Chapter 1

Transcribed from the 1913 Jarrold & Sons edition by David Price, email [email protected]

[Picture: Cover]

SOUVENIR OF THE GEORGE BORROW CELEBRATION

Norwich, July 5th, 1913

BY JAMES HOOPER

_PREPARED AND PUBLISHED FOR_ _THE COMMITTEE_

JARROLD & SONS PUBLISHERS LONDON AND NORWICH

2/6 net

[Picture: Picture of George Borrow]

FOREWORD.

The Committee are indebted to numerous Borrovians for the loan of Illustrations and Contributions of literary items to the text, to Miss C. M. Nichols, R.E., for her charming Pen Pictures of nooks and corners of Borrow's old home in Willow Lane, the Rev. F. W. Orde Ward for his appreciative stanzas, and Mr. E. Peake for his Ode to the Flower, whilst special mention must be made of Mr. A. J. Munnings' inspiring design of George Borrow and Petulengro overlooking the City of Norwich for the cover.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS George Borrow _Frontispiece_ Staircase doorway, Borrow's house _facing page_ 4 George Borrow's birthplace, 8 Dumpling Green, East Dereham Plan of Dumpling Green, East 9 Dereham Roger Kerrison 9 Crown and Angel, St. Stephen's 12 The grammar school 13 Borrow's house, Willow Lane 16 The winding river, near Norwich 17 The Yare at Earlham, near Norwich 17 The Strangers' Hall, Norwich 20 Earlham bridge 21 Bowling Green Inn 24 William Simpson 24 Tuck's Court, St. Giles 24 John Crome 25 The Windmill on Mousehold Heath 28 Ned Painter 29 Norwich castle and cattle market 32 in Borrow's time Marshland Shales 33 A quaint corner in Borrow's house 36 William Taylor 40 George Borrow's house, Oulton, 40 near Lowestoft George Borrow in 1848 40 George Borrow (painted by his 41 brother) Corner of Borrow's bedroom 44 George Borrow's grave, Brompton 48 cemetery

[Picture: Staircase doorway to attic in Borrow's House/ By C. M. Nichols, R.E.]

George Borrow.

1

Man of the Book, thou Pilgrim of the Road, The love of travel Drave thee on ever with pursuing goad; Trust was thy burning light, Truth was thy load-- Sweet riddles for the weary to unravel, Within thy breast Glowed the pure fire of an Eternal Quest.

2

The Bible was thy chart, the open sky Thy roof and rafter Often, and thou didst learn night's mystery; Learning some tale from each poor passer-by, Some gracious secret for the grand Hereafter. Master of lore Occult, and wanderer on the wildest shore.

3

What country was not trodden by thy feet, Nor bared its bosom And fragrance to the life it leapt to greet? From field and upland or where waters meet Was stolen, the virgin dew, the veiled blossom. Its native tongue On stranger lips, in every climate hung.

4

Pursuer of shy paths, all hunted things All creatures lonely, Gypsy and fox and hawk with slanted wings; These drank with thee at the same cosmic springs, These were thy teachers and thy playmates only. Nature gave up To them and thee alike, her hidden cup.

5

Who brought its glory back to cloistered Wales, And wrung their treasure From sacred books and dim sequestered vales? Who found the gold in haunted heights and dales, And showed a wondering world its pride and pleasure? Divine and strong Stood out the altar, with its flame of song.

6

Thy bardlike power, the passion of thy thirst For something greater, Awoke old Cymric melodies the first; Till all the mountains into music burst, And their lost glory crowned the recreator. Outpoured as wine Thy magic words made every shade a shrine.

7

Priest of the portals into the Unknown, Taught by no college, And free of every fountain but thine own; A waif, an exile, by the breezes blown Hither and thither to fresh fields of knowledge, That giant form, Fearless, and still no moment, rode the storm.

8

From land to land a pilgrim, yet at home Where'er thy journey Thou didst a dweller in the Eternal come; The dust thy floor, the heaven of stars thy dome, To break a lance for Truth in some new tourney. With Nature blent Art thou, and the wide world thy monument.

9

Thou gypsy of all time, no lot seems strange, No life was sterile To that free spirit, wrought by rugged change; Thy heart found rest in strife, and did outrange The farthest fancy, and woo the sorest peril. Hardships and lack Were comrades, and the milestones on thy track.

F. W. ORDE WARD.

GEORGE HENRY BORROW.

The time is ripe, and over ripe, for a commemorative celebration of George Borrow in a city with which he was so long, and so intimately, associated as he was with Norwich. His increasing fame as a foremost literary man of the nineteenth century is amply witnessed to by the various biographies of him, and the numerous appreciations of him by writers of repute, and Mr. Clement Shorter's forthcoming "Life of Borrow" will certainly add to the cult.

The following sketch of this wayward genius is mainly devoted to outstanding characteristics, with necessarily brief accounts of his works and journeyings. It seems convenient to sum up his career in the four divisions which follow.

_Section I_. (1803-15)--EARLY WANDERING DAYS.

Borrow's father, Thomas Borrow, was a patriotic, pugnacious, but God-fearing Cornishman, born at an old homestead known as Trethinnick, in the parish of St. Cleer, in which his forbears had been settled well back in the seventeenth century, probably earlier. To quote Dr. Knapp: "They feared God, honoured the king, and believed in 'piskies' and Holy Wells."

Thomas Borrow, handsome, tall, and muscular, was an adept in the athletic sports for which Cornwall is famous, and early signalised himself by his prowess as a boxer. As he grew up, George Borrow himself became an ardent admirer of "the Fancy," and when asked "What is the best way to get through life quietly?" was wont to say, "Learn to box, and keep a civil tongue in your head."

In 1778, when nineteen years of age, Thomas Borrow was articled for five years to a maltster; but just as that period expired, at Menheniot Fair a bicker arose in which Borrow and other young heroes triumphed over the braves of that town. Constables appeared, but were promptly felled by the brawny Borrow, and, to crown his misdeeds, he knocked over the head-borough, who happened to be his maltster master. He wisely fled, and shortly after enlisted as a private soldier in the Coldstream Guards, and was soon quartered in London. In 1792, as a sergeant, he was transferred to the West Norfolk Regiment of Militia, with headquarters at East Dereham. A company of players from Norwich frequently visited that nice little town, and in one of them appeared, as a supernumerary, Ann Perfrement, the pretty daughter of a small farmer of Dumpling Green, on the outskirts of the town. This maiden, of Huguenot descent, fascinated the Cornish soldier, and the two were married at Dereham Church on February 11th, 1793. The regiment was then about to start a wandering course over the highways of England--at Colchester; in Norfolk; then at Sheerness, Sandgate, and Dover; at Colchester once more; in Kent; Essex again, and then, in 1802-3, at East Dereham, where George was born July 5th, 1803, in the house of his maternal grandparents. On July 17th he was baptized George Henry, names of the king and of the eldest brother of Captain Thomas Borrow.

[Picture: Plan of Dumpling Green, East Dereham. By permission of Mr. Murray]

As a mere infant Borrow was gloomy and fond of solitude, "ever conscious," he says, "of a peculiar heaviness within me, and at times of a strange sensation of fear, which occasionally amounted to horror, and for which I could assign no real cause whatever." Of this earliest period he tells a characteristic story of drawing strange lines in the dust with his fingers, when a Jew pedlar came up and said: "The child is a sweet child, and he has all the look of one of our own people"; but when he leaned forward to inspect the lines in the dust, "started back, and grew white as a sheet; then, taking off his hat, he made some strange gestures to me, cringing, chattering, . . . and shortly departed, muttering something about 'holy letters,' and talking to himself in a strange tongue." This, in the first chapter of "Lavengro," is in the true Borrovian mystery-man style.

[Picture: George Borrow's birthplace, Dumpling Green, East Dereham]

Again and again Borrow, throughout his life, suffered from some nervous ailment which defied definition; thus, when he was fifteen, his strength and appetite deserted him and he pined and drooped, but an ancient female, a kind of doctress, who had been his nurse in his infancy, gave him a decoction of a bitter root growing on commons and desolate places, from which he took draughts till he was convalescent. In any estimate of Borrow's life the strange attacks of what he called "the Fear" or "the Horrors" must be taken into account. At times they even produced a suicidal tendency, as when, in 1824, he wrote to his friend Roger Kerrison, "Come to me immediately; I am, I believe, dying." The facsimile of this note in Knapp's "Life of Borrow" is as tremulous as if the writer was suffering from delirium tremens, which, of course, he was not.

[Picture: Roger Kerrison]

We have in "Lavengro" a very interesting account of the boy Borrow being taken twice every Sunday to the fine parish church at East Dereham, where, from a corner of a spacious pew, he would fix his eyes on the dignified high-Church rector and the dignified high-Church clerk, "from whose lips would roll many a portentous word descriptive of the wondrous works of the Most High." The rector was the Rev. F. J. H. Wollaston, B.D., who was himself patron of the living, which reverted to the Crown in 1841. At East Dereham, too, he came in touch with that exquisite old gentlewoman, Lady Fenn, widow of Sir John Fenn, editor of the "Paston Letters," as she passed to and fro from her mansion on some errand of bounty or of mercy, leaning on her gold-headed cane, whilst the sleek old footman walked at a respectful distance behind. But Borrow's admiration for Philo, the clerk, was greatest--"Peace to thee, thou fine old chap, despiser of dissenters, and hater of papists, as became a dignified and high-Church clerk."

Leaving Dereham in April, 1810, Captain Borrow and his family were transferred to Norman Cross, in the parish of Yaxley, some four miles from Peterborough, to guard a large number of French prisoners in sixteen long casernes, or barracks. At this place little Borrow, now seven years old, made a friend, quite to his liking, in a wild sequestered spot which was his favourite haunt; for he was allowed to pass his time principally in wandering about the neighbouring country. It was at this wild nook he came to know a viper-catcher and herbalist, a quaint figure in a skin cap, and with stout gaiters, who was catching a viper when the boy first made his acquaintance. "'What do you think of catching such a thing as that with the naked hand?' asked the old fellow. 'What do I think?' said I. 'Why, that I could do as much myself.'" This ruffled the old man's pride, but later he became quite friendly and explained that he hunted the vipers for their fat, to make unguents especially for rheumatism, and also collected simples, knowing he virtues of such as had medicinal value. On one of his excursions this primitive sportsman told him the marvellous tale of the King of the Vipers. The old fellow was wakened from his sleep one sultry day by a dreadful viper moving towards him--"all yellow and gold . . . bearing its head about a foot and a-half above the ground, the dry stubble crackling beneath its outrageous belly . . . then it lifted its head and chest high in the air, and high over my face as I looked up, flickering at me with its tongue as if it would fly at my face. Child," continued the narrator, "what I felt at that moment I can scarcely say, but it was a sufficient punishment for all the sins I ever committed; and there we two were, I looking up at the viper, and the viper looking down upon me, flickering at me with its tongue." Happily a sharp gun report close at hand frightened the reptile away. Before leaving the neighbourhood the viper-catcher presented his child friend with a specimen which he had tamed and rendered harmless by removing the fangs. This creature the queer boy fed with milk and often carried with him in his walks.

This episode resulted in experiences which coloured all the rest of Borrow's life, for, soon after, when he first came among gypsy tents, and saw the long-haired woman with skin dark and swarthy like that of a toad, and a particularly evil expression, and when her husband threatened to baste the intruder with a ladle, the boy broke forth into what in Romany would be called a "gillie," or ditty, ending--

"My father lies concealed within my tepid breast, And if to me you offer any harm or wrong, I'll call him forth to help me with his forked tongue."

The story cannot be mangled without losing its wild significance, but, on further threats, Borrow, to use his own words, "made a motion which the viper understood; and now partly disengaging itself from my bosom, where it had lain perdu, it raised its head to a level with my face, and stared upon my enemy with its glittering eyes."

The superstitious gypsies were effectively terrified, and invited the lad into their tent: "Don't be angry, and say no; but look kindly upon us, and satisfied, my precious little God Almighty."

They had taken him for a goblin, but when he explained that he was not "one of them there," the man said, "You are a sap-engro, a chap who catches snakes, and plays tricks with them." Then, when the boy proceeded to read them a bit of "Robinson Crusoe," it was voted that it "beat the rubricals hollow." Next followed the momentous meeting with Ambrose Smith--the Jasper Petulengro of Borrow's pages--and, as the band of gypsies were departing, Jasper, turning round, leered into the little Gorgio's face, held out his hand, and said, "Goodbye, Sap, I daresay we shall meet again; remember we are brothers, two gentle brothers." Gazing after the retreating company, the sap-engro said to himself, "A strange set of people, I wonder who they can be." Such was Borrow's first introduction to the Romany folk.

From July, 1811, to July, 1814, the Borrows led a nomadic life, yet at each tarrying-place Captain Borrow sent his sons to the best school available, and George, in these three years' travelling with the regiment, acquired Lilly's Latin Grammar by heart. A Dereham schoolmaster had assured Captain Borrow that "there is but one good school book in the world--the one I use in my seminary--Lilly's Latin Grammar." There is, it may be added, good evidence that Shakespeare was taught out of this venerable work.

Early in 1813 our interesting family were in Edinburgh, where the Borrow boys were sent to the celebrated High School, and George entered with zest into the faction fights between the Auld and the New Toon. More, and better than this, he picked up just such a wild character as fitted in with his romantic scheme of things. This was David Haggart, son of a gamekeeper and guilty of nearly every crime in the Statute Book under various aliases--John Wilson, John Morrison, John McColgan, David O'Brien, and "The Switcher." Haggart enlisted as a drummer-boy in Captain Borrow's recruiting-party at Leith Races in July, 1813, being then just twelve years old; but soon tiring of discipline and scanty pay, obtained his discharge, soon after embarking on a career of crime which culminated in his well-deserved hanging at Edinburgh in 1821, at the age of twenty.

[Picture: Crown and Angel, St. Stephen's. From Drawing by Mr. H. W. Tuck]

In June, 1814, the West Norfolk Regiment was ordered south; some went by sea, those who preferred by land. Captain Borrow chose the latter, and on July 18th his division entered Norwich, and the Earl of Orford, colonel of the regiment, entertained the officers and their friends at the Maid's Head Hotel. At this time Captain Borrow and his family went to lodge at the Crown and Angel, an ancient hostelry in St. Stephen's Street. From that convenient centre, the recruiting-parties under Captain Borrow were very successful in obtaining men, by beat of drum instead of by ballot, as had previously been the practice. But troubles arose in Ireland, and in August, 1815, the West Norfolks were again on the move. They found themselves at Cork early in September, and marched on to Clonmel.

During their short interval at Norwich, George went to the Grammar School, and his brother studied painting with "Old Crome."

[Picture: The Grammar School]

Captain Borrow commanded a division, and George walked by his side, holding the stirrup-leather of his horse, while John Thomas Borrow, gazetted ensign in May and lieutenant in December, was in his place in the regiment. At Clonmel the Borrows lodged with a handsome athletic man and his wife, who enthusiastically welcomed them. "I have made bold to bring up a bottle of claret," said the Orangeman, ". . . and when your honour and your family have dined, I will make bold too to bring up Mistress Hyne from Londonderry, to introduce to your honour's lady, and then we'll drink to the health of King George, God bless him; to the 'glorious and immortal'--to Boyne water--to your honour's speedy promotion to be Lord-Lieutenant."

Here at Clonmel our hero "read the Latin tongue and the Greek letters with a nice old clergyman, who sat behind a black oaken desk, with a huge Elzevir Flaccus before him." "Here," says Borrow, "I was in the habit of sitting on a large stone, before the roaring fire in the huge open chimney, and entertaining certain of the Protestant young gentlemen of my own age . . . with extraordinary accounts of my own adventures and those of the corps, with an occasional anecdote extracted from the story-books of Hickathrift and Wight Wallace, pretending to be conning the lesson all the while." Borrow calls Hickathrift his countryman; the legend is that Tom Hickathrift ridded the Fenland between Lynn and Wisbech, of a monstrous giant, by slaying him with the axle-tree of his cart. I gave the full story of this Norfolk giant-killer in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, for January, 1896. The boy's genius for story telling was quite exceptional, and when he was at Norwich Grammar School, as his schoolfellow Dr. Martineau informed me, "He used to gather about him three or four favourite schoolfellows, after they had learned their class lesson and before the class was called up, and with a sheet of paper and book on his knee, invent and tell a story, making rapid little pictures of each _Dramatis __Persona_. The plot was woven and spread out with much ingenuity, and the characters were various and well-discriminated. But two of them were sure to turn up in every tale, the Devil and the Pope: and the working of the drama invariably had the same issue--the utter ruin and disgrace of these two Potentates."

At Clonmel it was his good luck to make friends with one more notable character, another figure in his gallery of strange personages--Murtagh, a Papist gasoon, sent to school by his father to be "made a saggrart of and sent to Paris and Salamanca." But the gasoon loved cards better. George had a new pack, which soon changed hands. "You can't learn Greek, so you must teach Irish!" said George. "Before Christmas, Murtagh was playing at cards with his brother Denis, and I could speak a considerable quantity of broken Irish."

In January, 1816, the regiment was moved on to Templemore, a charming town in mid-Tipperary, where the Borrows remained but a short time, reaching Norwich again on May 13th, and tarrying at the Crown and Angel till they settled at the historic little house in King's Court, Willow Lane, which they leased from a builder named Thomas King. At the instance of Sir Peter Eade, it was re-named Borrow's Court, and the tablet commemorating the residence there of George Borrow was affixed on November 6th, 1891. Now, by the generosity of the Lord Mayor of Norwich (Arthur Michael Samuel), in this year of grace 1913, it has become a possession of the City of Norwich as a Borrow Museum in perpetuity.

At Templemore George Borrow, tall and large-limbed for a lad of thirteen, still had adventures; for on an excursion to visit his brother at Loughmore, he encountered the fierce "Dog of Peace" and its master, Jerry Grant, the outlaw--"a fairy man, in league with fairies and spirits, and able to work much harm by supernatural means, on which account the peasants held him in great awe." The account of Sergeant Bagge's encounter with this wizardly creature is in Borrow's best style. The sergeant thought he had the fellow fast by the throat, but suddenly "the man seemed to melt away from his grasp, and the wind howled more and more, and the night poured down darker and darker, the snow and the sleet thicker and more blinding. 'Lord have mercy upon us!' said Bagge, who concluded that the tussle was 'not fair but something Irish and supernatural.'" "I daresay," comments George to his brother, "he's right. I have read of witchcraft in the Bible."

At Templemore, too, our boy of thirteen learned to ride, mounted on a tremendous "gallant specimen of the genuine Irish cob," said by Borrow to be nearly extinct in his day. This horse had been the only friend in the world of his groom, but after a blow would not let him mount. So young Borrow mounted the animal barebacked, for, said the groom, "If you are ever to be a frank rider, you must begin without a saddle; . . . leave it all to him." Following the groom's directions, the cob gave his young rider every assistance, and great was the lad's joy! "Oh, that ride! that first ride!--most truly it was an epoch in my existence; and I still look back to it with feelings of longing and regret. People may talk of first love--it is a very agreeable event, I daresay--but give me the flush and triumph, and glorious sweat of a first ride, like mine on the mighty cob! . . . By that one trial I had become free . . . of the whole equine species." Thus began Borrow's passion for the equine race, and he avows that with him the pursuit of languages was always modified by his love of horses. As a wonderful pendant to this riding exploit, Borrow tells the tale of the Irish smith who, by a magical word, which thrilled the boy, absolutely maddened the cob, until the wizard soothed it by uttering another word "in a voice singularly modified, but sweet and almost plaintive."

With this weird episode ends the tale, as "coloured up and poetized" in "Lavengro," of Borrow's earliest journeyings and adventures; truly in his case adventures were to the adventurous. Having had all the wild experiences just outlined, small wonder that the strange lad was not very adaptable when, as a free scholar, he came under the rule of the Rev. Edward Valpy at Norwich Grammar School.

_Section II_. NORWICH (1816-24)--SCHOOL, LAW, AND LANGUAGES.