George Borrow and His Circle Part 31

Borrow lodging at the farm house. But what more likely? And it was characteristic of Borrow--don't you think?--that he should hold out "Oulton Hall" as an address to those who were not likely to visit him.'

When Mrs. Borrow, senior, was persuaded to leave Willow Lane, Norwich, for Oulton, her son took lodgings for her at the 'Hall,' and here she died. Very commonplace farm houses in East Anglia are frequently called 'halls,' to the great amazement of visitors from other counties, although there are some very n.o.ble ones, as, for example, Kirkstead, Swineshead, Parham and Dalling.

[187] This was in reply to a letter from Mr. Harry Palmer which ran as follows:--'When in London on Thursday I saw the captain and brothers of several vessels bound to Gibraltar and Cadiz, and the pa.s.sage money required will be about 10. The _Warblington_ will leave to-morrow, the latter part of next week, and should you decide upon sending your servant I have requested Messrs. Nickols and Marshal to attend to any communication you may make to them, who will do their utmost to get him out at the least possible expense, and pay the pa.s.sage money upon his leaving England, and make arrangements with the captain for his pa.s.sage to Tangier. As Gibraltar would be as convenient as Cadiz, have little doubt Messrs. Nickols and Co. would be able to get him out for 7 or 8.

I have a vessel now loading in this port for Barcelona, to which port (if you could send him to Liverpool) should be happy to take him and then send him forward to his destination.'

[188] _The Eastern Daily Press_, 1st October 1892. The Harveys were great friends of Borrow, and he left one of them co-executor with Mrs.

MacOubrey of his estate. Miss Harvey's impressions make an interesting contrast to those of Miss Frances Power Cobbe. I have to thank Mr. A.

Cozens-Hardy, the editor of _The Eastern Daily Press_, for courteously furnis.h.i.+ng me with copies of these letters, and for giving me permission to use them here.

[189] _The Poems of A. C. Benson_, p. 213: Published by John Lane, 1909.

[190] Dr. Knapp's _Life_, vol. ii, p. 41.

[191] _The Athenaeum_, July 8, 1893. Dr. Jessopp's feeling for Borrow was much more kindly then than when he supplied to the London _Daily Chronicle_ of 30th April 1900 an article which had better not have been written.

[192] Letter to _The Athenaeum_, July 22, 1893.

CHAPTER XXIX

IN SCOTLAND AND IRELAND

Borrow has himself given us--in _Lavengro_--a picturesque record of his early experiences in Scotland. It is pa.s.sing strange that he published no account of his two visits to the North in maturer years. Why did he not write _Wild Scotland_ as a companion volume to _Wild Wales_? He preserved in little leather pocket-books or leather-covered exercise-books copious notes of both tours. Two of his notebooks came into the possession of the late Dr. Knapp, Borrow's first biographer, and are thus described in his Bibliography:

_Note Book of a Tour in Scotland, the Orkneys and Shetland in Oct. and Dec. 1858._ 1 large vol. leather.

_Note Book of Tours around Belfast and the Scottish Borders from Stranraer to Berwick-upon-Tweed in July and August 1866._ 1 vol. leather.

Of these Dr. Knapp made use only to give the routes of Borrow's journeys so far as he was able to interpret them. It may be that he was doubtful as to whether his purchase of the ma.n.u.script carried with it the copyright of its contents, as it a.s.suredly did not; it may be that he quailed before the minute and almost undecipherable handwriting. But similar notebooks are in my possession, and there are, happily, in these days typists--you pay them by the hour, and it means an infinity of time and patience--who will copy the most minute and the most obscure doc.u.ments. There are some of the notebooks of the Scottish tour of 1858 before me, and what is of far more importance--Borrow's letters to his wife while on this tour. Borrow lost his mother in August 1858, and this event was naturally a great blow to his heart. A week or two later he suffered a cruel blow to his pride also, nothing less than the return of the ma.n.u.script of his much-prized translation from the Welsh of _The Sleeping Bard_--and this by his 'prince of publishers,' John Murray.

'There is no money in it,' said the publisher, and he was doubtless right.[193] The two disasters were of different character, but both unhinged him. He had already written _Wild Wales_, although it was not to be published for another four years. He had caused to be advertised--in 1857--a book on Cornwall, but it was never written in any definitive form, and now our author had lost heart, and the Cornish book--_Penquite and Pentyre_--and the Scots book never saw the light. In these autumn months of 1858 geniality and humour had parted from Borrow; this his diary makes clear. He was ill. His wife urged a tour in Scotland, and he prepared himself for a rough, simple journey, of a kind quite different from the one in Wales. The north of Scotland in the winter was scarcely to be thought of for his wife and stepdaughter Henrietta. He tells us in one of these diaries that he walked 'several hundred miles in the Highlands.' His wife and daughter were with him in Wales, as every reader of _Wild Wales_ will recall, but the Scots tour was meant to be a more formidable pilgrimage, and they went to Great Yarmouth instead. The first half of the tour--that of September--is dealt with in letters to his wife, the latter half is reflected in his diary. The letters show Borrow's experiences in the earlier part of his journey, and from his diaries we learn that he was in Oban on 22nd October, Aberdeen on 5th November, Inverness on the 9th, and thence he went to Tain, Dornoch, Wick, John o'Groat's, and to the island towns, Stromness, Kirkwall, and Lerwick. He was in Shetland on the 1st of December--altogether a bleak, cheerless journey, we may believe, even for so hardy a tramp as Borrow, and the tone of the following extract from one of his rough notebooks in my possession may perhaps be explained by the circ.u.mstance. Borrow is on the way to Loch Laggan and visits a desolate churchyard, Coll Harrie, to see the tomb of John Macdonnel or Ian Lom:

I was on a Highland hill in an old Popish burying-ground. I entered the ruined church, disturbed a rabbit crouching under an old tombstone--it ran into a hole, then came out running about like wild--quite frightened--made room for it to run out by the doorway, telling it I would not hurt it--went out again and examined the tombs.... Would have examined much more but the wind and rain blew horribly, and I was afraid that my hat, if not my head, would be blown into the road over the hill.

Quitted the place of old Highland Popish devotion--descended the hill again with great difficulty--gra.s.s slippery and the ground here and there quaggy, resumed the road--village--went to the door of house looking down the valley--to ask its name--knock--people came out, a whole family, looking sullen and all savage. The stout, tall young man with the grey savage eyes--civil questions--half-savage answers--village's name Achaluarach--the neighbourhood--all Catholic--chiefly Macdonnels; said the English, _my countrymen_, had taken the whole country--'but not without paying for it,' I replied--said I was soaking wet with a kind of sneer, but never asked me in.

I said I cared not for wet. A savage, brutal Papist and a hater of the English--the whole family with bad countenances--a tall woman in the background probably the mother of them all. Bade him good-day, he made no answer and I went away. Learnt that the river's name was Spean.

He pa.s.sed through Scotland in a disputative vein, which could not have made him a popular traveller. He tells a Roman Catholic of the Macdonnel clan to read his Bible and 'trust in Christ, not in the Virgin Mary and graven images.' He went up to another man who accosted him with the remark that 'It is a soft day,' and said, 'You should not say a "soft"

day, but a wet day.' Even the Spanish, for whom he had so much contempt and scorn when he returned from the Peninsula, are 'in many things a wise people'--after his experiences of the Scots. There is abundance of Borrow's prejudice, intolerance, and charm in this fragment of a diary[194]; but the extract I have given is of additional interest as showing how Borrow wrote all his books. The notebooks that he wrote in Spain and Wales were made up of similar disjointed jottings. Here is a note of more human character interspersed with Borrow's diatribes upon the surliness of the Scots. He is at Invergarry, on the Banks of Loch Oich. It is the 5th of October:

Dinner of real haggis; meet a conceited schoolmaster. This night, or rather in the early morning, I saw in the dream of my sleep my dear departed mother--she appeared to be coming out of her little sleeping-room at Oulton Hall--overjoyed I gave a cry and fell down at her knee, but my agitation was so great that it burst the bonds of sleep, and I awoke.

But the letters to Mrs. Borrow are the essential doc.u.ments here, and not the copious diaries which I hope to publish elsewhere. The first letter to 'Carreta' is from Edinburgh, where Borrow arrived on Sunday, 19th September 1858:

To Mrs. George Borrow, 38 Camperdown Place, Yarmouth, Norfolk

EDINBURGH, _Sunday (Sept. 19th, 1858)._

DEAR CARRETA,--I just write a line to inform you that I arrived here yesterday quite safe. We did not start from Yarmouth till past three o'clock on Thursday morning; we reached Newcastle about ten on Friday.

As I was walking in the street at Newcastle a sailor-like man came running up to me, and begged that I would let him speak to me. He appeared almost wild with joy. I asked him who he was, and he told me he was a Yarmouth north beach man, and that he knew me very well. Before I could answer, another sailor-like, short, thick fellow came running up, who also seemed wild with joy; he was a comrade of the other. I never saw two people so out of themselves with pleasure, they literally danced in the street; in fact, they were two of my old friends. I asked them how they came down there, and they told me that they had been down fis.h.i.+ng. They begged a thousand pardons for speaking to me, but told me they could not help it. I set off for Alnwick on Friday afternoon, stayed there all night, and saw the castle next morning. It is a fine old place, but at present is undergoing repairs--a Scottish king was killed before its walls in the old time. At about twelve I started for Edinburgh. The place is wonderfully altered since I was here, and I don't think for the better. There is a Runic stone on the castle brae which I am going to copy. It was not there in my time. If you write direct to me at the Post Office, Inverness. I am thinking of going to Glasgow to-morrow, from which place I shall start for Inverness by one of the packets which go thither by the North-West and the Caledonian Ca.n.a.l. I hope that you and Hen are well and comfortable. Pray eat plenty of grapes and partridges. We had upon the whole a pleasant pa.s.sage from Yarmouth; we lived plainly but well, and I was not at all ill--the captain seemed a kind, honest creature. Remember me kindly to Mrs.

Turnour and Mrs. Clarke, and G.o.d bless you and Hen.

GEORGE BORROW.

In his unpublished diary Borrow records his journey from Glasgow through beautiful but over-described scenery to Inverness, where he stayed at the Caledonian Hotel:

To Mrs. George Borrow, 38 Camperdown Place, Yarmouth

INVERNESS, _Sunday (Sept. 26th)._

DEAR CARRETA,--This is the third letter which I have written to you.

Whether you have received the other two, or will receive this, I am doubtful. I have been several times to the post office, but we found no letter from you, though I expected to find one awaiting me when I arrived. I wrote last on Friday. I merely want to know once how you are, and if all is well I shall move onward. It is of not much use staying here. After I had written to you on Friday I crossed by the ferry over the Firth and walked to Beauly, and from thence to Beaufort or Castle Downie; at Beauly I saw the gate of the pit where old Fraser used to put the people whom he owed money to--it is in the old ruined cathedral, and at Beaufort saw the ruins of the house where he was born. Lord Lovat lives in the house close by. There is now a claimant to the t.i.tle, a descendant of old Fraser's elder brother who committed a murder in the year 1690, and on that account fled to South Wales. The present family are rather uneasy, and so are their friends, of whom they have a great number, for though they are flaming Papists they are very free of their money. I have told several of their cousins that the claimant has not a chance as the present family have been so long in possession. They almost blessed me for saying so. There, however, can be very little doubt that the t.i.tle and estate, more than a million acres, belong to the claimant by strict law. Old Fraser's brother was called Black John of the Ta.s.ser. The man whom he killed was a piper who sang an insulting song to him at a wedding. I have heard the words and have translated them; he was dressed very finely, and the piper sang:

'You're dressed in Highland robes, O John, But ropes of straw would become ye better; You've silver buckles your shoes upon But leather thongs for them were fitter.'

Whereupon John drew his dagger and ran it into the piper's belly; the descendants of the piper are still living at Beauly.

I walked that day thirty-four miles between noon and ten o'clock at night. My letter of credit is here. This is a dear place, but not so bad as Edinburgh. _If you have written_, don't write any more till you hear from me again. G.o.d bless you and Hen.

GEORGE BORROW.

'Swindled out of a s.h.i.+lling by rascally ferryman,' is Borrow's note in his diary of the episode that he relates to his wife of crossing the Firth. He does not tell her, but his diary tells us, that he changed his inn on the day he wrote this letter: the following jottings from the diary cover the period:

_Sept. 29th._--Quit the 'Caledonian' for 'Union Sun'--poor accommodation--could scarcely get anything to eat--unpleasant day. Walked by the river--at night saw the comet again from the bridge.

_Sept. 30th._--Breakfast. The stout gentleman from Caithness, Mr. John Miller, gave me his card--show him mine--his delight.

_Oct. 1st._--Left Inverness for Fort Augustus by steamer--pa.s.sengers--strange man--tall gentleman--half doctor--breakfast--dreadful hurricane of wind and rain--reach Fort Augustus--inn--apartments--Edinburgh ale--stroll over the bridge to a wretched village--wind and rain--return--fall asleep before fire--dinner--herrings, first-rate--black ale, Highland mutton--pudding and cream--stroll round the fort--wet gra.s.s--stormy-like--wind and rain--return--kitchen--kind, intelligent woman from Dornoch--no Gaelic--shows me a Gaelic book of spiritual songs by one Robertson--talks to me about Alexander c.u.mming, a fat blacksmith and great singer of Gaelic songs.

But to return to Borrow's letters to his wife:

To Mrs. George Borrow, 38 Camperdown Terrace, Gt. Yarmouth

INVERNESS, _September 29th, 1858._

MY DEAR CARRETA,--I have got your letter, and glad enough I was to get it. The day after to-morrow I shall depart from here for Fort Augustus at some distance up the lake. After staying a few days there, I am thinking of going to the Isle of Mull, but I will write to you if possible from Fort Augustus. I am rather sorry that I came to Scotland--I was never in such a place in my life for cheating and imposition, and the farther north you go the worse things seem to be, and yet I believe it is possible to live very cheap here, that is if you have a house of your own and a wife to go out and make bargains, for things are abundant enough, but if you move about you are at the mercy of innkeepers and suchlike people. The other day I was swindled out of a s.h.i.+lling by a villain to whom I had given it for change. I ought, perhaps, to have had him up before a magistrate provided I could have found one, but I was in a wild place and he had a clan about him, and if I had had him up I have no doubt I should have been outsworn. I, however, have met one fine, n.o.ble old fellow. The other night I lost my way amongst horrible moors and wandered for miles and miles without seeing a soul. At last I saw a light which came from the window of a rude hovel. I tapped at the window and shouted, and at last an old man came out; he asked me what I wanted, and I told him I had lost my way. He asked me where I came from and where I wanted to go, and on my telling him he said I had indeed lost my way, for I had got out of it at least four miles, and was going away from the place I wanted to get to. He then said he would show me the way, and went with me for several miles over most horrible places. At last we came to a road where he said he thought he might leave me, and wished me good-night. I gave him a s.h.i.+lling. He was very grateful and said, after considering, that as I had behaved so handsomely to him he would not leave me yet, as he thought it possible I might yet lose my way. He then went with me three miles farther, and I have no doubt that, but for him, I should have lost my way again, the roads were so tangled. I never saw such an old fellow, or one whose conversation was so odd and entertaining.

This happened last Monday night, the night of the day in which I had been swindled of the s.h.i.+lling by the other; I could write a history about those two s.h.i.+llings.

To Mrs. George Borrow, 39 Camperdown Terrace, Gt. Yarmouth

INVERNESS, _30th September 1858._

DEAR CARRETA,--I write another line to tell you that I have got your second letter--it came just in time, as I leave to-morrow.

In your next, address to George Borrow, Post Office, Tobermory, Isle of Mull, Scotland. You had, however, better write without delay, as I don't know how long I may be there; and be sure only to write once. I am glad we have got such a desirable tenant for our Maltings, and should be happy to hear that the cottage was also let so well. However, let us be grateful for what has been accomplished. I hope you wrote to Cooke as I desired you, and likewise said something about how I had waited for Murray.... I met to-day a very fat gentleman from Caithness, at the very north of Scotland; he said he was descended from the Norse. I talked to him about them, and he was so pleased with my conversation that he gave me his card, and begged that I would visit him if I went there. As I could do no less, I showed him my card--I had but one--and he no sooner saw the name than he was in a rapture. I am rather glad that you have got the next door, as the locality is highly respectable. Tell Hen that I copied the Runic stone on the Castle Hill, Edinburgh. It was brought from Denmark in the old time. The inscription is imperfect, but I can read enough of it to see that it was erected by a man to his father and mother. I again write the direction for your next: George Borrow, Esq., Post Office, Tobermory, Isle of Mull, Scotland.

G.o.d bless you and Hen. Ever yours,