George Borrow and His Circle Part 23

To Mrs. George Borrow

EARLHAM, _12th June 1840._

DEAR MRS. BORROW,--I am sorry I cannot find any of Mr. Borrow's letters from Spain. I don't think we ever had any, but my brother is from home and I therefore cannot inquire of him. I send you the only two I can find. I am very glad he is going to publish his travels, which I have no doubt will be very interesting. It must be a pleasant object to a.s.sist him by copying the ma.n.u.scripts. If I should visit Lowestoft this summer I shall hope to see you, but I have no immediate prospect of doing so. With kind regards to all your party, I am, Dear Mrs. Borrow, Yours sincerely,

C. GURNEY.[157]

The Bible Society applied to in the same manner lent Borrow all his letters to that organisation and its secretaries. Not all were returned.

Many came to Dr. Knapp when he purchased the half of the Borrow papers that were sold after Borrow's death; the remainder are in my possession.

It is a nice point, seventy years after they were written, as to whom they belong. In any case the Bible Society must have kept copies of everything, for when, in 1911, they came to publish the _Letters_[158]

the collection was sufficiently complete. That publication revealed some interesting sidelights. It proved on the one hand that Borrow had drawn more upon his diaries than upon his letters, although he frequently reproduced fragments of his diaries in his letters. It revealed further the extraordinary frankness with which Borrow wrote to his employers.

But the main point is in the discovery revealed to us that Borrow was not an artist in his letters. Borrow was never a good letter writer, although I think that many of the letters that appear for the first time in these pages will prove that his letters are very interesting as contributions to biography. If some of the letters that helped to make up _The Bible in Spain_ are interesting, it is because in them Borrow incorporated considerable fragments of anecdote and adventure from his notebooks. It is quite a mistake to a.s.sume, as does Dr. Knapp, that the 'Rev. and Dear Sir' at the head of a letter was the only variation. You will look in vain in the Bible Society correspondence for many a pearl that is contained in _The Bible in Spain_, and you will look in vain in _The Bible in Spain_ for many a sentence which concludes some of the original letters. In one case, indeed, a letter concludes with Heber's hymn--

'From Greenland's Icy Mountains,'

with which Borrow's correspondent must already have been sufficiently familiar. But Borrow could not be other than Borrow, and the secretaries of the Bible Society had plentiful matter with which to astonish them.

The finished production, however, is a fascinating book. You read it again and it becomes still more entertaining. No wonder that it took the world by storm and made its author the lion of a season. 'A queer book will be this same _Bible in Spain_,' wrote Borrow to John Murray in August 1841, 'containing all my queer adventures in that queer country ... it will make two nice foolscap octavo volumes.'[159] It actually made three volumes, and Borrow was as irritated at Mr. Murray's delay in publis.h.i.+ng as that publisher afterwards became at Borrow's own delay over _Lavengro_. The whole book was laboriously copied out by Mrs.

Borrow. When this copy was sent to Mr. Murray, it was submitted to his 'reader,' who reported 'numerous faults in spelling and some in grammar,' to which criticism Borrow retorted that the copy was the work of 'a country amanuensis.' The book was published in December 1842, but has the date 1843 on its t.i.tle-page.[160] In its three-volumed form 4750 copies of the book were issued by July 1843, after which countless copies were sold in cheaper one-volumed form. Success had at last come to Borrow. He was one of the most talked-of writers of the day. His elation may be demonstrated by his discussion with Dawson Turner as to whether he should leave the ma.n.u.script of _The Bible in Spain_ to the Dean and Chapter's Library at Norwich or to the British Museum, by his gratification at the fact that Sir Robert Peel referred to his book in the House of Commons, and by his pleasure in the many appreciative reviews which, indeed, were for the most part all that an ambitious author could desire. 'Never,' said _The Examiner_, 'was book more legibly impressed with the unmistakable mark of genius.' 'There is no taking leave of a book like this,' said the _Athenaeum_. 'Better Christmas fare we have never had it in our power to offer our readers.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SHEKEL

given to Borrow by Hasfeld, his Danish friend, as a talisman when they parted at St. Petersburg. In _The Bible in Spain_ Borrow relates that he showed this shekel at Gibraltar to a Jew, who exclaimed, 'Brothers, witness, these are the letters of Solomon. This silver is blessed. We must kiss this money.']

The publication of _The Bible in Spain_ made Borrow famous for a time.

Hitherto he had been known only to a small religious community, the coterie that ran the Bible Society. Even the large ma.s.s of people who subscribed to that Society knew its agent in Spain only by meagre allusions in the Annual Reports. Now the world was to talk about him, and he enjoyed being talked about. Borrow declared--in 1842--that the five years he pa.s.sed in Spain were the most happy years of his existence. But then he had not had a happy life during the previous years, as we have seen, and in Russia he had a toilsome task with an added element of uncertainty as to the permanence of his position. The five years in Spain had plentiful adventure, and they closed in a pleasant manner. Yet the year that followed, even though it found him almost a country squire, was not a happy one. Once again the world did not want him and his books--not the _Gypsies of Spain_ for example.

Seven weeks after publication it had sold only to the extent of some three hundred copies.[161] But the happiest year of Borrow's life was undoubtedly the one that followed the publication of _The Bible in Spain_. Up to that time he had been a mere adventurer; now he was that most joyous of beings--a successful author; and here, from among his Papers, is a carefully preserved relic of his social triumph:

To George Borrow, Esq., at Mr. Murray's, Bookseller, Albemarle Street.

4 CARLTON TERRACE, _Tuesday, 30th May._

The Prussian Minister and Madam Bunsen would be very happy to see Mr. Borrow to-morrow, Wednesday evening, about half past nine o'clock or later, when some German national songs will be performed at their house, which may possibly suit Mr. Borrow's taste. They hoped to have met him last night at the Bishop of Norwich's, but arrived there too late. They had already commissioned Lady Hall (sister to Madam Bunsen) to express to Mr. Borrow their wish for his acquaintance.

In a letter to his wife, of which a few lines are printed in Dr. Knapp's book, he also writes of this visit to the Prussian Minister, where he had for company 'Princes and Members of Parliament.' 'I was the star of the evening,' he says; 'I thought to myself, "what a difference!"'[162]

The following letter is in a more sober key:

To Mrs. George Borrow, Oulton, Suffolk.

_Wednesday_, 58 JERMYN STREET.

DEAR CARRETA,--I was glad to receive your letter; I half expected one on Tuesday. I am, on the whole, very comfortable, and people are kind. I pa.s.sed last Sunday at Clapham with Mrs.

Browne; I was glad to go there for it was a gloomy day. They are now glad enough to ask me: I suppose I must stay in London through next week. I have an invitation to two grand parties, and it is as well to have something for one's money. I called at the Bible Society--all remarkably civil, Joseph especially so. I think I shall be able to manage with my own Dictionary.

There is now a great demand for Morrison. Yesterday I again dined at the Murrays. There was a family party; very pleasant.

To-morrow I dine with an old schoolfellow. Murray is talking of printing a new edition to sell for five s.h.i.+llings: those rascals, the Americans, have, it seems, reprinted it, and are selling it for _eighteen_ pence. Murray says he shall print ten thousand copies; it is chiefly wanted for the Colonies. He says the rich people and the libraries have already got it, and he is quite right, for nearly three thousand copies have been sold at 27s.[163] There is no longer the high profit to be made on books there formerly was, as the rascals abroad pirate the good ones, and in the present state of copyright there is no help; we can, however, keep the American edition out of the Colonies, which is something. I have nothing more to say save to commend you not to go on the water without me; perhaps you would be overset; and do not go on the bridge again till I come. Take care of Habismilk and Craffs; kiss the little mare and old Hen.

GEORGE BORROW.

The earliest literary efforts of Borrow in Spain were his two translations of St. Luke's Gospel--the one into Romany, the other into Basque. This last book he did not actually translate himself, but procured 'from a Basque physician of the name of Oteiza.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: t.i.tLE-PAGE OF BASQUE TRANSLATION BY OTEIZA OF THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE]

[Ill.u.s.tration: t.i.tLE-PAGE OF FIRST EDITION OF ROMANY TRANSLATION OF THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE]

[Ill.u.s.tration: TWO PAGES FROM BORROW'S CORRECTED PROOF SHEETS OF ROMANY TRANSLATION OF THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE]

FOOTNOTES:

[155] Yet one critic of Borrow--Jane H. Findlater, in the _Cornhill Magazine_, November 1899--actually says that '_The Bible in Spain_ was perhaps the most ill-advised t.i.tle that a well-written book ever laboured under, giving, as it does, the idea that the book is a prolonged tract.'

[156] Borrow had really written a great deal of the book in Spain. The 'notebook' contained many of his adventures, and moreover on August 20, 1836, the _Athenaeum_, published two long letters from him under the t.i.tle of 'The Gypsies in Russia and in Spain,' opening with the following preliminary announcement:

We have been obligingly favoured with the following extracts from letters of an intelligent gentleman, whose literary labours, the least important of his life, we not long since highly praised, but whose name we are not at liberty, on this occasion, to make public. They contain some curious and interesting facts relating to the condition of this peculiar people in very distant countries.

The first letter is dated September 23, 1835, and gives an account of his experiences with the gypsies in Russia. The whole of this account he incorporated in _The Gypsies of Spain_. Following this there are two columns, dated Madrid, July 19, 1836, in which he gives an account of the gypsies in Spain. All the episodes that he relates he incorporated in _The Bible in Spain_. The two letters so plainly indicate that all the time Borrow was in Spain his mind was more filled with the subject of the gypsies than with any other question. He did his work well for the Bible Society no doubt, and gave them their money's worth, but there is a humorous note in the fact that Borrow should have utilised his position as a missionary--for so we must count him--to make himself so thoroughly acquainted with gypsy folklore and gypsy songs and dances as these two fragments by an 'intelligent gentleman' imply. It is not strange that under the circ.u.mstances Borrow did not wish that his name should be made public.

[157] This was Miss Catherine Gurney, who was born in 1776, in Magdalen Street, Norwich, and died at Lowestoft in 1850, aged seventy-five. She twice presided over the Earlham home. The brother referred to was Joseph John Gurney.

[158] _Letters of George Borrow to the British and Foreign Bible Society_. Published by direction of the Committee. Edited by T. H.

Darlow. Hodder and Stoughton, 1911.

[159] Samuel Smiles: _A Publisher and his Friends_, vol. ii. p. 485.

[160] _The Bible in Spain; or The Journeys, Adventures, and Imprisonments of an Englishman in an Attempt to Circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula_. By George Borrow, author of _The Gypsies of Spain_.

In three volumes. London: John Murray, Albemarle St., 1843.

[161] Herbert Jenkins: _Life_, p. 341.

[162] Knapp's _Life_, vol. i. p. 398. In the _Annals of the Harford Family_, edited by Alice Harford (Westminster Press, 1909), there is an account of this gathering in a letter from J. Harford-Battersby to Louisa Harford. There was present 'the amusing author of _The Bible in Spain_, a man who is remarkable for his extraordinary powers as a linguist, and for the originality of his character, not to speak of the wonderful adventures he narrates, and the ease and facility with which he tells them. He kept us laughing a good part of breakfast time by the oddity of his remarks, as well as the positiveness of his a.s.sertions, often rather startling, and, like his books, partaking of the marvellous.'

[163] 4750 copies were sold in the three volume form in 1843, and a sixth and cheaper edition the same year sold 9000 copies.

CHAPTER XXIII

RICHARD FORD

The most distinguished of Borrow's friends in the years that succeeded his return from Spain was Richard Ford, whose interests were so largely wrapped-up in the story of that country. Ford was possessed of a very interesting personality, which was not revealed to the public until Mr.

Rowland E. Prothero issued his excellent biography[164] in 1905, although Ford died in 1858. This delay is the more astonis.h.i.+ng as Ford's _Handbook for Travellers in Spain_ was one of the most famous books of its day. Ford's father, Sir Richard Ford, was a friend of William Pitt, and twice sat in Parliament, being at one time Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department. He ended his official career as a police magistrate at Bow Street, but deserves to be better known to fame as the creator of the mounted police force of London. Ford was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, inheriting a fortune from his father, and from his mother an extraordinary taste for art. Although called to the bar he never practised, but spent his time in travelling on the Continent, building up a valuable collection of books and paintings. He was three times married, and all these unions seem to have been happy, in spite of an almost unpleasant celerity in the second alliance, which took place nine months after the death of his first wife. A very large portion of his life he devoted to Spain, which he knew so intimately that in 1845 he produced that remarkable _Handbook_ in two closely printed volumes, a most repellent-looking book in appearance to those who are used to contemporary typography, usually so attractive. Ford, in fact, was so full of his subject that instead of a handbook he wrote a work which ought to have appeared in half a dozen volumes. In later editions the book was condensed into one of Mr. Murray's usual guide-books, but the curious may still enjoy the work in its earliest form, so rich in discussions of the Spanish people, their art and architecture, their history and their habits. The greater part of the letters in Mr. Prothero's collection are addressed to Addington, who was our amba.s.sador to Madrid for some years, until he was superseded by George Villiers, Lord Clarendon, with whom Borrow came so much in contact. Those letters reveal a remarkably cultivated mind and an interesting outlook on life, an outlook that was always intensely anti-democratic. It is impossible to sympathise with him in his brutal reference to the execution by the Spaniards of Robert Boyd, a young Irishman who was captured with Torrijos by the Spanish Government in 1831. Richard Ford apparently left Spain very shortly before George Borrow entered that country. Ford pa.s.sed through Madrid on his way to England in September 1833. He then settled near Exeter, purchasing an Elizabethan cottage called Heavitree House, with twelve acres of land, and devoted himself to turning it into a beautiful mansion. Presumably he first met Borrow in Mr. John Murray's famous drawing-room soon after the publication of _The Gypsies of Spain_. He tells Addington, indeed, in a letter of 14th January 1841:

I have made acquaintance with an extraordinary fellow, George Borrow, who went out to Spain to convert the gypsies. He is about to publish his failure, and a curious book it will be. It was submitted to my perusal by the hesitating Murray.

Ford's article upon Borrow's book appeared in _The British and Foreign Review_, and Ford was delighted that the book had created a sensation, and that he had given sound advice as to publis.h.i.+ng the ma.n.u.script. When _The Bible in Spain_ was ready, Ford was one of the first to read it.

Then he wrote to John Murray: