CHAPTER V

IN FOREIGN PARTS

“ROMANCE brought up” the year 1832. It was a year full of events with an important bearing on the course of Borrow’s life. In the first place, he became acquainted with the Skeppers, of Oulton Hall, near Lowestoft. The introduction to this family issued in a friendship with Mr. Skepper’s sister, the widow of a young naval officer named Clarke. In Mrs. Clarke, a woman somewhat older than himself—she was thirty-six and he was twenty-nine—he met the woman who was to bring into his life its fairest influence and its rarest happiness. But the story of this romance must be postponed for a few pages in order to the relation of a sequence of affairs without which it cannot be understood. They resulted from sundry conversations about Borrow—between the Skeppers and the Rev. Francis Cunningham, Rector of Pakefield, and in turn between Cunningham and Joseph Gurney, his brother-in-law, from whose meadows at Earlham George had fished in boyhood.

Both Cunningham and Gurney were interested in the work of the Bible Society, and between them the idea was hatched of employing Borrow’s philological learning in its behalf. The Society happened at the moment to be looking for a man to superintend the printing of the New Testament in Manchu. There were many negotiations, and ultimately the engagement was consummated which made Borrow’s modest fortune.

To go to St. Petersburg on this business of the Bible Society’s was an adventure after Borrow’s own heart. He had passed through some exceedingly stormy waters, and in this employment he found a secure and congenial harbour. He could well afford to regard lightly the critical attitude of certain people in Norwich, who did not forget to recall the episode of “godless Billy Taylor.” Their temper was reflected in the letter of Harriet Martineau referring to Borrow as a “polyglot gentleman,” and remarking that his appearance as “a devout agent of the Bible Society” evoked “one shout of laughter from all who remembered the old Norwich days.” Borrow did not like their laughter, and he did not forgive their contempt. But for the time he was too busy with the actualities of his new situation to trouble about them, and too elated with his suddenly brightened prospects to be cast down by the jeers of the scornful.

He was going a journey into a far country, and he was going on a more or less philological errand. His task was to undertake the production in the Russian capital of the Manchu version of the Sacred Books made by Lipotsof. Invited to London to see the officials of the Society, he set off in high spirits—and on foot. The long road stretched for a hundred and twelve miles between Norwich and London—that road which some ten years before he had travelled by coach with the little green box of poetical translations. He now tramped it in 27½ hours, and his expenses _en route_ amounted to fivepence halfpenny! This feat was one of his favourite boasts. It was, in its way, a remarkable achievement. Few big, healthy young men would care to undertake such long-sustained exertion on a pint of ale, half a pint of milk, a roll of bread, and two apples. But such is Borrow’s tale of his commissariat arrangements on this expedition.

The Society desired him to learn the Manchu language before he set out for Russia. They gave him six months for the purpose. Even for a meteoric philologist like Borrow, who swallowed a language by memorising its dictionary, six months meant short commons. He could not possibly acquire more than a nodding acquaintance with that most difficult of the tongues of Babel. However, he set about his task with zeal.

There is one amusing passage in the correspondence between him and the Secretary of the Bible Society. Observe the true Borrovian spirit asserting itself in the letter where he expresses pleasure at the prospect of “becoming useful to the Deity, to man, and to myself.” Observe the solemn admonition of the good secretary, when he perceived that a sense of human frailty was not one of Borrow’s most striking characteristics: “Doubtless you mean the prospect of glorifying God.” Thereafter, the Borrovian spirit was subdued (in correspondence) to the proper standard of orthodoxy.

At the end of June, 1833, he set sail for St. Petersburg, by way of Hamburg, and was highly delighted with the Russian capital. He made his way into the acquaintanceship of a number of literary people, in whose society he found congenial entertainment. Among them he speedily established for himself quite a reputation. It was here that he began his long friendship with Hasfeldt, which produced a prolific correspondence. Hasfeldt was a Dane attached to the Russian Government, and a linguist of attainments, who added to his income by the teaching of European languages. He conceived a remarkable fondness for “tall George,” as he called him; the affection was returned as fully as Borrow could return a friendship, and that was in much higher measure than many estimates of him suggest. He met Russian scholars, and found many opportunities for extending his philological studies in the direction of the Oriental languages.

His work on the Chinese version was hard and long. He had to use German printers, who did not always feel for the task the enthusiasm which Borrow expected everybody to throw into anything in which he himself was concerned. They had to be bribed with vodka, and other things, in order that progress might be secured. The Bible Society presumably swallowed the vodka in their delight at the energy Borrow displayed, and they passed a resolution to pay him any expenses to which he might be put in the execution of the commission. He had to furbish up an old fount of type in the Chinese character, that had been lying rusting in a cellar for many years, and to get everything in order himself, because, of course, it was impossible to obtain compositors who knew anything of the Manchu. He even turned printer. So keen was the zest with which he entered into the work that he submitted a proposal to the Society to undertake the distribution of the books when they were printed, going overland to China, and looking in upon the Tartars on the way! Without doubt he would have done it but for the fact that the Russian Government refused to grant him a passport for the purpose. It is characteristic of Borrow that years afterwards he said, and doubtless thought, that he had been overland to China.

The work of printing done, he paid a hurried visit to Moscow, gathering impressions for the description of the Kremlin to be found in “The Bible in Spain,” and on September 9th, 1835, he left St. Petersburg for England, having spent the previous night in a solemn leave-taking of Hasfeldt. While in St. Petersburg hard at work, and feeling run down, he had “the Horrors” several times, but affected to have found a cure for it in the shape of strong port wine. It was during his stay in Russia that the news arrived of the death of his brother John in Mexico. He had discovered other activities to occupy him besides the translation of the Testament into Chinese. He turned homilies of the Church of England into Russian and Manchu, and did translations of some of the sacred Buddhist books from Manchu into English. He conceived at the moment no high opinion of the Buddhist philosophy. “You will be surprised,” he writes to the Rev. F. Cunningham, “that Satan by such inconsistent trash should have been able to ensnare the souls of millions!” If that had been read in the Martineau household there might have been another “burst of laughter.” It was while he was in St. Petersburg, too, that he published his “Targum,” a collection of poetic translations from thirty different languages and dialects. When Pushkin, the poet, after Borrow’s departure, received a presentation copy of this book, he expressed his great regret that he had not met the author.

Borrow reached London on the 18th September, and went down to Norfolk, feeling anxious again about his future, and hoping that the Bible Society would be able to find some further employment for him. He was not disappointed. The Society had not yet given up hope that they might find a way to send him to China, but in the meantime they resolved to commission him to Portugal. On November 2nd they passed a resolution that he should be asked to go to Lisbon and Oporto to inquire about “means and channels for promoting the circulation of the Holy Scriptures in Portugal.” {91} Here is the origin of two of his books, of which one was “The Bible in Spain.” On November 6th he sailed from London, touching at Falmouth on the 8th, and was at Lisbon on the 13th. He was to confer with one Wilby about the work; but, Wilby being away, Borrow consoled himself with the company of Captain Heyland, of the 35th Foot, whose acquaintance he had made on the voyage. With him he made several trips, upon one of which he met the _bohémienne_ landlady of Cintra. During this first expedition to the Peninsula, he set up relations with the gypsies of Spain, which provided the germ of the first of his books that attracted anything like general attention. At Badajoz he encountered a gypsy tribe, by whom he was detained ten days. In that time he had translated the Gospel of Saint Luke into the Câlo, or Spanish gypsy language, and the version was subsequently printed by the Bible Society. One of the Romany chals, Antonio Lopez, accompanied him most of the way to Madrid, delaying three days at Merida in a gypsy house. Antonio finally went off with a gitana. Borrow bought a donkey from the girl, and rode on the animal’s back as far as Talavera, where he sold it to a Toledo Jew whom he met on the road. The rest of the journey to Madrid he did by the diligence, like a common Christian.

By the time of his arrival there, he had formed a definite project of printing the New Testament in Spanish and in Spain, without comment or note of any sort. The law would prohibit the circulation of such a book if it were printed outside and brought into the country. It was decided to use the current Catholic version, in order not to excite any more prejudices than could be helped, and to sell cheaply, and thus to spread the book among people who had never seen it before. This was a time in Spain of constant political excitement, chronic Ministerial change, and periodical revolution; and Borrow had much trouble in getting official recognition for the enterprise, without which he might as well have left it alone. But the way was smoothed for him by Sir George Villiers, the British Minister, and at the end of twelve months he returned to England with an active campaign mapped out in his mind, for which he soon obtained the approval of the Society. In a letter to his mother about this, he remarked that his “ordination” would be put off till his return. This is the first and the last that we hear of any proposal to enter the Church.

On his way out to Spain the second time, he happened across Santa Coloma, the Carlist, who is frequently met with hereafter in his Spanish adventures. “The Bible in Spain” relates very closely the events of the next two years—his wanderings and escapes, his enterprise in Madrid, where he set up a bookselling shop, his imprisonment for insulting the Government and the Catholic Church—an offence of which he was quite innocent, for such was not his method at the time. The trouble was brought on him by an evangelical firebrand, named Lieutenant Graydon, who led Borrow into one of his scrapes with the Peninsular powers by claiming to be associated with him in the work of the Bible Society. Borrow’s imprisonment resulted in a declaration by him in the Spanish Press, directed against Graydon. He said that neither himself nor the Bible Society was actuated by any enmity against either the Government or the Catholic clergy of Spain, and concluded by avowing himself the sole agent of the Society in the Peninsula. Out of this grew an estrangement between Borrow and the Society. It happened that Graydon was one of the pets of Mr. Brandram, joint secretary of the Society, and was actually regarded as one of their agents, though he received no pay, being the holder of a Government pension. He was an enthusiastic evangelist, who seems to have lacked nothing save discretion, but manifested this defect by fierce attacks upon the Catholic faith in its stronghold, instead of contenting himself with prosecuting the primary work of the Society, which was the distribution of the unadulterated Scriptures. In the event, Graydon was withdrawn from Spain, but it was expressly stated that this step was taken only in the interests of his own safety, and that the Society would pass no judgment on the merits of the dispute between him and Borrow until Graydon had returned to England and had an opportunity of vindicating himself. Borrow at the same time was ordered to cease issuing his advertisement. It is difficult to judge a man like Graydon. His good faith in all he did can hardly be doubted, but there is no question that the result of his ill-timed action was to put an end to the work of the Society and the circulation of the Bible in Spain for many years.

The relations between Earl Street and Borrow grew more strained, and very soon he had practically a command to come to London. He packed up and returned, but such was the force of his character that he fascinated Earl Street into sending him to Spain a third time. He was only home a month or two, and got back to the Peninsula on the last day of 1838. But the mission was not of much further use, for there had been another change of Ministry in the meanwhile, and Borrow and the Society were again out of official favour.

He proceeded to Seville, settling there for a purpose, as we shall presently see. In the sunlit southern city he was encountered by an English traveller, who has left a most entertaining account of him. This was Lieutenant-Colonel Elers Napier, in whose “Excursions along the Shores of the Mediterranean” appears the remarkable figure of a Man of Mystery, who is easily identified as Don Jorge—though apparently Napier never learned who he was. Borrow, six feet three, with piercing black eyes, snowy head, and swarthy, hairless face, made a profound impression on his new friend—and we may be sure that he omitted nothing that would deepen it. He showed off all his best points and maintained a rigid silence upon the question of his identity, so that in Napier’s recollections he assumes almost supernatural proportions, and is described throughout as “The Unknown.” He revealed all his miscellaneous acquaintance with languages, Occidental and Oriental. He conversed with the Colonel in Spanish, in Latin, in French (“the purest Parisian accent”), in Italian. He spoke English perfectly, but did not appear to be an Englishman. He was even as conversant with Hindu as the Anglo-Indian himself; he seemed, Napier says, to know everything and everybody, but was apparently known to nobody himself. His almost magic power over the gypsies, his familiarity with their patois and their customs, the way in which they almost worshipped him when he took Napier by night for a visit to one of their weird encampments, added to the marvel.

But the real significance of the visit to Seville is not to be sought in the archives of the Bible Society or in the jottings of Colonel Napier. Borrow’s friendship with Mrs. Clarke, of Oulton, arose in the fashion already mentioned. His long absences from England did not impair it, and in 1838 it developed in peculiar circumstances, which were the subject from time to time of scandal utterly unfounded, and of gossip more or less impertinent and irrelevant. Whether Borrow, during the years from 1832 to 1838 nurtured dreams of any relation closer than friendship it is hardly possible to determine. He was not “a marrying man,” and probably the sober little romance that ended in their wedding was a thing of sudden growth. That theory is encouraged by a passage in his correspondence as late as 1838, when he told his friend Usóz that it was better to suffer the halter than the yoke, and expressed his conviction that bachelordom was the better kingdom for him. But at the end of the same year, during his stay in England, he visited his friends at Oulton, and found a state of affairs that doubtless altered his judgment.

The business of Mrs. Clarke, who was the principal heiress of the Oulton Hall estate, was in a highly complicated condition. She had none but professional advisers, save Borrow, and leant with obvious relief upon his friendship to guide her through a puzzling maze of family disputes. It would be wearisome to attempt to follow the controversies about the disposition of the property. They finally involved Chancery proceedings, and Dr. Knapp asserts that Mrs. Clarke’s solicitors advised her that it would be well for her to disappear for a time. The reason for this counsel is obscure, but the fact that it was followed is important. Mrs. Clarke consulted Borrow about it, with the result that her evanishment took the form of a journey to Spain, accompanied by her daughter Henrietta. The fact created an amazing quantity of idle speculation and not too generous suggestion. The plan was arranged in March, 1839. Borrow was then in Madrid, and immediately posted off to Seville to prepare a house for the reception of the two ladies, having given them some useful hints, drawn from his long experience of Spain, as to the household gods they ought to bring with them. They arrived in June, and were installed at No. 7, Plazuela de la Pila Seca, which Borrow had modestly furnished and was himself occupying.

The little wind of scandal that played about this arrangement will not disturb the equanimity of those who know their Borrow. The _ménage_ was unquestionably a little difficult to explain to the Spaniards to whom explanation was necessary, and to this difficulty Dr. Knapp attributes Borrow’s expedition to Tangier at the end of August. This was the trip with which “The Bible in Spain” suddenly closed down in the approved Borrovian style. The scandal was of short duration and small effect. But in after years other suggestions were made, including the highly improbable and offensive one that Mrs. Clarke was at this time pursuing Borrow with the object of matrimony, and “travelled over half Europe in search of him.” Another friendly theory advanced was that Borrow’s proceedings were governed by mercenary motives, and that he married Mrs. Clarke because she had an income of three or four hundred a year.

Meanwhile, the quarrel with the Bible Society was dragging its slow length along. The correspondence is confused and in general uninteresting, except that it shows how Borrow’s attitude towards Earl Street had altered since the time when he climbed down before the protests of the good secretary in the first days of their association. He was on his feet now.

He felt surer of his ground than when he was at his wits’ end for employment and subsistence. Consequently his native impatience of restraint came out. The Bible Society never gauged their man. In one despatch to Earl Street, Borrow had said of a certain enterprise that “his usual good fortune accompanied them.” “This,” replied Mr. Brandram, “is a mode of speaking to which we are not well accustomed; it savours, some of our friends would say, a little of the profane. . . . Pious expressions may be thrust into letters _ad nauseam_, and it is not for that I plead; but is there not a _via media_?” The breach grew wider and severance was ordained; it was consummated very shortly after Borrow’s return to England at the beginning of the next year.

The visit to Tangier occupied some five or six weeks. Borrow returned to Seville at the end of September, and set to work compiling notes and making transcripts for his book on the Gypsies of Spain. The enterprise was assisted by diligent friends, such as Bailly, {99a} Usóz, {99b} and Gayangos. {99c} The fruits of their curious researches among dusty and neglected bookshelves may be seen in the long translations from archaic Spanish authors in “The Zincali.” It was a Spaniard who invented the epigram on the virtues of old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old books to read. But we may be excused for excluding from the category of books which have the bouquet of old crusted port the discourses of Dr. Sancho de Moncada and others to which Borrow has treated us so liberally.

He spared time from these labours and from the task of settling up with the Bible Society to pay considerable attention to Mrs. Clarke and “Hen”—the affectionate diminutive given to her daughter Henrietta. The widow had found Seville, as Borrow promised her it should be, “a most agreeable retreat,” where “the growls of her enemies could scarcely reach her.” The ladies enjoyed to the full the startling change from the life of the English fens to that of the sunny and many-hued Spanish city. They realised his prophecy that it would be a delicious existence where, “during the summer and autumn, the people reside in their courtyards, over which an awning is hung. A very delicious existence it is—a species of dream of sunshine and shade, of falling water and flowers.” And, incidentally, of course, a very fit setting for such love-making as came to be done: the weather is always fine when people are courting, as a modern sage has remarked. Not much more than a month after his return from Morocco, Borrow had proposed marriage to Mrs. Clarke, and had been accepted. The arrangement was to a certain extent a “convenient” one for both parties. With little prospect of further employment by the Bible Society, and only a precarious hold on any profitable literary work, Borrow had no glowing future before him. Mrs. Clarke felt the need of a man to manage affairs for her at Oulton. Still, there is ample evidence that this was a fortuitous concourse of circumstances, and that it had little to do with the marriage. The warm English friendship had become more intimate as the years passed, and there was nothing more natural than this sequel when they were thrown together in the “delightful existence” in which she hid from her “enemies” at Seville.

Having decided to cross the Rubicon, Borrow determined that the sooner it was done the better. There was to be no “sweet, reluctant, amorous delay.” He began at once to make preparations for the return to England in order that they might be married in their own country. One of the first steps to be taken to this end was to procure his passport from the Alcalde. Why this official disapproved of Borrow cannot be affirmed. As a son of the True Church he may have conceived a prejudice against the Protestant colporteur; he may have been infected by the “spy” mania; he may have been merely anxious to display his own importance. At any rate, he resolved to give the _Ingles rubio_ as much trouble as possible to remove himself and his party out of Spain. He raised questions about the validity of Borrow’s papers, refused the passport, and would not be pacified by the offer of fees, “lawful or unlawful,” to quote Borrow, who sent to him apparently under the impression that authority, though a stubborn bear, might be led by the nose with gold, as the clown said to Autolycus. When Don Jorge himself went to the office to inquire into the matter, he was told to go away. Instead he continued to investigate the motives of the Alcalde, who thereupon threatened to carry him to prison. Borrow dared him to do so—and he did it. This was his third acquaintance with the inside of a Spanish gaol. He sent a reassuring note to Mrs. Clarke, and had a message taken to the British Consul. Colonel Napier had noticed earlier in the year that the police kept sharp eyes on Borrow, and attributed it to the suspicion that he was (of all things in the world!) a Russian spy. There was clearly something in the suggestion that he was under espionage, for while he was in prison his house was searched for papers. Nothing “compromising” being found, he was released the next night.

His indignation at this outrage reached white heat, and did not die down for months. His insistence upon redress detained Borrow in the country much longer than he had proposed to stop. Once having got his knife into Spanish officialdom, he twisted it round till he had gouged out his pound of flesh. And even then, after he had returned to England, and the knife was no longer available, Spanish officialdom received very severe treatment from that even more terrible weapon, his pen. From Seville he set working all the diplomatic machinery that an injured Briton could influence; he went to Madrid on the business; he wrote incessantly and exhaustively about it. His return to England and his marriage had to wait until he had settled accounts with the impertinent Alcalde de Barrio, who had laid sacrilegious hands upon a subject of her Britannic Majesty—and that subject George Borrow. While ambassadors and consuls and State secretaries were busily employed in official correspondence on his behalf, he proceeded with the work on the “Gypsies,” and did not get away from Spain till April, 1840.

The embarkation of the colporteur and his party upon the _Royal Adelaide_ steamer at Cadiz was an impressive ceremony. Borrow was taking a long farewell of Spain, and he was not going home without souvenirs of his residence there. In the previous year he had purchased the Arab horse celebrated in his books as “Sidi Habismilk” (being interpreted, “My Lord Mustard”). The retinue at Cadiz included not only Mrs. Clarke and Henrietta, but also Sidi Habismilk and Hayim ben Attar, “the Jew of Fez,” Borrow’s servant. {103} They touched at Lisbon, where General Cordova came on board—not on business of State, but in search of a consignment of cigars that had been sent to him in the care of the captain. Borrow wrote an amusing sketch of the General and two Secretaries of Legation stowing Havana cigars in their pockets “with all the eagerness of contrabandista.” {104} The vessel arrived in the port of London on April 16th, and the party put up at the Spread Eagle, in Gracechurch Street. As soon as the licence could be obtained, the marriage of “George Henry Borrow, bachelor,” with “Mary Clarke, widow,” was celebrated at St. Peter’s Church, Cornhill, and witnessed by John Pilgrim, of Norwich (the bride’s solicitor) and by her daughter Henrietta. The wedding day was April 23rd.

There remained a very little business to do in London. He had an interview with the General Purposes Committee of the Bible Society, received a letter from Mr. Brandram, saying that there was no sphere open “to which your services in connection with our Society can be transferred,” and quickly terminated his relations with Earl Street. In spite of the little differences that had arisen, there was a generous reference to Borrow in the Report of the Society for 1840. He was said to have succeeded “by almost incredible pains, and at no small cost and hazard,” in his last mission to Spain, and to have assisted in circulating during five years nearly fourteen thousand copies of the Scriptures. Thus the Bible Society and Don Jorge said good-bye.

At the beginning of May, Mr. and Mrs. Borrow and Miss Clarke went down to Oulton. The Hall having been let to a farmer, they took up their residence in a little house on the margin of the Broad, known as Oulton Cottage.