge when he said that “various parts of the history are known to be a faithful narrative of Mr. Borrow’s career, while we ourselves can testify as to many other parts of his volumes, that nothing can excel the fidelity with which he has described both men and things. Far from his showing any tendency to exaggeration, such of his characters as we chance to have known—and they are not a few—are rather within the truth than beyond it. . . . There can be no doubt that the larger part, and possibly the whole, of the work is a narrative of actual occurrences.”

The review which most correctly anticipated the verdict of a later generation, a generation that knew not Borrow but was emancipated from some of the prejudices of the ’fifties, was that of the _Saturday Review_. The writer saw the charm of these books—their raciness, their naturalistic humour, their spirit of romance. He penetrated the secret of Borrow’s style when he spoke of his “almost affectedly simple language.” He realised the permanent power of a writer who could make such wonderfully strong impressions without actual categorical description of scenery or persons. Otherwise, the treatment of the book was cool and neglectful, or hostile—in either case highly unsatisfactory to Borrow. Perhaps we, who can read “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye” together, and view them in a different atmosphere, are hardly able to make sufficient allowance for the conduct of critics who had this sequel to a half-forgotten book pitched on their tables after an interval of six years, and found that its most vigorous passages consisted of terrific denunciations of their harmless selves.

The disappointed author went off alone in August to seek solace in a second tour through the country which still held the warmest place in his affections. He walked through the greater part of South Wales to the very tip of the Pembrokeshire promontory, and then cut across to Hereford and Shropshire. At Uppington and Donnington he sought out the tracks of Gronwy Owen, and returned to London and Yarmouth once more full of his Celtic bards and prophets. Occasionally antiquarian researches were interrupted to give time for original vaticinations on public affairs. He was a fierce opinionist, who contrived as a rule to find his opinions on the side which was against the constituted authority, whatever it might be. The conduct of Indian policy during the Mutiny pleased him no better than the conduct of the Russian war. In a letter to Murray, after defending the tone of “The Romany Rye” on the ground that it denounced boldly the evils which were hurrying the country to destruction and had kindled God’s anger against it, “namely, the pride, insolence, cruelty, covetousness, and hypocrisy of its people, and, above all, that rage for gentility which must be indulged in at the expense of every good and honourable feeling,” he goes on to discuss affairs in the East. Some of his choicest anathemas are reserved for “the miserable newspapers,” which proclaimed a firm determination to put down the rebels in India, “but forget to tell us how India is to be held without the sepoys.” The international situation seemed to his hypochondriac mind to be full of irremediable gloom, and he turned again, sighing, from these melancholy reflections to his Welsh poets. His passionate desire was reawakened to reveal the wonders of Cymric literature to a stiff-necked generation of Englishmen. He had turned out once more his translation of the “Visions” of Elis Wyn, which had been too strong for the stomach of the little bookseller of Smithfield nearly thirty years before. He delivered it to Murray on his way back from Wales. Borrow suggested that it would be likely to sell if it could be adorned with three engravings by Cruikshank—“the dance of the fairies in the first part; another the old poet in Hades flinging a skull at the head of Elis Wyn in the second; and the last, the personification of Sin in the third part at the very conclusion.” But Murray was no more impressed with the saleable quality of the Sleeping Bard than the bookseller of Smithfield had been; Cruikshank continued to throw stones at the Bottle Imp instead of flinging skulls at Elis Wyn, and the manuscript went back to Yarmouth.

All literary enterprises were suddenly set aside in August, 1858, by a family tragedy. No less a phrase can describe Borrow’s loss when his mother died, for the bonds between them were exceedingly close. Her love had a poignant quality which was sharpened by the anxiety, well-concealed from him, with which his weaknesses filled her. His love for her was more than filial. It had kept him in East Anglia for many years; it had an important influence, which has been previously suggested, upon his attitude towards the Catholic Church; he could never forget that it was the revocation of the Edict of Nantes that drove his mother’s family out of France.

The death occurred rather suddenly. The severance had so extreme an effect upon him that he was inconsolable during many weeks. At last, to obtain distraction, he set off on a walking tour in the Highlands. He devoted much of his time to roaming all over the island of Mull, which he described as perhaps the wildest country in Europe. He noted that the place-names of Mull strongly resembled those of the Isle of Man, and wrote scraps of discourse on the Gaelic dialects. Leaving Mull, he penetrated, principally on foot, into the farthest north, crossing to Orkney and Shetland at the end of November. A quiet seven months at Yarmouth followed, and in June, 1859, he paid a visit to Ireland. Mrs. Borrow and Miss Clarke remained in Dublin while he plodded through the country. He walked to the wilds of Connemara, pursuing his customary line of inquiry into language and legend, and thence extended his tramp to the Giants’ Causeway. In Dublin he studied with zest the records of the associations which were exploring the ancient literature of the country, and gloated over the stories of Finn and Ossian. He became a member of the Ossianic Society soon after his arrival in the Irish capital. Unfortunately, Borrow left no record of the tour or of his studies in Dublin.

Ireland was, indeed, soon forgotten after his return home in November. At Yarmouth he came almost immediately under the magic spell of Wales again. The unpublished manuscript of “The Sleeping Bard” could not be allowed to slumber any longer, and he determined to issue the book at his own expense. Murray made a graceful compromise; though he would not undertake the publication, he allowed Borrow to use his valuable imprint, so that 250 copies were turned out by Denew the printer of Yarmouth, with the notification on the title-page that the book was published by John Murray. Apparently Borrow came to the conclusion that if Elis Wyn was to be reviewed adequately, he must do it himself. In the _Quarterly Review_ for January, 1861, appeared an anonymous article on “The Welsh and their Literature.” All the sprites which inhabited Borrow’s portfolios knew that the main part of this article had been there for many years. It appeared in the _Quarterly_, polished up, and interleaved with references to the translation of the “Bardd Cwsg.” It was admired by those who were interested in the subject, and they were at any rate sufficiently numerous to buy up the whole edition of Elis Wyn in a month. The book was held in very favourable opinion by Welshmen. This was the last literary work of any sort he did in East Anglia, to which he was shortly to bid farewell for fourteen years.

Borrow and his wife departed from Yarmouth at the end of June, 1860, and took lodgings at No. 21, Montagu Street, Portman Square. The special reason for their residence in the East of England had vanished with the death of his mother, and they had been discussing for some time the project of taking a house in London. There he counted upon closer touch with the literary world. In a sense, he obtained it, for he was in constant companionship with a few choice friends; but for the purposes of a biographer the removal to town was disastrous. After the first year or two he made no conspicuous figure in literature, his correspondence almost ceased, and the records of his movements first become scanty and then vanish altogether. They are to be found in casual references among the reminiscences of the limited circle of his associates—Frances Power Cobbe, Charles Godfrey Leland, and Theodore Watts-Dunton. And, with the last name excepted, it is no very prepossessing picture that we get of him. Miss Clarke had been left at Oulton during the period of house-hunting. She joined them after they had taken No. 22, Hereford Square, Brompton, where they had Miss Cobbe for a near neighbour.

Having installed his household gods there, Borrow began to occupy himself with the most congenial employments he could discover. There was “Wild Wales.” The beloved book was on the stocks; it was being worked up with the affection he bestowed on no other subject. But he did not permit it to absorb him. There were many things to be done in London by a lover of common adventures and a student of social byways. There were rambles in the streets and in the environs of London, where odd characters were far more numerous than in East Anglia, or Wales, or Cornwall. There were gypsies—degenerate gypsies who lived in houses, still more degenerate gypsies who plied petty commerce in caravans, and the remnants of the real blood who camped in the outskirts of the metropolis, and were not unwilling to converse with “the London caloro” when he found his way among them. There was an occasional race; there was an occasional fight. A foot race at Brompton between “Deerfoot,” the Seneca Indian, and Jackson, “the American deer,” in October, 1861, was the subject of a lively description in his notebook.

Borrow tried some of his friends a good deal, even now that he was mellowing. But he had not lost the art of being jovial, and there are records of festivities at which he very successfully entertained those whom he might call his “pals.” Richmond was a favourite resort. One dinner party at the Star and Garter, when Borrow was host, comprised John Murray, his partner Cooke, and his brother-in-law, Dr. David Smith, of Edinburgh. It was a gargantuan feast for that day; it cost Borrow £6 3s., of which £4 1s. 6d. was for wine. His studies in the poetry of many lands went on concurrently with his entertainments and his work on Wales. The habit of translation was ingrained, and could not be conquered. He continued turning poems and legends into English from the Celtic tongues, from Danish, Turkish, and Russian. But no book came of all this industry. The public were still callously indifferent to Borrow’s poetical versions, as they had been in other years. They had put up with some of Bowring’s anthologies, but had now tired even of his Magyars and Serbs. The prevailing sentiment about this kind of literary ware was represented by a ludicrous parody which appeared in _Fraser’s Magazine_:

TE PIKKE MEGGE. THE PIOUS MAIDEN.

Hogy, wogy, Pogy! Holy little Polly! Xupumai trtzaaa bnikttm Love sought me, but I tricked Pogy, wogy, hogy! him. Bsduro plgvbz cttnsttm Polly little holy! Wogy, hogy, Pogy! You thought of me, “I’ve Mlèsrz vbquògp fvikttm. nicked him.” Little holy Polly! I’m not to be your victim.

The utmost Borrow could do was to induce the editor of _Once a Week_—which had just entertained a very different kind of angel unawares in the person of George Meredith—to publish a series of ballads and stories from the Manx, Russian, Danish, and old Norse.

But in 1862 occurred a literary event whose importance was very slowly realised. “Wild Wales” appeared. Its reception by the critics was exceedingly curious. Most of the newspapers ignored it altogether; others were unjust to the point of savagery. For concentrated malice, the _Cornhill_ notice would be difficult to surpass. “Really,” wrote the reviewer (obviously as closely in touch with Borrow and his subject as a cat with the differential calculus), “it is too much to demand that we should read the record of every glass of ale which Mr. Borrow drank—usually with his criticism of its quality—or be patient under the fatiguing triviality of, ‘I paid my bill and departed,’ which occurs incessantly.” But, lest it should be imagined that Borrow was either drinking beer or paying hotel bills all the time he was in Wales, the reviewer went on grudgingly to admit that “snatches of commonplace conversation and intensely prosaic translations of Welsh-poems swell out this book and render it rather tiresome reading.” At least one notice was both fair and complimentary, and foreshadowed the very high opinion in which the book is held at the present day by Welshmen. That was the article in the _Spectator_, which described it as “the first really clever book we remember to have seen in which an honest attempt is made to do justice to the Welsh literature. . . . In the course of his wanderings Mr. Borrow caught very happily the salient points in the Welsh character, and he has depicted them with those light, free touches which none but George Borrow can hit off to such perfection.” True, the _Spectator_ discovered “the fine Roman hand” of Mr. Borrow in some of the speeches of his friends, but felt sure that the conversations were in substance faithfully recorded.

Borrow was in his sixtieth year when “Wild Wales” was published. In spite of the extraordinary extent and variety of his activities, he was by no means an old man. He retained his physical vigour; his mental force was unimpaired. He was to have twenty years more of life in which to accumulate new experiences and contract a rare friendship or two. Yet he had certainly outgrown his vogue. The older public that had hailed some of his writing with demonstrative joy had gone; he had not found—nor was to find while he lived—the newer public that could enter into the spirit in which he did his work. It is a little disconcerting, but not really a matter for surprise, that after the publication of “Wild Wales” Borrow gradually sank out of view. He buried himself still deeper in his philological studies. At intervals he vanished from London to make tours in various parts of the British Islands. Rough notes of these may be consulted in Knapp; they were never polished into anything like literary form. In 1865 came another severance: Miss Clarke, his step-daughter, married Dr. William MacOubrey, and went to live at Belfast. The “old Hen” of Borrow’s letters, the “Henrietta” of “Wild Wales,” had been a member of his household ever since the golden days of sunny Seville, and he had a very deep and sincere affection for her. He did not, of course, feel the separation so acutely as did his wife, who had never parted from her for more than a few weeks at a time during the forty-seven years since she was born; and it was Mrs. Borrow who planned a visit to the Orange capital in the following year. She was escorted to Belfast by her husband, who left her there with Mrs. MacOubrey, while he went off to Scotland. Crossing to Stranraer, he set out upon a lonely tramp in the Lowlands and the Border Country. He visited Abbotsford, but, his rage against Sir Walter Scott having subsided, his notes are as mild as a guidebook. Pushing on to Edinburgh, he returned to Glasgow by rail, and took the steamer to Belfast, spending the remaining weeks of the holiday in Ulster, with pedestrian trips to Lisburn and Antrim.

The journey through the Border was not without some literary fruit, as will be seen. For some years Borrow had been absorbed in Welsh and Danish poetry; but just now his attention was returning to the gypsy friends of his youth. At Kirk Yetholm, a few miles south-east of Kelso, dwelt Esther Blyth, the descendant of a famous gypsy king, herself endowed with a royal title, “the Queen of the Nokkums.” Her majesty was sought out and “interviewed,” and the notes of this encounter were worked into a chapter of the last book Borrow ever wrote.