George Borrow and His Circle Part 34

[198] Borrow was fond of writing out t.i.tle-pages for his books, and I have a dozen or so of these draft t.i.tle-pages among my Borrow Papers.

[199] Dr. Knapp's _Life_, vol. ii. p. 167.

[200] Borrow's a.s.sociation with the firm of Murray deserves a chapter to itself, but the material for writing such a chapter has already been used by Dr. Knapp and Mr. Herbert Jenkins. The present Mr. John Murray, John Murray IV., has seventy letters from Borrow to his firm in his possession. The first of the name to publish Borrow's works was John Murray II., who died in 1843. John Murray III., who died in 1892, and his partner and cousin Robert Cooke, were Borrow's friends. He had differences at times, but he was loyal to them and they were loyal to him as good authors and good publishers ought to be. With all his irritability Borrow had the sense to see that there was substantial reason in their declining to issue his translations. That, although at the end there were long intervals of silence, the publishers and their author remained friends is shown by letters written to his daughter after Borrow's death, and by the following little note from Borrow to John Murray which was probably never sent. It is in the feeble, broken handwriting of what was probably the last year of Borrow's life.

To John Murray, Esq.

'OULTON (_no date_).

'MY DEAR FRIEND,--Thank you most sincerely for sending me the last vol.

of the _Quarterly_, a truly remarkable one it is, full of literature of every description--I should have answered the receipt of it before had I not been very unwell. Should you come to these parts do me the favour to look in upon me--it might do me good, and say the same thing from me to my kind and true friend Robt. Cooke. His last visit to me did me much good, and another might probably do me the same. What a horrible state the country seems to be in, and no wonder--a monster-minister whose princ.i.p.al aim seems to be the ruin of his native land, a parliament either incompetent or indifferent. However, let us hope for the best.

Pray send my cordial respects to Mrs. Murray and kind regards to the rest of your good family.--Ever sincerely yours,

GEORGE BORROW.'

[201] Mr. Sampson has written an admirable introduction to _The Romany Rye_ in Methuen's 'Little Library,' but he goes rather far in his suggestion that Borrow instead of writing 'Joseph Sell' for 20, possibly obtained that sum by imitating 'the methods of Jerry Abershaw, Galloping d.i.c.k,' or some of the 'fraternity of vagabonds' whose lives Borrow had chronicled in his _Celebrated Trials_, in other words, that he stole the money.

[202] _The Romany Rye_, Appendix, ch. vii.

[203] It is interesting to note that all the surviving members of Sir Walter Scott's family belong to the Roman Catholic Church, as do certain members of the family of Newman's opponent, Charles Kingsley. Several members of Charles d.i.c.kens's family are also Roman Catholics.

[204] _Essays Critical and Historical_ by John Henry Cardinal Newman, vol. i., Longmans. See also _Apologia pro Vita Sua_, pp. 96-97.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

EDWARD FITZGERALD

Edward FitzGerald once declared that he was about the only friend with whom Borrow had never quarrelled.[205] There was probably no reason for this exceptional amity other than the 'genius for friends.h.i.+p' with which FitzGerald has been rightly credited. There were certainly, however, many points of likeness between the two men which might have kept them at peace. Both had written copiously and out of all proportion to the public demand for their work. Both revelled in translation. FitzGerald's eight volumes in a magnificent American edition consists mainly of translations from various tongues which no man presumably now reads. All the world has read and will long continue to read his translation or paraphrase of Omar Khayyam's _Rubaiyat_. 'Old Fitz,' as his friends called him, lives by that, although his letters are among the best in literature. Borrow wrote four books that will live, but had publishers been amenable he would have published forty, and all as unsaleable as the major part of FitzGerald's translations. Both men were Suffolk squires, and yet delighted more in the company of a cla.s.s other than their own, FitzGerald of boatmen, Borrow of gypsies; both were counted eccentrics in their respective villages. Perhaps alone among the great Victorian authors they lived to be old without receiving in their lives any popular recognition of their great literary achievements. But FitzGerald had a more cultivated mind than Borrow. He loved literature and literary men whilst Borrow did not. His criticism of books is of the best, and his friends.h.i.+ps with bookmen are among the most interesting in literary history. 'A solitary, shy, kind-hearted man,' was the verdict upon him of the frequently censorious Carlyle. When Anne Thackeray asked her father which of his friends he had loved best, he answered 'Dear old Fitz, to be sure,' and Tennyson would have said the same. Borrow had none of these gifts as a letter-writer and no genius for friends.h.i.+p. The charm of his style, so indisputable in his best work, is absent from his letters; and his friends were alienated one after another. Borrow's undisciplined intellect and narrow upbringing were a curse to him, from the point of view of his own personal happiness, although they helped him to achieve exactly the work for which he was best fitted. Borrow's acquaintance with FitzGerald was commenced by the latter, who, in July 1853, sent from Boulge Hall, Suffolk, to Oulton Hall, in the same county, his recently published volume _Six Dramas of Calderon_. He apologises for making so free with 'a great man; but, as usual, I shall feel least fear before a man like yourself who both do fine things in your own language and are deep read in those of others.' He also refers to 'our common friend Donne,' so that it is probable that they had met at Donne's house.[206] The next letter, also published by Dr. Knapp, that FitzGerald writes to Borrow is dated from his home in Great Portland Street in 1856. He presents his friend with a Turkish Dictionary, and announces his coming marriage to Miss Barton, 'Our united ages amount to 96!--a dangerous experiment on both sides'--as it proved. The first reference to Borrow in the FitzGerald _Letters_ issued by his authorised publishers is addressed to Professor Cowell in January 1857:

I was with Borrow a week ago at Donne's, and also at Yarmouth three months ago: he is well, but not yet agreed with Murray.

He read me a long translation he had made from the Turkish: which I could not admire, and his taste becomes stranger than ever.[207]

But Borrow's genius if not his taste was always admired by FitzGerald, as the following letter among my Borrow Papers clearly indicates. Borrow had published _The Romany Rye_ at the beginning of May:

[Ill.u.s.tration: OULTON COTTAGE FROM THE BROAD

Showing the summer house on the left from a sketch by Henrietta MacOubrey. The house which has replaced it has another aspect.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SUMMER HOUSE OULTON, AS IT IS TO DAY

Which when compared with Miss MacOubrey's sketch shows that it has been reroofed and probably rebuilt altogether.]

To George Borrow, Esq., Oulton Hall.

GOLDINGTON HALL, BEDFORD, _May 24/57_[208]

MY DEAR SIR,--Your Book was put into my hands a week ago just as I was leaving London; so I e'en carried it down here, and have been reading it under the best Circ.u.mstances:--at such a Season--in the Fields as they now are--and in company with a Friend I love best in the world--who scarce ever reads a Book, but knows better than I do what they are made of from a hint.

Well, lying in a Paddock of his, I have been travelling along with you to Horncastle, etc.,--in a very delightful way for the most part; something as I have travelled, and love to travel, with Fielding, Cervantes, and Robinson Crusoe--and a smack of all these there seems to me, with something beside, in your book. But, as will happen in Travel, there were some spots I didn't like so well--didn't like _at all_: and sometimes wished to myself that I, a poor 'Man of Taste,' had been at your Elbow (who are a Man of much more than Taste) to divert you, or get you by some means to pa.s.s lightlier over some places. But you wouldn't have heeded me, and won't heed me, and _must_ go your own way, I think--And in the parts I least like, I am yet thankful for honest, daring, and original Thought and Speech such as one hardly gets in these mealy-mouthed days. It was very kind of you to send me your book.

My Wife is already established at a House called 'Albert's Villa,' or some such name, at Gorlestone--but a short walk from you: and I am to find myself there in a few days. So I shall perhaps tell you more of my thoughts ere long. Now I shall finish this large Sheet with a Tetrastich of one Omar Khayyam who was an Epicurean Infidel some 500 years ago:

[Persian][209]

and am yours very truly, EDWARD FITZGERALD.

In a letter to Cowell about the same time--June 5, 1857--FitzGerald writes that he is about to set out for Gorleston, Great Yarmouth:

Within hail almost lives George Borrow, who has lately published, and given me, two new volumes of Lavengro called _Romany Rye_, with some excellent things, and some very bad (as I have made bold to write to him--how shall I face him!) You would not like the book at all I think.[210]

It was Cowell, it will be remembered, who introduced FitzGerald to the Persian poet Omar, and afterwards regretted the act. The first edition of _The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam_ appeared two years later, in 1859.

Edward Byles Cowell was born in Ipswich in 1826, and he was educated at the Ipswich Grammar School. It was in the library attached to the Ipswich Library Inst.i.tution that Cowell commenced the study of Oriental languages. In 1842 he entered the business of his father and grandfather as a merchant and maltster. When only twenty years of age he commenced his friends.h.i.+p with Edward FitzGerald, and their correspondence may be found in Dr. Aldis Wright's _FitzGerald Correspondence_. In 1850 he left his brother to carry on the business and entered himself at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, where he pa.s.sed six years. At intervals he read Greek with FitzGerald and, later, Persian. FitzGerald commenced to learn this last language, which was to bring him fame, when he was forty-four years of age. In 1856 Cowell was appointed to a Professors.h.i.+p of English History at Calcutta, and from there he sent FitzGerald a copy of the ma.n.u.script of _Omar Khayyam_, afterwards lent by FitzGerald to Borrow. Much earlier than this--in 1853--FitzGerald had written to Borrow:

At Ipswich, indeed, is a man whom you would like to know, I think, and who would like to know you; one Edward Cowell: a great scholar, if I may judge.... Should you go to Ipswich do look for him! a great deal more worth looking for (I speak with no sham modesty, I am sure) than yours,--E. F. G.[211]

Twenty-six years afterwards--in 1879--we find FitzGerald writing to Dr.

Aldis Wright to the effect that Cowell had been seized with 'a wish to learn Welsh under George Borrow':

And as he would not venture otherwise, I gave him a Note of Introduction, and off he went, and had an hour with the old Boy, who was hard of hearing and shut up in a stuffy room, but cordial enough; and Cowell was glad to have seen the Man, and tell him that it was his _Wild Wales_ which first inspired a thirst for this language into the Professor.[212]

This introduction and meeting are described by Professor Cowell in the following letter:[213]

CAMBRIDGE, _December 10, 1892._

DEAR SIR,--I fear I cannot help you much by my reminiscences of Borrow. I never had the slightest interest in the gipsies, but I always had a corner in my heart for Spain and Wales, and consequently _The Bible in Spain_ and _Wild Wales_ have always been favourite books. But though Borrow's works were well known to me, I never saw him but once, and what I saw of him then made me feel that he was one of those men who put the best part of themselves into their books. We get the pure gold there without the admixture of alloy which daily life seemed to impart.

I was staying one autumn at Lowestoft some ten years or more ago when I asked my dear old friend, Mr. Edward FitzGerald, to give me a letter of introduction to Mr. George Borrow. Armed with this I started on my pilgrimage and took a chaise for Oulton Hall. I remember as we drew near we turned into a kind of drift road through the fields where the long sweeping boughs of the trees hung so low that I lost my hat more than once as we drove along. My driver remarked that the old gentleman would not allow any of his trees to be cut. When we reached the hall I went in at the gate into the farmyard, but I could see n.o.body about anywhere. I walked up to the front door, but n.o.body answered my knock except some dogs, who began barking from their kennels. At last in answer to a very loud knock, the door was opened by an old gentleman whom I at once recognised by the engraving to be Borrow himself. I gave him my letter and introduced myself. He replied in a tone of humorous petulance, 'What is the good of your bringing me a letter when I haven't got my spectacles to read it?' However, he took me into his room, where I fancy my knock had roused him from a siesta. We soon got into talk. He began by some unkind remarks about one or two of our common friends, but I soon turned the subject to books, especially Spanish and Welsh books. Here I own I was disappointed in his conversation. I talked to him about Ab Gwilym, whom he speaks so highly of in _Wild Wales_, but his interest was languid. He did not seem interested when I told him that the London Society of Cymmrodorion were publis.h.i.+ng in their journal the Welsh poems of Iolo Goch, the bard of Owen Glendower who fought with our Henry v., two of whose poems Borrow had given spirited translations of in _Wild Wales_. He told me he had heaps of translations from Welsh books somewhere in his cupboards but he did not know where to lay his hand on them. He did not show me one Welsh or Spanish book of any kind.

You may easily imagine that I was disappointed with my interview and I never cared to visit him again. Borrow was a man of real genius, and his _Bible in Spain_ and _Wild Wales_ are unique books in their way, but with all his knowledge of languages he was not a scholar. I should be the last person to depreciate his _Sleeping Bard_, for I owe a great deal to it as it helped me to read the Welsh original, but it is full of careless mistakes. The very t.i.tle is wrong; it should not be the _Visions of the Sleeping Bard_ but the _Visions of the Bard Sleep_, as the bard or prophet Sleep shows the author in a series of dreams--his visions of life, death, and h.e.l.l, which form the three chapters of the book.

Borrow knew nothing of philology. His strange version of 'Om mani padme hum' (Oh! the gem in the lotus ho!) must have been taken from some phonetic representation of the sounds as heard by an ignorant traveller in China or Mongolia.

I have written this long letter lured on by my recollections, but after all I can tell you nothing. Surely it is best that Borrow should remain a name; we have the best part of him still living in his best books.

'He gave the people of his best; His worst he kept, his best he gave.'

I don't see why we should trouble ourselves about his 'worst.'

He had his weaker side like all of us, the foolish part of his nature as well as the wise; but 'de mortuis nil nisi bonum'

especially applies in such cases.--I remain, dear sir, yours sincerely,

E. B. COWELL.

There is one short letter from FitzGerald to Borrow in Dr. Aldis Wright's _FitzGerald Letters_. It is dated June 1857 and from it we learn that FitzGerald lent Borrow the Calcutta ma.n.u.script of _Omar Khayyam_, upon which he based his own immortal translation, and from a letter to W. H. Thompson in 1861 we learn that Cowell, who had inspired the writing of FitzGerald's _Omar Khayyam_, Donne and Borrow were the only three friends to whom he had sent copies of his 'peccadilloes in verse' as he calls his remarkable translation,[214] and this two years after it was published. A letter, dated July 6, 1857,[215] asks for the return of FitzGerald's copy of the Ouseley ma.n.u.script of _Omar Khayyam_, Borrow having clearly already returned the Calcutta ma.n.u.script. This letter concludes on a pathetic note: