George Borrow and His Circle Part 28

I was seated on Yarmouth jetty; the weather was very stormy; there came a tremendous sea, which struck the jetty, and made it quiver; there was a boat on the lee-side of the jetty fastened by a painter; the surge snapped the painter like a thread, the boat was overset with two men in it, there was a cry, 'The men must be drowned.' I started up from my seat on the north side of the jetty, and saw the boat bottom upwards, and I heard some people say, 'The men are under it.' I ran a little way along the jetty, and then jumped upon the sand; before taking the leap I saw a man flung by the surge upon the sh.o.r.e; he crawled up upon the beach, and was, I believe, lifted up upon his legs by certain beachmen. I had my eye upon the boat, which was now near the sh.o.r.e; I had an idea that there was a man under it; I flung off my coat and hat, and went a little way into the sea, about parallel to some beachmen who were moving backwards and forwards as the waves advanced and receded. I now saw a man as a wave recoiled lying close by the boat in the reflux. I dashed forward and made a grip at the man, then came a tremendous wave which tumbled me heels over head; being an expert diver I did not attempt to rise, lest I should be flung on sh.o.r.e. When the wave receded, I found myself near the boat; the man was now nearer to the sh.o.r.e than myself. I believe a man or two were making towards him; another wave came which overwhelmed me, and flung me on the sh.o.r.e, to which I was now making with all my strength. I got on my legs for one moment, when the advanced guard, if I may call it so, of another wave, struck me on the back, and laid me upon my face, but I was now quite out of danger. A man now came and lifted me up, as others lifted up the other man, who seemed quite unable to exert himself. The above is a plain statement of facts. I was the only person, with the exception of the man in distress, who was in the deep water, or who confronted the billows, which were indeed monstrous, but which I cared little for, being, as I said before, an expert diver. Had I been alone the result of the affair would have been much the same; as it is, after the last wave I could easily have dragged the man up upon the beach. I am willing to give to the beachmen whatever credit is due to them; I am anxious to believe that one of them was once up to his middle in water, but truth compels me to state that I never saw one of them up to his knees. I received very uncivil language from one of them, but every species of respect and sympathy from the genteel part of the spectators. A gentleman, I believe from Norwich, and a policeman, attended me in a cab to my lodgings, where they undressed and dressed me.

The kindness of these two individuals I shall never forget.

In any case this adventure had exceptional publicity. For example Mr.

Robert Cooke of John Murray's firm wrote to Mrs. Borrow on 13th October 1853 to say that while travelling abroad he had read in _Galignani's Messenger_ an account of his friend Lavengro's 'daring and heroic act in rescuing so many from a watery grave.' 'I wish they had all been critics,' he adds; 'he would have done just the same, and they might perhaps have shown their grat.i.tude when they got among his inky waves of literature.'

More than this, the paragraph in the Bury St. Edmunds newspaper was copied into the _Plymouth Mail_, and was there read by the Borrows of Cornwall, who had heard nothing of their relative, Thomas Borrow, the army captain and his family, for fifty years or more. One of Borrow's cousins by marriage, Robert Taylor of Penquite, invited him to his father's homeland, and Borrow accepted, glad, we may be sure, of any excuse for a renewal of his wanderings. And so on the 23rd of December 1853 Borrow made his way from Yarmouth to Plymouth by rail, and thence walked twenty miles to Liskeard, where quite a little party of Borrow's cousins were present to greet him. The Borrow family consisted of Henry Borrow of Looe Doun, the father of Mrs. Taylor, William Borrow of Trethinnick, Thomas Nicholas and Elizabeth Borrow, all first cousins, except Anne Taylor. Anne, talking to a friend, describes Borrow on this visit better than any one else has done:

A fine tall man of about six feet three; well-proportioned and not stout; able to walk five miles an hour successively; rather florid face without any hirsute appendages; hair white and soft; eyes and eyebrows dark; good nose and very nice mouth; well-shaped hands;--altogether a person you would notice in a crowd.[179]

Dr. Knapp possessed two 'notebooks' of this Cornish tour. Borrow stayed at Penquite with his cousins from 24th December to 9th January, then he went on a walking tour to Land's End, through Truro and Penzance; he was back at Penquite from 26th January to 1st February, and then took a week's tramp to Tintagel, King Arthur's Castle, and Pentire. Naturally he made inquiries into the language, already extinct, but spoken within the memory of the older inhabitants. 'My relations are most excellent people,' he wrote to his wife from London on his way back, 'but I could not understand more than half of what they said.'

I have only one letter to Mrs. Borrow written during this tour:

To Mrs. George Borrow

PENQUITE, _27th Janry. 1854._

MY DEAR CARRETA,--I just write you a line to inform you that I have got back safe here from the Land's End. I have received your two letters, and hope you received mine from the Land's End. It is probable that I shall yet visit one or two places before I leave Cornwall. I am very much pleased with the country. When you receive this if you please to write a line _by return of post_ I think you may; the Trethinnick people wish me to stay with them for a day or two. When you see the Cobbs pray remember me to them; I am sorry Horace has lost his aunt, he will _miss her_. Love to Hen. Ever yours, dearest,

G. BORROW.

(Keep this.)

One of Borrow's biographers, Mr. Walling, has given us the best account of that journey through Cornwall,[180] and his explanation of why Borrow did not write the Cornish book that he caused to be advertised in a fly-leaf of _The Romany Rye_, by the discouragement arising out of the dire failure of that book, may be accepted.[181] Borrow would have made a beautiful book upon Cornwall. Even the t.i.tle, _Penquite and Pentyre; or, The Head of the Forest and the Headland_, has music in it. And he had in these twenty weeks made himself wonderfully well acquainted not only with the topography of the princ.i.p.ality, but with its folklore and legend. The gulf that ever separated the Borrow of the notebook and of the unprepared letter from the Borrow of the finished ma.n.u.script was extraordinary, and we may deplore with Mr. Walling the absence of this among Borrow's many unwritten books.

Borrow was back in Yarmouth at the end of February 1854--he had not fled the country as Dalrymple had suggested--but in July he was off again for his great tour in Wales, in which he was accompanied by his wife and daughter. Of that tour we must treat in another and later chapter, for _Wild Wales_ was not published until 1862. The year following his great tour in Wales he went on a trip to the Isle of Man.

FOOTNOTES:

[178] It is thus that an old schoolfellow, Dalrymple, describes the episode in a fragment of ma.n.u.script in the possession of Mrs. James Stuart of Carrow Abbey, from which I have already quoted:

'In 1850/2/3 Borrow lived at Yarmouth; he here made rather a ludicrous exhibition of himself on the occasion of a wreck, when he ran into the sea through a full tide up to his knees, with the utmost apparent heroism, and retreated again as soon as he thought it might be dangerous. He incurred so much ridicule that he abruptly quitted the town, and I have not heard since of him.'

[179] Knapp's _Life_, vol. ii. p. 97. Letter from Mrs. Robert Taylor to Mrs. Wilkey.

[180] _George Borrow, The Man and His Work_. By R. A. J. Walling.

Ca.s.sell, 1908.

[181] It is not generally known that not less than eleven books by Borrow were advertised in the first edition of _The Romany Rye_ in 1857, of which only two were published in his lifetime:

1. _Celtic Bards, Chiefs, and Kings._ 2 volumes.

2. _Wild Wales: Its People, Language, and Scenery._ 2 volumes.

3. _Songs of Europe, or Metrical Translations from all the European Languages._ 2 volumes.

4. _Kaempe Viser. Songs about Giants and Heroes._ 2 volumes.

5. _The Turkish Jester._ 1 volume.

6. _Penquite and Pentyre; or, The Head of the Forest and the Headland. A Book on Cornwall._ 2 volumes.

7. _Russian Popular Tales._ 1 volume.

8. _The Sleeping Bard._ 1 volume.

9. _Norman Skalds, Kings, and Earls._ 2 volumes.

10. _The Death of Balder._ 1 volume.

11. _Bayr Jairgey and Glion Doo. Wanderings in Search of Manx Literature._ 1 volume.

Of these _The Sleeping Bard_ appeared in 1860 and _Wild Wales_ in 1862; and after Borrow's death _The Turkish Jester_ in 1884 and _The Death of Balder_ in 1889. The remaining seven books have not yet been published.

Their ma.n.u.script is partly in the Knapp Collection now in the Hispanic Society's possession, partly in my Collection, while certain fragments and the ma.n.u.script of _Romano Lavo-Lil_ are in the possession of well-known Borrow enthusiasts.

CHAPTER XXVII

IN THE ISLE OF MAN

The holiday which Borrow gave himself the year following his visit to Wales, that is to say, in September 1855, is recorded in his unpublished diaries. He never wrote a book as the outcome of that journey, although he caused one to be advertised under the t.i.tle of _Bayr Jairgey and Glion Doo: Wanderings in Search of Manx Literature_.[182] Dr. Knapp possessed two volumes of these notebooks closely written in pencil.

These he reproduced conscientiously in his _Life_, and indeed here we have the most satisfactory portion of his book, for the journal is transcribed with but little modification, and so we have some thirty pages of genuine 'Borrow' that are really very attractive reading.

Borrow, it will be remembered, learnt the Irish language as a mere child, much to his father's disgust. Although he never loved the Irish people, the Celtic Irish, that is to say, whose genial temperament was so opposed to his own, he did love the Irish language, which he more than once declared had incited him to become a student of many tongues.

He never made the mistake into which two of his biographers have fallen of calling it 'Erse.' He was never an accurate student of the Irish language, but among Englishmen he led the way in the present-day interest in that tongue--an interest which is now so p.r.o.nounced among scholars of many nationalities, and has made in Ireland so definite a revival of a language that for a time seemed to be on the way to extinction. Two translations from the Irish are to be found in his _Targum_ published so far back as 1835, and many other translations from the Irish poets were among the unpublished ma.n.u.scripts that he left behind him. It would therefore be with peculiar interest that he would visit the Isle of Man which, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was an Irish-speaking land, but in 1855 was at a stage when the language was falling fast into decay. What survived of it was still Irish with trifling variations in the spelling of words. 'Cranu,' a tree, for example, had become 'Cwan,' and so on--although the p.r.o.nunciation was apparently much the same. When the tall, white-haired Englishman talked to the older inhabitants who knew something of the language they were delighted. 'Mercy upon us,' said one old woman, 'I believe, sir, you are of the old Manx!' Borrow was actually wandering in search of Manx literature, as the t.i.tle of the book that he announced implied. He inquired about the old songs of the island, and of everything that survived of its earlier language. Altogether Borrow must have had a good time in thus following his favourite pursuit.

But Dr. Knapp's two notebooks, which are so largely taken up with these philological matters, are less human than a similar notebook that has fallen into my hands. This is a long leather pocket-book, in which, under the t.i.tle of 'Expedition to the Isle of Man,' we have, written in pencil, a quite vivacious account of his adventures. It records that Borrow and his wife and daughter set out through Bury to Peterborough, Rugby, and Liverpool. It tells of the admiration with which Peterborough's 'n.o.ble cathedral' inspired him. Liverpool he calls a 'London in miniature':

Strolled about town with my wife and Henrietta; wonderful docks and quays, where all the s.h.i.+ps of the world seemed to be gathered--all the commerce of the world to be carried on; St.

George's Crescent; n.o.ble shops; strange people walking about, an Herculean mulatto, for example; the old china shop; cups with Chinese characters upon them; an horrible old Irishwoman with naked feet; a.s.size Hall a n.o.ble edifice.

The party left Liverpool on 20th August, and Borrow, when in sight of the Isle of Man, noticed a lofty ridge of mountains rising to the clouds:

Entered into conversation with two of the crew--Manx sailors--about the Manx language; one, a very tall man, said he knew only a very little of it as he was born on the coast, but that his companion, who came from the interior, knew it well; said it was a mere gibberish. This I denied, and said it was an ancient language, and that it was like the Irish; his companion, a shorter man, in s.h.i.+rt sleeves, with a sharp, eager countenance, now opened his mouth and said I was right, and said that I was the only gentleman whom he had ever heard ask questions about the Manx language. I spoke several Irish words which they understood.

When he had landed he continued his investigations, asking every peasant he met the Manx for this or that English word:

'Are you Manx?' said I. 'Yes,' he replied, 'I am Manx.' 'And what do you call a river in Manx?' 'A river,' he replied. 'Can you speak Manx?' I demanded. 'Yes,' he replied, 'I speak Manx.'

'And you call a river a river?' 'Yes,' said he, 'I do.' 'You don't call it owen?' said I. 'I do not,' said he. I pa.s.sed on, and on the other side of the bridge went for some time along an avenue of trees, pa.s.sing by a stone water-mill, till I came to a public-house on the left hand. Seeing a woman looking out of the window, I asked her to what place the road led. 'To Castletown,' she replied. 'And what do you call the river in Manx?' said I. 'We call it an owen,' said she. 'So I thought,'

I replied, and after a little further discourse returned, as the night was now coming fast on.

One man whom Borrow asked if there were any poets in Man replied that he did not believe there were, that the last Manx poet had died some time ago at Kirk Conos.h.i.+ne, and this man had translated Parnell's _Hermit_ beautifully, and the translation had been printed. He inquired about the Runic Stones, which he continually transcribed. Under date Thursday, 30th August, we find the following:

This day year I ascended Snowdon, and this morning, which is very fine, I propose to start on an expedition to Castletown and to return by Peel.