CHAPTER XIV

THE PASSING OF THE ROMANY RYE

WHEN “The Romano Lavo-Lil” came out at the beginning of 1874, the public were already in possession of Leland’s great book, which finally “queered the pitch” for Borrow. The two would not bear comparison as a study of the Romany language, for Borrow had worked so hurriedly that his vocabulary was much less complete than he might have made it. There are a large number of gypsy words in various parts of “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye” which he failed to incorporate in the new book; and others acquired at Yetholm were also omitted. But it was not only in comparison with Leland’s that Borrow’s last words on the gypsies seemed feeble. Many much more learned persons had been publishing monumental works on the subject—Pott, Miklosich, Paspati, to mention only three. The new philological spirit had been operating on the Romany; the gypsy tongue had been treated with as much care and skill as though it were one of the great literary languages; whereas, when “The Zincali” was offered to the public, as Mr. Hindes Groome pointed out in _The Academy_, “there were not two educated men in England who possessed the slightest knowledge of Romany.”

Mr. Groome was fair, even generous, in some of his acknowledgments. On the other hand, _The Athenæum_ had no bowels of compassion for the veteran; it did not temper justice with mercy. Though it had to confess that not a few of those who had studied the gypsies and their language “owed their first taste for the subject to the perusal of Mr. Borrow’s books,” it could not “allow merely sentimental reasons to prevent us from telling the honest truth,” but forthwith told it in terms of perfect candour.

Amidst this demonstration of the fact that he had outlived his age, Borrow decided to leave London once and for all, and to return to his home on the shores of Oulton Broad, where he was finally lost to the sight of a world not patient of him. As he told Mr. Watts-Dunton, he was going down into East Anglia to die. For many years before the publication of his last book, he had been very little in the limelight. The public which had hailed “The Bible in Spain” with almost delirious delight had grown older. In the absence of regular literary appeals to its attention by Borrow, it had imagined him already dead. Some American celebrities at one of Mrs. Procter’s Sunday afternoons were discussing Borrow and Latham with Mr. Watts-Dunton, who told them “an anecdote of a whimsical meeting” between these two. Was it the computation of his capacity for “bottles at a sitting” which Latham endeavoured to get out of Borrow at Dr. Gordon Hake’s? “My anecdote,” adds Watts-Dunton, “was fully appreciated and enjoyed by my auditors till I chanced to let fall the fact that both heroes of the quaint adventure were still alive, that they occasionally met at Putney, and that I had quite lately been seeking for sundews on Wimbledon Common with the one and strolling through Richmond Park with the other. Then the look that passed from face to face showed how dangerous it is to indulge on all occasions in the coxcombry of mere truth. And afterwards my brilliant hostess did not fail to let me know how grievously my character for veracity had suffered for having talked about two men as being alive who were well known to have been dead years ago—‘talked of them as though I had just left them at luncheon.’ And yet at this very time Latham and Borrow were, in the eyes of a few of England’s most illustrious men, the important names they had always been.” {253}

Borrow’s leave-taking of London had its apotheosis from the same pen in a brilliant and much-quoted passage:

“The last time I ever saw George Borrow was shortly before he left London to live in the country. It was, I remember well, on Waterloo Bridge, where I had stopped to gaze at a sunset of singular and striking splendour, whose gorgeous clouds and ruddy mists were reeling and boiling over the West End. Borrow came up and stood leaning over the parapet, entranced by the sight, as well he might be. Like most people born in flat districts, he had a passion for sunsets. Turner could not have painted that one, I think, and certainly my pen could not describe it; for the London smoke was flushed by the sinking sun and had lost its dunness, and, reddening every moment as it rose above the roofs, steeples, and towers, it went curling round the sinking sun in a rosy vapour, leaving, however, just a segment of a golden rim, which gleamed as dazzlingly as in the thinnest and clearest air—a peculiar effect which struck Borrow deeply. I never saw such a sunset before or since, not even on Waterloo Bridge; and, from its association with ‘the last of Borrow,’ I shall never forget it.”

And Mr. Watts-Dunton paid tribute to Borrow of a sonnet melodising their talk of the “Children of the Open Air,” and making contrast of the lot of lovers of the sun and wind with the habitants of London:

“. . . . Where men wither and choke, Roofed in, poor souls, renouncing stars and skies, And love of woods and wild-wind prophecies— Yea, every voice that to their father spoke; And sweet it seemed to die ere bricks and smoke Leave never a meadow, outside Paradise.”

At the age of seventy-one there was not much left for the solitary spirit to achieve. It was not easy to make new friendships, and even the old ones were difficult to nurture at Oulton. He made one effort to get Edward FitzGerald over from Woodbridge to see him. FitzGerald, twenty years before, had been an ardent admirer of Borrow’s work. Sending him a copy of his translation of Calderon’s plays, he remarked that he was a man “who both did fine things in his own language and was deep read in those of others.” Their correspondence was not extensive, but FitzGerald’s letters are of considerable interest. For example, they show that Borrow was in the secret of old Omar. FitzGerald wrote that “Cowell, to whom I sent a copy, was naturally alarmed at it, he being a very religious man; nor have I given any other copy but to George Borrow . . . and to old Donne . . .” {255} This was a copy of the edition printed in 1859 by Quaritch. But two years before the premature birth of the great poem, FitzGerald had lent Borrow his manuscript of the quatrains, and in asking for the return of it, he wrote: “I only want a look at him. . . . You shall have _Omar_ back directly, or whenever you want him, and I should really like to make you a copy (taking my time) of the best quatrains. I am now looking over the Calcutta manuscript, which has 500!—very many quite as good as those in the manuscript you have; but very many in _both_ manuscripts are well omitted. . . .” FitzGerald had been at Oulton about 1850. In 1856 he had visited Borrow again at Yarmouth, and of that meeting he says expressively, “I enjoyed my evening.” He did not fail, of course, to rub against some of Borrow’s angles. According to Mr. Benson (“Edward FitzGerald,” in the “English Men of Letters” series), he “found this strange pilgrim’s masterful manners and irritable temper uncongenial,” but Mr. Benson admits that FitzGerald said, long afterwards, “he was almost the only friend Borrow had never quarrelled with.” The irritation could have been but slight, if it could be called irritation at all: in one of his wayward moods Borrow banged home the covers of the book just as his guest was about to ask him to read some of the Northern Ballads. This incident is mentioned without rancour by FitzGerald, in a letter in which he makes Borrow a present of Redhouse’s “New Turkish Dictionary,” declares what a pleasant evening he had spent at Yarmouth, and lets his friend into the secret of his amazing marriage.

“I must tell you. I am come up here” (he writes from London) “on my way to Chichester to be—married! to Miss Barton (of Quaker memory), and our united ages amount to 96!—a dangerous experiment on both sides. She at least brings a fine head and heart to the bargain—worthy of a better market. But it is to be, and I dare say you will honestly wish we may do well.”

The “dangerous experiment” turned out as we know. FitzGerald’s letter is hardly that of a man who found Borrow “uncongenial.” He liked the Borrow _ménage_, they had much in common in their literary tastes, and some few common friends—Donne for one, and for another Kerrich, of Geldeston Hall, FitzGerald’s brother-in-law. He liked Borrow’s books, too. They were among the few modern works he read, though his fastidious palate was offended by some of Borrow’s lapses in style. In addition to the meetings at Oulton and Yarmouth, there were foregatherings at Donne’s house in London, at FitzGerald’s own house in Great Portland Street, and at Gorleston.

But this was all twenty years old now; the FitzGerald who received Borrow’s letter at Woodbridge was sixty-six and a close recluse, unable to understand why any man who had reached his age or gone beyond it should want any company but his own. His response is a curious illustration of the hermit way of thought into which he had fallen. He told Borrow that for the last fifteen years he had not visited any of his oldest friends, except the daughters of George Crabbe—“my old parson Crabbe,” vicar of Bredfield, whose “brave old white head” had “sunk into the village churchsward” in 1857—and Donne, to whom he had given a half-day. To have told why he had thus fallen from his company would have been a tedious thing, he said, and all about himself, too—“whom, Montaigne says, one never talks about without detriment to the person talked about.”

“One’s friends, however kind and ‘loyal’ (as the phrase goes), do manage to exist and enjoy themselves pretty reasonably without one.

“So with me. And is it not much the same with you also? Are you not glad now to be mainly alone, and find company a heavier burden than the grasshopper? . . . I like to think over my old friends. They are there, lingering as ineffaceable portraits—done in the prime of life—in my memory. Perhaps we should not like one another so well after a fifteen years’ separation, when all of us change and most of us for the worse. . . .

“So shall things rest? I could not go to you, after refusing all this while to go to older—if not better—friends. . . .”

This letter, dated January 10th, 1875, is almost the final literary relic of Borrow. It sings in a minor key, but with a fitting sombre melody, the requiem of his career in the world of letters. Borrow himself, however, did not renounce and abhor society in FitzGerald’s fashion. Desolate Oulton, the haunt of so many wraiths of past joys and sorrows, saddened the lonely old man, and in the late ’seventies he lived a good deal in Norwich, where he had apartments in Lady Lane, seeking the company of those who knew and liked him. His favourite resort was the old Norfolk Hotel. There he had his special chair, whence he issued his pronouncements _ex cathedra_ on ale and men and things. But to Oulton he turned at the last, dismal as it was. The estate had been pitifully neglected during his residence in London. The Nemesis that dogged his steps as a landed proprietor had always been the litigious tenant. There was one in possession of the Hall Farm in 1878, when Dr. and Mrs. MacOubrey had left London to live at Oulton, in order to bear Borrow company in his declining days. This tenant, calling at the Cottage to deliver an ultimatum about the need for repairs, became rude to Borrow, who fired up quite in his best style, and declared, “Sir, you came in by that door; you can go out by it!”

Borrow’s predilection for the alehouse is beyond question, whether it was in Norwich, or in London, or in Wales. But it was probably not so overpowering as sometimes has been represented. The misrepresentation is doubtless his own fault in great measure, because of the literary emphasis he laid upon the virtue of inns and their staple commodity. We have observed how this affected one of the reviewers of “Wild Wales.” Legends grew up around a certain inn at Oulton Broad, the Wherry Hotel. They were inevitable. Because it was an inn and was near Borrow’s house, gossip assumed that he was a frequent visitor and a bibulous. A sort of myth arose that it was the scene of drinking bouts, where Borrow not only gratified his own passion for quarrelling and fighting, but egged on others to quarrel and fight. It has already been shown on good evidence that he was personally temperate, if not abstemious, and the known facts dispose of the idea that there was any excessive drinking. {259} But the stories gave occasion for a correspondence in one of the London papers a few years ago, when Mr. William Mackay was able to dismiss them by proving that the Wherry Hotel was kept by one Mason during this period, and that Mr. Mason averred that Borrow did not visit the house more than twice, and that he had no recollection of the incidents so vividly described.

Mr. William A. Dutt has given us a graphic little picture {260} of Borrow in the last years of his life in the country of the Broads, and of the impression he made on his neighbours:

“His tall, erect, somewhat mysterious figure was often seen in the early hours of summer mornings or late at night on the lonely pathways that wind in and out from the banks of Oulton Broad. He loved to be mysterious, and the village children used to hush their voices and draw aside at his approach. They looked upon him with fear and awe—for had they not seen him stop and talk with the gypsies, who ran away with little children? But in his heart Borrow was fond of the little ones, though it amused him to watch the impression his strange personality made upon them. Older people he seldom spoke to when out on his solitary rambles; but sometimes he would flash out such a glance from beneath his broad-brimmed hat and shaggy eyebrows as would make timid country-folk hasten on their way filled with vague thoughts and fears of the evil eye. . . .

“Still, Borrow was not unpopular with the villagers, many of whom, long after his death, remembered little acts of kindness on his part by which they had benefited. To the sick and infirm he was always a good friend, though his almost invariable remedy for all the ills that flesh is heir to were wine and ale. He was exceedingly fond of animals, and nothing aroused his wrath more than to see them badly treated. . . . A favourite old cat that was ill crawled out of his house to die in the garden hedge. Borrow no sooner missed the poor creature than he went in search of it, and brought it indoors in his arms. He then laid it down in a comfortable spot, and sat and watched it till it was dead.”

Most old people incline to exaggerate their age after they have passed the common span of life, and are offended if the achievement of longevity is not accounted a meritorious performance in them. Borrow was unconventional in this as in all things. He resented references to his age. The vicar of Lowestoft visited him at Oulton, and had a smooth and delightful experience till he transgressed by asking the veteran how old he was. “Sir,” said Borrow thunderously, “I tell my age to no man!” One of his last bits of writing, in a tremulous hand, was a little dissertation “On People’s Age,” beginning: “Never talk to people about their age. . . . Compliment a man of eighty-five on the venerableness of his appearance, and he will shriek out, ‘No more venerable than yourself,’ and will perhaps hit you with his crutch.” {262}

The forcible sentiment was that of a man whose mind was stronger than his physical frame. Within a few months the passing came. His death, by some strange fate, was as secret as much of his life had been: he passed to the hidden bourne unseen by any human eye; his last agony was even more closely veiled than those years of his youth around which he had diffused a mist as thick as the enchanted vapours raised by his favourite magicians, the Firbolgs.

On July 26th, 1881, Dr. and Mrs. MacOubrey drove to Lowestoft on business. Borrow was left alone in the house. When they returned he lay dead. Censure passed upon his step-daughter and her husband in connection with this incident is ungenerous. They had cared for him so tenderly that it is impossible to accuse them of any lack of affection. And who, viewing George Borrow’s life and character as a rounded whole, would regard the circumstances of his death with disapproval? So, seventy-eight years after the summer evening when, at the “beautiful little town in a certain district of East Anglia, I first saw the light,” he entered into the Life Everlasting, not many miles away, alone in his lonely house, with the fir trees whispering as his spirit departed, and the quiet water shimmering by the little summer-house where that spirit had communed with its choicest companions and accomplished its finest work. The body lay silent there for several days:

“That port which so majestic was and strong, Loose, and deprived of vigour, stretched along: All withered, all discoloured, pale and wan . . .”

On August 4th it was conveyed to London, and laid with the body of his wife in West Brompton Cemetery.

Borrow dead was Borrow forgotten until the afflation of a new time breathed upon him, and his resurrection came. The “strange pilgrim’s masterful manner and irritable temper” took their proper place in the background of the picture; the real value of his pilgrimage was seen. A finnicking age which emphasised his “vulgarity” had ended, and another age had opened which was competent to approve his realism and to appraise his art. Borrow took his rightful niche among the immortals who have illuminated the human comedy and sung the joys of earth. The inspiration of Jasper Petulengro is the inspiration of the New Day: “There’s a wind on the heath, brother. . . . Who would wish to die?”