CHAPTER VI

THE SUMMER HOUSE AT OULTON

WHEN Borrow went to Oulton he was thirty-seven. The comforts of the domesticity to which he settled down were sweet, but its joys were of a very different quality from those golden matrimonial projects of which he had dreamed in Mumper’s Dingle. He was older, sadder, if not much wiser. He had modified the scale of his ambitions. He was bent upon the acquisition of such fame as he could attract through the avenue of literature, and not disdainful of what local celebrity might come his way. But though he was not of the temperament to apostrophise with Cowper—

“Domestic happiness! Thou only bliss Of Paradise that has survived the Fall!”

there is everything in favour of the supposition that, in marrying Mrs. Clarke, Borrow wrought better for himself than a man of his temperament usually has an actuarial expectation of doing in matrimony. Moreover, he did infinitely better than a great number of literary persons who have taken the plunge in similar circumstances. There was no such tragedy about his marriage as befell his friend and neighbour Edward FitzGerald; indeed, there was no tragedy at all. Its absence is due to Mrs. Borrow’s remarkable personality, her wifely qualities, unfailing devotion to him in all his fads and moods and whimsies. She was a perfect “helpmeet”; she provided him with a buffer to absorb some of the shocks of outrageous fortune; she was a patient amanuensis and an indefatigable secretary.

The picture one constructs of his wife from the materials—slight enough—that Borrow himself gives, and from the correspondence extant, is that of the “flower of wifely patience”—a woman in whom tact has been developed to such a degree as to become a kind of extra sense. She was married to one of the queerest specimens of mankind that Nature ever evolved; yet she secured in their union happiness for both. Her affection for him was true and deep; it was strong enough even to prevail over idiosyncrasies that might easily have been fatal to any chance of domestic peace, to say nothing of marital bliss. She was one of the women to whom “patience hath such mild composure given” that even Borrow failed to destroy her equanimity and self-possession. Behind her hero-worship appears now and then an illuminating gleam of feminine commonsense—just a shooting ray upon some foible; but whenever it seems likely to show Borrow in a specifically unfavourable light it is immediately switched off.

Near the easternmost point of land in England, on the margin of Oulton Broad, in a spot where the roar of the North Sea could be heard, was the cottage in which the best of his remaining years were to be passed. Here he was to prosecute amid the solemn marshland the eternal search for truth and happiness, and to find that the pursuit was even more difficult for him than for the majority of mankind. The house contained few rooms, but sufficient for the requirements of the little family, and its quietude and isolation were special recommendations to Borrow in the particular mood in which he then found himself. The scenery was of a character for which he had strong affection, and the place itself was linked with one or two of the powerful emotions of his youth. The Broad stretched away from the end of his garden, and he overlooked it from the summer-house he built as a study. Behind the house: and almost surrounding it, were plantations of pine trees. For the rest, only an occasional tower or windmill broke the level horizon. The scene is different, more varied, and much fuller of life at the present day, when the virtues of the Broads as pleasure waters and of the country round as a residential district have been discovered and exploited. But in certain hours and seasons it is easy to imagine Oulton as George Borrow knew it.

Miss Elizabeth Harvey has left us a picture of Borrow as the friends of this period recalled him. {109} In his wooden pavilion “on the very margin of the water,” she tells us, “he had many strange old books in various languages. I remember he once put one before me, telling me to read it. ‘Oh, I can’t,’ I replied. He said, ‘You ought: it’s your own language.’ It was an old Saxon book. He used to spend a great deal of his time in this room, writing, translating, and at times singing strange words in a stentorian voice, while passers-by on the lake would stop to listen with astonishment and curiosity to the singular sounds.” A note on his personal appearance, by the same hand, may help to keep his figure in mind: “He was six feet three, a splendid man, with handsome hands and feet. He wore neither whiskers, beard, nor moustache. His features were very handsome, but his eyes were peculiar, being round and rather small, but very piercing, and now and then fierce. He would sometimes sing one of his Romany songs, shake his fist at me, and look quite wild. Then he would ask, ‘Aren’t you afraid of me?’ ‘No, not at all,’ I would say. Then he would look just as gentle and kind, and say, ‘God bless you, I would not hurt a hair of your head.’” Here was he, then, when he set up author in real earnest, and induced “glorious John” to publish the first book that resulted from his adventures in foreign parts. This was “The Zincali; or, An Account of the Gypsies of Spain, with an Original Collection of their Songs and Poetry, and a Copious Dictionary of their Language.” Most of the compilation—for such it is, and a desultory compilation at that—had been made during his five years in Spain. It was written at odd times, “chiefly in ventas and posadas, whilst wandering through the country in the arduous and unthankful task of distributing the Gospel among its children.”

In its published form “The Zincali” was an amalgam of several schemes that had occurred to the author from time to time during his Spanish wanderings. He had projected a collection of the rhymes and proverbial sayings of the gypsies of Spain, inspired thereto by the material he had gathered at Badajoz and Merida, to which additions were made some years later at Seville with the assistance of Juan Antonio Bailly, a French courier with a considerable acquaintance among the Câlé. He had also proposed a glossary of Câlo and English, which afterwards resolved itself into a limited vocabulary of words occurring in the songs and sayings that he and Bailly had collected. Both these schemes were imperfectly executed. Borrow’s knowledge of the Spanish-gypsy language was quite empirical, and Bailly’s collections were either written by illiterate persons, or taken down from the lips of people who spoke a corrupted jargon. Borrow and Bailly made a large number of translations from obscure Spanish authors—and this was the material from which “The Zincali” was constructed. He eked it out with a quantity of out-of-the-way information and anecdote acquired during his association with gypsies in England and Russia, and in the course of much miscellaneous browsing among books. A more unscientific process of writing “An Account of the Gypsies of Spain, etc.,” it would be hard to devise. There were half a hundred works of more or less utility which he might have consulted, and there is no evidence that he had seen more than a tithe of that number. But, _pari passu_, there is certainly no evidence that if he had seen them all he would have produced a better book. In fact, here, as in every other case, his work does not depend for its charm and its value upon any scientific basis whatever, but upon the idiosyncrasies of Borrow himself, the mordant style, the quaint observation, the atmosphere with which he contrives to invest his subject. “The Zincali” was read at first, as it is read now, not so much for the accuracy of its history or its philology as for its intrinsic interest as literature.

Having put together at Oulton these notes, memoranda, rhymes, translations, descriptions, and scraps of a gypsy vocabulary, Borrow took the compost to John Murray, who agreed to publish an edition of 750 copies. The book attracted certain minds attuned to the Borrovian spirit, and it was admitted to display the supreme virtue of originality. The voice of Murray, above all, was encouraging, and to Borrow that was the voice of the “Mæcenas of British literature.” In spite of occasional difficulties, he held Mr. Murray in unfailing honour, and was proud to have his work sealed with the _cachet_ of Albemarle Street. The close association of the Murrays with Richard Ford, whose “Handbook” was long the classic English work on Spain, had important results for Borrow. Ford was living in retirement at Heavitree, near Exeter—the haven where, half a century later, George Gissing found rest in his last days—and to him the manuscript of “The Zincali” was sent for critical observation. Ford’s knowledge of Spain was extensive and peculiar, and he immediately perceived in Borrow a man after his own heart, who preferred byways to highways, was full of curious learning, and invariably took the unconventional outlook. {112} His criticism of the book was what might have been expected. It took the form of a regret that Borrow had not given his readers more of himself “instead of the extracts from those blunder-headed old Spaniards, who knew nothing about gypsies.” But, on the whole, both Murray and Ford were pleased. So were the reviewers. As to the public, they bought the work very slowly. It appeared in April, 1841, and by June only three hundred copies had been sold. Murray explained this genially by declaring that the state of politics had shed a blight over literature; no book was selling, and Borrow’s only shared the fate of the rest.

But before this a new enterprise had been designed. It was to be an account of Borrow’s personal adventures while engaged in the circulation of the Scriptures in the Peninsula. The scheme appealed strongly to Ford, and Murray thought well of it. Ford was “delighted” to know that Borrow meditated such a work. “The more odd personal adventures the better, and still more so if dramatic; that is, giving the exact conversations.” “I have given him much advice,” said Ford in a letter to Addington, “to avoid Spanish historians and _poetry_ like prussic acid; to stick to himself, his biography, and queer adventures.” And Borrow wrote to Ford: “I shall attend to all your advice. The book will consist entirely of my personal adventures, travels, etc., in that country during five years. I met with a number of strange characters, all of whom I have introduced; the most surprising of them is my Greek servant, who accompanied me in my ride of 1,500 miles.” And again: “‘The Bible in Spain’ is a rum, very rum, mixture of gypsyism, Judaism, and missionary adventure, and I have no doubt will be greedily read.” Here was the impulse from which arose “The Bible in Spain.”

The book which gave Borrow his first and greatest vogue was a compilation based mainly on the letters he had sent home in the form of reports to the Bible Society. They were unquestionably the most remarkable reports from a literary point of view, and the most unconventional from a religious point of view, that had ever been received by the grave and reverend seniors of Earl Street. The Society had been staggered once or twice. Borrow’s confession that he was a little “superstitious,” his reference to the “prophetess” of Manzanares, his “luck”—all these were foreign phrases, and distasteful to the pundits of the Bible Society. They chid Borrow; but they put up with him until the final disruption, and now, when he applied for permission to use his letters in connection with the new book, they treated him very well. There were some episodes—the squabble with Graydon among them—for which they were not anxious to secure more publicity, a very natural feeling; but, Borrow giving assurances, they “cheerfully forwarded the letters to him.”

The relations between the Bible Society and this astounding missionary of theirs provide a quaint chapter in literary history. Throughout a great part of their intercourse with him they seem to have remained in a state of bland and childlike innocence with regard to the real character and the actual personality of their agent. They were aware of his eccentricity, but apparently blind to the causes from which the eccentricity sprang. This was the quality which gave his letters from Spain their value for the purposes of the book he now began to edit.

The year 1841 was gloomy, with bad weather and much disease. It was the year when the murrain first appeared in Great Britain and spread havoc throughout the agricultural districts. Of all men Borrow was most delicately affected by the moods of Nature round him, most sympathetically attuned—wild and fierce where Nature was fierce and wild, gentle and sunny amid fair meads in fine weather. And during this miserable year he found it hard to make progress with his writing. Next spring the change came with a rush, cold and dry, with bright days merging into a glorious summer. The country called Borrow out. He tells us that he spent most of his time riding his Arab horse “over heaths and through the green lanes of my native land,” or staying at home and fishing for big pike in the ponds near Oulton Broad, or basking in the sun. He worshipped Sidi Habismilk, and the horse worshipped his master so manifestly as almost to encourage the belief that Borrow was really a “horse-wizard.” The Arab followed him about like a dog. But this magnetism of his was not confined to horses; it was exercised equally over dogs and cats. Miss Harvey mentions that when Borrow set out from Oulton for a walk, he was often accompanied by two dogs and a cat. Grimalkin would, of course, be satisfied with much less pedestrianism than her master and the dogs, and would turn back home after a quarter of a mile or so. These diversions occupied him well into the summer. It was only when the heat and his own laziness began to remind him of sun-baked Andalusia that the big book came to his mind as a duty to be done. In actual fact, it would seem that the bulk of the manuscript was in the hands of Murray by the middle of the year in the form of a fair copy made by Mrs. Borrow from the letters and from the new connecting links which the author scribbled, as he says, “higgledypiggledy” on the blank leaves of account-books and the backs of envelopes.

The book was published in December, 1842, and dated 1843. Ford, whose interest in it was continuous, had given Borrow much advice; he prophesied success. “Avoid words; stick to deeds,” was his counsel. There should be no “fine writing,” but plenty of wild adventure, “journals . . . sorcery, Jews, Gentiles, rambles, and the interior of Spanish prisons.” Borrow was to “avoid rant and cant. Dialogues always tell; they are dramatic, and give an air of reality.” With how much fidelity Borrow followed this advice needs no emphasis. How accurate was Ford’s diagnosis of the public taste the sequel demonstrates.

There was a loud chorus of praise from the literary papers. Those who had approved “The Zincali” called their readers to witness how they had unerringly detected the trail of true genius. The _Athenæum_ and the _Examiner_ led the way. Ford wrote a pæan in the _Edinburgh_; the _Quarterly_ was sorry it had overlooked the “Gypsies,” but made up for the omission by its reception of “The Bible.” The author became the lion of the hour; visiting London, he was fêted with ambassadors and “princes and members of Parliament,” as he wrote to his wife. “On Saturday night I went to a grand soirée, and the people came in throngs to be introduced to me. To-night I am going to the Bishop of Norwich, to-morrow to another place, and so on.” He was overwhelmed with congratulations from private friends, among whose letters those of Hasfeldt from St. Petersburg gave him most pleasure. Six editions of the book were sold in England before the end of the year; it was pirated in America by three houses; it was translated into French, German, and Russian. Borrow was the most scintillating star in the literary firmament of 1843.

The book deserved its success. It has all the Borrovian merits and few of the Borrovian defects. There is the charm of the wonderful style, which is no style at all, the crisp sentence, the unexpected epithet, the penetrating phrase, jumpy and abrupt, but compelling the reader to take the jump and make the sudden halt because it is the only thing to do. There is the astonishing variety of adventure, of character, of colour, of scene, the wealth of incident, the compelling force of narrative. Ford said that Borrow “sometimes put him in mind of Gil Blas; {118} but he had not the sneer of the Frenchman, nor did he gild the bad.” There was, he added, a touch of Bunyan in the way in which, like that enthusiastic tinker, he hammered away at the Devil, or his man-of-all-work on earth—the Pope. It was, in fine, such a book as had never been placed in the hands of the public which now read it with tremendous avidity—the public interested in foreign missions, in the propagation of the Gospel in foreign parts—in a word, “the religious world.” “The Bible in Spain” coloured with all the hues of romance the great work of disseminating the Scriptures; it introduced them to new people and to new scenes; it candied the villainies of gypsies with the frosted sugar of evangelical effort, and if it recited strange things of superstitious papists and dubious prophetesses, was not the guide who introduced these matters to them “a devout agent of the Bible Society,” whose end justified all the means he sought? The “polyglot gentleman” was the most piquant sensation that had ever made its way into thousands of English drawing-rooms.

It was obvious that so great a success must be followed up, and “The Bible in Spain” was hardly in the press before Borrow was pondering a scheme for a book to follow it. For many reasons, the matter was long in maturing. The chief of them, probably, was Borrow’s health. As he grew older, his innate melancholy deepened into hypochondria, from which he emerged occasionally with fits of high-strung merriment. At forty years of age he had lived three ordinary lives. He was irritable and eccentric, the irresponsible victim of megrims. Success did not sweeten life for him. While he was the literary lion of London, he growled at those who fêted and flattered him as though he would devour them. He was certainly an admirer of George Borrow himself, and he was not displeased with the flattery; but it left him unsatisfied. Hasfeldt, with whom he still corresponded, noted his unrest, rallied him, tried to cheer him, adjuring him to philosophy. But the lack of peace was the effect of a deeper cause than Hasfeldt’s friendly soul could divine; deeper than Borrow himself could plumb.

“I did very wrong not to bring you when I came” (so he wrote to his wife from London, when at the zenith of his social success and at the nadir of mental and spiritual tribulation), “for without you I cannot get on at all. Left to myself, a gloom comes upon me which I cannot describe. . . . My place seems to be in our own dear cottage, where, with your help, I hope to prepare for a better world. . . . The poor bird when in trouble has no one to fly to but his mate.”

His condition displayed itself in ridiculous quarrels with his neighbours, particularly about the conflicts in which their dogs were involved. It was characteristic of Borrow that he would never admit his own dog to be in the wrong. One dispute is set out by Dr. Knapp in a formal correspondence with the vicar of Oulton. The parson described the Borrow dog as “a beast of a very quarrelsome and savage disposition.” Borrow retorted that the animal was “a harmless house-dog.” The last passage of Borrow’s last letter on the subject was:

“Circumstances over which Mr. Borrow at present has no control will occasionally bring him and his family under the same roof with Mr. Denniss; that roof, however, is the roof of the House of God, and the prayers of the Church of England are wholesome from whatever mouth they may proceed.”

He became absolutely furious when a railway was taken through his estate and past his house by one of the schemes of Sir Morton Peto.

It was in this temper that he began the book which was to stir generations into controversy, to arouse bitter criticism and tremendous recrimination, to destroy for his lifetime the literary reputation that Borrow had earned—the book destined, in the irony of fate, to be that upon which such share of immortality as Borrow possesses will probably rest.

“Lavengro” passed through many mutations while it was planning and writing. The idea of an autobiography had been suggested by Ford, who wanted him to publish his “whole adventures for the last twenty years,” describing the countries he had visited, discussing the languages he knew, and treating of the people he had lived with. The “reader” who had pronounced judgment for Murray upon the manuscript of “The Bible in Spain” had thought it would be well to prefix to that narrative some pages of autobiographical matter. These hints fructified early, for “The Bible” had hardly issued from the press before he was suggesting to Murray another book: “Capital subject: early life, studies and adventures; some account of my father, William Taylor, Whiter, Big Ben, etc. etc.”

His first plan was more coherent and more comprehensive than the book in its published form; it was to be an actual autobiography in three volumes, the first to take him to the time of his father’s death, the second to describe his literary life in London and his adventures on the road, and to proceed to his travels abroad; the third to give his adventures in Russia and carry him through a journey in Barbary and Turkey, which yet remained to be undertaken. The first part of the scheme was faithfully carried out, though Borrow wrote very slowly. Throughout the early correspondence on the subject with Murray, he referred to the book as “My Life: A Drama.” It was not till October, 1843, that he mentioned the title “Lavengro: A Biography.” Next month he told Murray that he had reached his Irish experiences. “I am now in a blacksmith’s shop in the south of Ireland, taking lessons from the Vulcan in horse-charming and horse-shoe making.” In January, 1844, he described it in a letter to Dawson Turner, of Yarmouth, the collector of manuscripts, as “a kind of biography in the Robinson Crusoe style.” There was much more difficulty in stringing together the “Lavengro” episodes than in editing the letters from Spain. He was writing from memory of matters twenty or thirty years old, not visualising recent travels with the assistance of documents made on the spot. Further, he laboured under a sense of the necessity for doing something specially fine in order that his new book might not endanger the reputation he had obtained with his last. “People will expect so much,” he wrote to Murray. “I go on . . . scribbling away, though with a palpitating heart.” Ford, who visited him at Oulton (January, 1844), was enthusiastic about the book, but disapproved of Borrow’s scheme for dropping several years (“the veiled period”—1826 to 1833): “I shall be most anxious,” he wrote, “to hear you tell your own story and recent adventures; but first let us lift up a corner of the curtain over _those seven years_.” Borrow was enthusiastic, too, in the intervals of sunshine that lit up his melancholy life. “‘Lavengro’ progresses steadily, but I am in no hurry. It is my third book. Hitherto the public has said: ‘Good! _Better_!’ I want it to say to No. 3, ‘BEST!’”

It was remarkable that he had been content to remain four years at Oulton, even though the monotony was varied by occasional visits to London and tours through East Anglia on his Arab horse. The wandering spirit which possessed him from the cradle to the grave had been suppressed with difficulty, and by the aid of circumstances which were inimical to schemes of travel and adventure. It was not for lack of effort on Borrow’s part that he did not spend those years in going up and down the world and to and fro in it. He had hardly begun “The Bible in Spain” before he was recommencing the kind of campaign which marked the early ’thirties—worrying Lord Clarendon to get him made a consul or to engage him in some work abroad for the Government. Lord Clarendon politely told him that it was “quite hopeless” to ask Palmerston for a consulship; and apparently Borrow was unable to make any definite suggestion for the useful employment of his philological learning in any travelling commission on behalf of the nation. These schemes dropped; he had dreams of settling in Berlin, and others, provoked by Hasfeldt, of studying the sagas in Copenhagen; they were succeeded by visions of travel in North Africa, in search of the wandering sect of the Dar-Bushi-Fal and the witch-hamlet, Char Seharra, to which there are mysterious references in the sixth chapter of “The Zincali.” But none of these enterprises came to a head, and he performed the uncongenial role of a stay-at-home till, having worked just over a year upon the manuscript of “Lavengro,” he suddenly determined to take a prolonged tour abroad. Starting on April 23rd, 1843, he proceeded by way of Paris to Strasburg and Vienna, travelled through Hungary, Transylvania, and Rumania to Bucharest, across the Danube, and from Rustchuk to Constantinople, where he was in September. Thence he went to Salonika, through Thessaly and Albania to Prevesa, afterwards visiting Corfu and Venice, returning by Rome, Marseilles, Paris, and Havre to London, which he reached in the middle of November. Dr. Knapp gives the itinerary. This is one of the few expeditions of which Borrow left no records save those worked into late editions of “The Zincali” and into the Hungarian’s narrative in “The Romany Rye.”

Having satiated his roving demon for a time, Borrow returned to Oulton and resumed work upon “Lavengro.” By this time he had completed the first volume, covering the period to his father’s death, which is the most authentically autobiographical part of the book. Henceforward his plans underwent a gradual change, and ultimately the original scheme went completely adrift. Borrow was tossed about in the eddies of his passions and prejudices as a cork in a whirlpool. “Lavengro” took charge of him. Progress seemed to be slower than ever; the work dragged more desperately as the departure from the first plan grew more marked.

He took some consolation in the visit of Ford, already mentioned. “I am here,” wrote Ford from Oulton Hall, “on a visit to El Gitano: two rum coves in a queer country.” And he gives, in a letter to Addington (January 26th, 1844), a delicious picture of the place and their pursuits:

“This is a regular Patmos, an _ultima Thule_, placed in an angle of the most unvisited, out-of-the-way portion of England. His house hangs over a lonely lake covered with wild fowl, and is girt with dark firs, through which the wind sighs sadly. However, we defy the elements, and chat over _las cosas de Espana_, and he tells me portions of his life, more strange even than his book. We scamper by day over the country in a sort of gig, which reminds me of Mr. Weare on his trip with Mr. Thurtell (Borrow’s old preceptor). ‘Sidi Habismilk’ is in the stable and a zamarra now before me, writing as I am in a sort of summer-house, called _La Mezquita_, in which _El Gitano_ concocts his lucubrations, and _paints_ his pictures, for his object is to colour up and poetise his adventures.”

After Ford had left, Borrow wrote to him a letter {126a} which provides an interesting glimpse at the process of composition of “Lavengro”:

“AN BATUSCHA,—I have got your letter, which I should have answered sooner had I not been to Yarmouth—not, however, to the house of the Armenian. Thank you for the pheasants and the caviare which you were kind enough to send. Almost as soon as I got back from Norwich the weather became disagreeable—a strange jumble of frost, fog, and wet. I am glad that during your stay there it has been a little more favourable. My wife is better, and left her room, but poor Henrietta is in bed with the same complaint. I still keep up, but not exactly the thing. You can’t think how I miss you in our chats by the fireside. The wine, now I am alone, has lost its flavour, and the cigar makes me ill. I am very frequently by the Valley of the Shadow, and, had I not summers and jaunts to look forward to, I am afraid it would be all up with your friend, su Batuscha.

“I still go on with my life, but slowly, lazily. What I write is, however, good. I feel it is good: strange and wild as it is. I expect to be in London by the beginning of March, and hope there to write your review {126b} and receive a cheque from Murray to the tune of some hundreds. The colt is, however, not bought yet. My wife has set her face against it, and at present I do not like to press the matter. She is in delicate health, and believes she has dreamt it would either kill her or me. At present I may truly call myself _el necio de la casa_, _pero veremos vir_. She much regrets not having seen you.

“When I go to London upon whom would you advise me to call? Who is worth knowing? Now that the old man is dead, I am afraid that a certain street will not be quite so agreeable as it was. Did the gypsies tell you where they lived? If I knew I would go and visit them. I suppose somewhere about Tottenham Court.

“As I returned from Norwich I stopped at Thurton and tasted the wine. It was really good. When you are next past that way you must taste it yourself, and give me your opinion. I hope . . . having found your way to these parts you will frequently favour us with your company. God bless you. Ever yours,

“GEORGE BORROW.

“_Muchismas espresiones de la parti de mi esposa y de la Henriqueta_.”

NOTE.—The correspondence with Mr. Murray, to which reference is made in this chapter, and some of Ford’s letters should be consulted in Dr. Knapp. Ford’s letters to Addington are reproduced in Mr. Rowland Prothero’s collection (Murray, 1905).