George Borrow and His Circle Part 10

Come away, children, call no more!

Come away, come down, call no more!

It says much for the literary proclivities of Norwich at this period that Borrow should have had so kindly a reception for his book as the subscription list implies. At the end of each of Wilkin's two hundred copies a 'list of subscribers' is given. It opens with the name of the Bishop of Norwich, Dr. Bathurst; it includes the equally familiar names of the Gurdons, Gurneys, Harveys, Rackhams, Hares (then as now of Stow Hall), Woodhouses--all good Norfolk or Norwich names that have come down to our time. Mayor Hawkes, who is made famous in _Lavengro_ by Haydon's portrait, is there also. Among London names we find 'F. Arden,' which recalls his friend 'Francis Ardry' in _Lavengro_, John Bowring, Borrow's new friend, and later to be counted an enemy, Thomas Campbell, Benjamin Haydon, and John Timbs, But the name that most strikes the eye is that of 'Thurtell.' Three of the family are among the subscribers, including Mr. George Thurtell of Eaton, near Norwich, brother of the murderer; there also is the name of John Thurtell, executed for murder exactly a year before. This would seem to imply that Borrow had been a long time collecting these names and subscriptions, and doubtless before the all-too-famous crime of the previous year he had made Thurtell promise to become a subscriber, and, let us hope, had secured his half-guinea.

That may account, with so sensitive and impressionable a man as our author, for the kindly place that Weare's unhappy murderer always had in his memory. Borrow, in any case, was now, for a few years, to become more than ever a vagabond. Not a single further appeal did he make to an unsympathetic literary public for a period of five years at least.

FOOTNOTES:

[61] _Life and Death of Faustus_, p. 59.

[62] _Faustus: His Life, Death, and Doom: a Romance in Prose, translated from the German_. London: W. Kent and Co., Paternoster Row, 1864, Borrow's _Life and Death of Faustus_ was reprinted in 1840, again with Simpkin's imprint. Collating Borrow's translation with the issue of 1864, I find that, with a few trivial verbal alterations, they are identical--that is to say, the translator of the book of 1864 did not translate at all, but copied from Borrow's version of _Faustus_, copying even his errors in translation. There is no reason to suppose that the individual, whoever he may have been, who prepared the 1864 edition of _Faustus_ for the Press, had ever seen either the German original or the French translation of Klinger's book. It is clear that he 'conveyed'

Borrow's translation almost in its entirety.

[63] Allan Cunningham, in a letter to Borrow, says, 'Taylor will undertake to publish.' But there must have been a change afterwards, for some of the London copies bear the imprint Wightman and Cramp. In 1913 Jarrold and Sons of Norwich issued a reprint of _Romantic Ballads_ limited to 300 copies, with facsimiles of the ma.n.u.script from my Borrow Papers.

[64] Knapp's _Life_, vol. i 117.

CHAPTER XI

_CELEBRATED TRIALS_ AND JOHN THURTELL

Borrow's first book was _Faustus_, and his second was _Romantic Ballads_, the one being published, as we have seen, in 1825, the other in 1826. This chronology has the appearance of ignoring the _Celebrated Trials_, but then it is scarcely possible to count _Celebrated Trials_[65] as one of Borrow's books at all. It is largely a compilation, exactly as the _Newgate Calendar_ and Howell's _State Trials_ are compilations. In his preface to the work Borrow tells us that he has differentiated the book from the _Newgate Calendar_[66] and the _State Trials_[67] by the fact that he had made considerable compression. This was so, and in fact in many cases he has used the blue pencil rather than the pen--at least in the earlier volumes. But Borrow attempted something much more comprehensive than the _Newgate Calendar_ and the _State Trials_ in his book. In the former work the trials range from 1700 to 1802; in the latter from the trial of Becket in 1163 to the trial of Thistlewood in 1820. Both works are concerned solely with this country. Borrow went all over Europe, and the trials of Joan of Arc, Count Struensee, Major Andre, Count Cagliostro, Queen Marie Antoinette, the Duc d'Enghien, and Marshal Ney, are included in his volumes. Moreover, while what may be called state trials are numerous, including many of the cases in _Howell_, the greater number are of a domestic nature, including nearly all that are given in the _Newgate Calendar_. In the first two volumes he has naturally mainly state trials to record; the later volumes record sordid everyday crimes, and here Borrow is more at home. His style when he rewrites the trials is more vigorous, and his narrative more interesting. It is to be hoped that the exigent publisher, who he a.s.sures us made him buy the books for his compilation out of the 50 that he paid for it, was able to present him with a set of the _State Trials_, if only in one of the earlier and cheaper issues of the work than the one that now has a place in every lawyer's library.[68]

The third volume of _Celebrated Trials_, although it opens with the trial of Algernon Sidney, is made up largely of crime of the more ordinary type, and this sordid note continues through the three final volumes. I have said that _Faustus_ is an allegory of 'man's inhumanity to man.' That is emphatically, in more realistic form, the distinguis.h.i.+ng feature of _Celebrated Trials_. Amid these records of savagery, it is a positive relief to come across such a trial as that of poor Joseph Baretti. Baretti, it will be remembered, was brought to trial because, when some roughs set upon him in the street, he drew a dagger, which he usually carried 'to carve fruit and sweetmeats,' and killed his a.s.sailant. In that age, when our law courts were a veritable shambles, how cheerful it is to find that the jury returned a verdict of 'self-defence.' But then Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, Dr. Johnson, and David Garrick gave evidence to character, representing Baretti as 'a man of benevolence, sobriety, modesty, and learning.' This trial is an oasis of mercy in a desert of drastic punishment. Borrow carries on his 'trials' to the very year before the date of publication, and the last trial in the book is that of 'Henry Fauntleroy, Esquire,' for forgery.

Fauntleroy was a quite respectable banker of unimpeachable character, to whom had fallen at a very early age the charge of a banking business that was fundamentally unsound. It is clear that he had honestly endeavoured to put things on a better footing, that he lived simply, and had no gambling or other vices. At a crisis, however, he forged a doc.u.ment, in other words signed a transfer of stock which he had no right to do, the 'subscribing witness' to his power of attorney being Robert Browning, a clerk in the Bank of England, and father of the distinguished poet.[69] Well, Fauntleroy was sentenced to be hanged--and he was duly hanged at Newgate on 30th October 1824, only thirteen years before Queen Victoria came to the throne!

Borrow has affirmed that from a study of the _Newgate Calendar_ and the compilation of his _Celebrated Trials_ he first learned to write genuine English, and it is a fact that there are some remarkably dramatic effects in these volumes, although one here withholds from Borrow the t.i.tle of 'author' because so much is 'scissors and paste,' and the purple pa.s.sages are only occasional. All the same I am astonished that no one has thought it worth while to make a volume of these dramatic episodes, which are clearly the work of Borrow, and owe nothing to the innumerable pamphlets and chap-books that he brought into use. Take such an episode as that of Schening and Harlin, two young German women, one of whom pretended to have murdered her infant in the presence of the other because she madly supposed that this would secure them bread--and they were starving. The trial, the scene at the execution, the confession on the scaffold of the misguided but innocent girl, the respite, and then the execution--these make up as thrilling a narrative as is contained in the pages of fiction. a.s.suredly Borrow did not spare himself in that race round the bookstalls of London to find the material which the grasping Sir Richard Phillips required from him. He found, for example, Sir Herbert Croft's volume, _Love and Madness_, the supposed correspondence of Parson Hackman and Martha Reay, whom he murdered. That correspondence is now known to be an invention of Croft's. Borrow accepted it as genuine, and incorporated the whole of it in his story of the Hackman trial.

But after all, the trial which we read with greatest interest in these six volumes is that of John Thurtell, because Borrow had known Thurtell in his youth, and gives us more than one glimpse of him in _Lavengro_ and _The Romany Rye_. We recall, for example, Lavengro's interview with the magistrate when a visitor is announced:

'In what can I oblige you, sir?' said the magistrate.

'Well, sir; the soul of wit is brevity; we want a place for an approaching combat between my friend here and a brave from town. Pa.s.sing by your broad acres this fine morning we saw a pightle, which we deemed would suit. Lend us that pightle, and receive our thanks; 'twould be a favour, though not much to grant: we neither ask for Stonehenge nor for Tempe.'

My friend looked somewhat perplexed; after a moment, however, he said, with a firm but gentlemanly air, 'Sir, I am sorry that I cannot comply with your request.'

'Not comply!' said the man, his brow becoming dark as midnight; and with a hoa.r.s.e and savage tone, 'Not comply! why not?'

'It is impossible, sir--utterly impossible!'

'Why so?'

'I am not compelled to give my reasons to you, sir, nor to any man.'

'Let me beg of you to alter your decision,' said the man, in a tone of profound respect.

'Utterly impossible, sir; I am a magistrate.'

'Magistrate! then fare-ye-well, for a green-coated buffer and a Harmanbeck.'

'Sir,' said the magistrate, springing up with a face fiery with wrath.

But, with a surly nod to me, the man left the apartment; and in a moment more the heavy footsteps of himself and his companion were heard descending the staircase.

'Who is that man?' said my friend, turning towards me.

'A sporting gentleman, well known in the place from which I come.'

'He appeared to know you.'

'I have occasionally put on the gloves with him.'

'What is his name?'

In the original ma.n.u.script in my possession the name 'John Thurtell' is given as the answer to that inquiry. In the printed book the chapter ends more abruptly as we see. The second reference is even more dramatic. It occurs when Lavengro has a conversation with his friend the gypsy Petulengro in a thunderstorm--when all are hurrying to the prize-fight. Here let Borrow tell his story:

'Look up there, brother!'

I looked up. Connected with this tempest there was one feature to which I have already alluded--the wonderful colours of the clouds. Some were of vivid green, others of the brightest orange, others as black as pitch. The gypsy's finger was pointed to a particular part of the sky.

'What do you see there, brother?'

'A strange kind of cloud.'

'What does it look like, brother?'

'Something like a stream of blood.'

'That cloud foreshoweth a b.l.o.o.d.y dukkeripen.'

'A b.l.o.o.d.y fortune!' said I. 'And whom may it betide?'

'Who knows?' said the gypsy.

Down the way, das.h.i.+ng and splas.h.i.+ng, and scattering man, horse, and cart to the left and right, came an open barouche, drawn by four smoking steeds, with postillions in scarlet jackets and leather skull-caps. Two forms were conspicuous in it--that of the successful bruiser, and of his friend and backer, the sporting gentleman of my acquaintance.

'His!' said the gypsy, pointing to the latter, whose stern features wore a smile of triumph, as, probably recognising me in the crowd, he nodded in the direction of where I stood, as the barouche hurried by.

There went the barouche, das.h.i.+ng through the rain-gushes, and in it one whose boast it was that he was equal to 'either fortune.' Many have heard of that man--many may be desirous of knowing yet more of him. I have nothing to do with that man's after life--he fulfilled his dukkeripen. 'A bad, violent man!'

Softly, friend; when thou wouldst speak harshly of the dead, remember that thou hast not yet fulfilled thy own dukkeripen!

There is yet another reference by Borrow to Thurtell in _The Gypsies of Spain_, which runs as follows:

When a boy of fourteen I was present at a prize-fight; why should I hide the truth? It took place on a green meadow, beside a running stream, close by the old church of E----, and within a league of the ancient town of N----, the capital of one of the eastern counties. The terrible Thurtell was present, lord of the concourse; for wherever he moved he was master, and whenever he spoke, even when in chains, every other voice was silent. He stood on the mead, grim and pale as usual, with his bruisers around. He it was, indeed, who _got up_ the fight, as he had previously done twenty others; it being his frequent boast that he had first introduced bruising and bloodshed amidst rural scenes, and transformed a quiet slumbering town into a den of Jews and metropolitan thieves.

Rarely in our criminal jurisprudence has a murder trial excited more interest than that of John Thurtell for the murder of Weare--the Gill's Hill Murder, as it was called. Certainly no murder of modern times has had so many indirect literary a.s.sociations. Borrow, Carlyle, Hazlitt, Walter Scott, and Thackeray are among those who have given it lasting fame by comment of one kind or another; and the lines ascribed to Theodore Hook are perhaps as well known as any other memory of the tragedy: