George Borrow and His Circle Part 38

To Mrs. George Borrow

_Tuesday afternoon._

MY DEAR WIFE,--I just write you a line to tell you that I am tolerably well as I hope you are. Every thing is in confusion abroad. The French King has disappeared and will probably never be heard of, though they are expecting him in England. Funds are down nearly to eighty. The Government have given up the income tax and people are very glad of it. _I am not._ With respect to the funds, if I were to sell out I should not know what to do with the money. J. says they will rise. I do not think they will, they may, however, fluctuate a little.--Keep up your spirits, my heart's dearest, and kiss old Hen. for me.

G. B.

To Mrs. George Borrow

53_a_, PALL MALL.

DEAR WIFE CARRETA,--I write you a line as I suppose you will be glad to have one. I dine to-night with Murray and Cooke, and we are going to talk over about _The Sleeping Bard_; both are very civil. I have been reading hard at the Museum and have lost no time. Yesterday I went to Greenwich to see the Leviathan. It is almost terrible to look at, and seems too large for the river.

It resembles a floating town--the paddle is 60 feet high. A tall man can stand up in the funnel as it lies down. 'Tis sad, however, that money is rather scarce. I walked over Blackheath and thought of poor dear Mrs. Watson. I have just had a note from FitzGerald. We have had some rain but not very much.

London is very gloomy in rainy weather. I was hoping that I should have a letter from you this morning. I hope you and Hen.

have been well.--G.o.d bless you,

GEORGE BORROW.

To Mrs. George Borrow

PALL MALL, _53a, Sat.u.r.day._

DEAR CARRETA,--I am thinking of coming to you on Thursday. I do not know that I can do anything more here, and the dulness of the weather and the mists are making me ill. Please to send another five pound note by Tuesday morning. I have spent scarcely anything of that which you sent except what I owe to Mrs. W., but I wish to have money in my pocket, and Murray and Cooke are going to dine with me on Tuesday; I shall be glad to be with you again, for I am very much in want of your society.

I miss very much my walks at Llangollen by the quiet ca.n.a.l; but what's to be done? Everything seems nearly at a standstill in London, on account of this wretched war, at which it appears to me the English are getting the worst, notwithstanding their boasting. They thought to settle it in an autumn's day; they little knew the Russians, and they did not reflect that just after autumn comes winter, which has ever been the Russians'

friend. Have you heard anything about the rent of the Cottage?

I should have been glad to hear from you this morning. Give my love to Hen. and may G.o.d bless you, dear.

(Keep this.)

GEORGE BORROW.

To Mrs. George Borrow

No. 53_a_ PALL MALL.

DEAR CARRETA,--I hope you received my last letter written on Tuesday. I am glad that I came to London. I find myself much the better for having done so. I was going on in a very spiritless manner. Everybody I have met seems very kind and glad to see me. Murray seems to be thoroughly staunch. Cooke, to whom I mentioned the F.T., says that Murray was delighted with the idea, and will be very glad of the 4th of _Lavengro_.

I am going to dine with Murray to-day, Thursday. W. called upon me to-day. I wish you would send me a blank cheque, in a letter so that if I want money I may be able to draw for a little. I shall not be long from home, but now I am here I wish to do all that's necessary. If you send me a blank cheque, I suppose W.

or Murray would give me the money. I hope you got my last letter. I received yours, and Cooke has just sent the two copies of _Lavengro_ you wrote for, and I believe some engravings of the picture. I shall wish to return by the packet if possible, and will let you know when I am coming. I hope to write again shortly to tell you some more news. How is mother and Hen., and how are all the creatures? I hope all well. I trust you like all I propose--now I am here I want to get two or three things, to go to the Museum, and to arrange matters.

G.o.d bless you. Love to mother and Hen.

GEORGE BORROW.

To Mrs. George Borrow

No. 58 JERMYN STREET, ST. JAMES.

DEAR CARRETA,--I got here safe, and upon the whole had not so bad a journey as might be expected. I put up at the Spread Eagle for the night for I was tired and _hungry_; have got into my old lodgings as you see, those on the second floor, they are very nice ones, with every convenience; they are expensive, it is true, but they are _cheerful_, which is a grand consideration for me. I have as yet seen n.o.body, for it is only now a little past eleven. I can scarcely at present tell you what my plans are, perhaps to-morrow I shall write again. Kiss Hen., and G.o.d bless you.

G. B.

It was in the year 1843 that Borrow, on a visit to London following upon the success of _The Bible in Spain_, sat to Henry Wyndham Phillips for his portrait at the instigation of Mr. Murray, who gave Borrow a replica, retaining for himself Phillips's more finished picture, which has been reproduced again and again in the present Mr. Murray's Borrow productions.[230]

Borrow was in London in 1845 and again in 1848. There must have been other occasional visits on the way to this or that starting point of his annual holiday, but in 1860 Borrow took a house in London, and he resided there until 1874, when he returned to Oulton. In a letter to Mr.

John Murray, written from Ireland in November 1859, Mrs. Borrow writes to the effect that in the spring of the following year she will wish to look round 'and select a pleasant holiday residence within three to ten miles of London.' There is no doubt that a succession of winters on Oulton Broad had been very detrimental to Mrs. Borrow's health, although they had no effect upon Borrow, who bathed there with equal indifference in winter as in summer, having, as he tells us in _Wild Wales_, 'always had the health of an elephant.' And so Borrow and his wife arrived in London in June, and took temporary lodgings at 21 Montagu Street, Portman Square. In September they went into occupation of a house in Brompton--22 Hereford Square, which is now commemorated by a County Council tablet. Here Borrow resided for fourteen years, and here his wife died on January 30, 1869. She was buried in Brompton Cemetery, where Borrow was laid beside her twelve years later. For neighbour, on the one side, the Borrows had Mr. Robert Collinson and, on the other, Miss Frances Power Cobbe and her companion, Miss M. C. Lloyd. From Miss Cobbe we have occasional glimpses of Borrow, all of them unkindly. She was of Irish extraction, her father having been grandson of Charles Cobbe, Archbishop of Dublin. Miss Cobbe was an active woman in all kinds of journalistic and philanthropic enterprises in the London of the 'seventies and 'eighties of the last century, writing in particular in the now defunct newspaper, the _Echo_, and she wrote dozens of books and pamphlets, all of them forgotten except her _Autobiography_,[231] in which she devoted several pages to her neighbour in Hereford Square.

Borrow had no sympathy with fanatical women with many 'isms,' and the pair did not agree, although many neighbourly courtesies pa.s.sed between them for a time. Here is an extract from Miss Cobbe's _Autobiography_:

George Borrow, who, if he were not a gypsy by blood, _ought_ to have been one, was for some years our near neighbour in Hereford Square. My friend[232] was amused by his quaint stories and his (real or sham) enthusiasm for Wales, and cultivated his acquaintance. I never liked him, thinking him more or less of a hypocrite. His missions, recorded in _The Bible in Spain_, and his translations of the Scriptures into the out-of-the-way tongues, for which he had a gift, were by no means consonant with his real opinions concerning the veracity of the said Bible.

One only needs to quote this by the light of the story as told so far in these pages to see how entirely Miss Cobbe misunderstood Borrow, or rather how little insight she was able to bring to a study of his curious character. The rest of her attempt at interpretation is largely taken up to demonstrate how much more clever and more learned she was than Borrow. Altogether it is a sorry spectacle this of the pseudo-philanthropist relating her conversations with a man broken by misfortune and the death of his wife. Many of Miss Cobbe's statements have pa.s.sed into current biographies and have doubtless found acceptance.[233] I do not find them convincing. Archdeacon Whately on the other hand tells us that he always found Borrow 'most civil and hospitable,' and his sister gives us the following 'impression':

When Mr. Borrow returned from this Spanish journey, which had been full, as we all know, of most entertaining adventures, related with much liveliness and spirit by himself, he was regarded as a kind of 'lion' in the literary circles of London.

When we first saw him it was at the house of a lady who took great pleasure in gathering 'celebrities' in various ways around her, and our party was struck with the appearance of this renowned traveller--a tall, thin, spare man with prematurely white hair and intensely dark eyes, as he stood upright against the wall of one of the drawing-rooms and received the homage of lion-hunting guests, and listened in silence to their unsuccessful attempts to make him talk.'[234]

Another reminiscence of Borrow in London is furnished by Mr. A. T.

Story, who writes:[235]

I had the pleasure of meeting Borrow on several occasions in London some forty years ago. I cannot be quite certain of the year, but I think it was either in 1872 or '73. I saw him first in James Burns's publis.h.i.+ng office in Southampton Row. I happened to call just as a tall, strongly-built man with an unforgettable face was leaving. When he had gone, Mr. Burns asked: 'Do you know who that gentleman was?' and when I said I did not, he said: 'He is the man whose book, _The Bible in Spain_, I saw you take down from the shelf there the other day and read.' 'What, George Borrow?' I exclaimed. He nodded, and then said Borrow had called several times.

A few days later I had an opportunity of making the good man's acquaintance and hearing a conversation between him and Mr.

Burns. They talked about Spiritualism, with which Borrow had very little patience, though, after some talk he consented to attend a seance to be held that evening in Burns's drawing-room. We sat together, and I had the pleasure of hearing from time to time his grunts of disapproval. When the discourse--'in trance'--was over, he asked me if I believed in 'this sort of thing,' and when I said I was simply an investigator he remarked, 'That's all right, I, too, am an investigator--of things in general--and it would not take me long to sum up that little man (the medium) as a humbug, but a very clever humbug.'

That evening I had a long walk and a talk with him, and after that several other opportunities of talk, the last being one night when I chanced upon him on Westminster Bridge. It was a superb starlight night, and he was standing about midway over the bridge gazing down into the river. When I approached him he said: 'I have been standing here for twenty minutes looking round and meditating. There is not another city like this in the world, nor another bridge like this, nor a river, nor a Parliament House like that--with its little men making little laws--which the Lawgiver that made yonder stars--look at them!--is continually confounding--and will confound. O, we little men! How long before we are dust? And the stars there, how they smile at our puny lives and tricks--here to-day, gone to-morrow. And yet to-night how glorious it is to be here!'

So he rhapsodised. And then it was, 'Where can we get a bite and sup? I've been footing it all day among the hills there--the Surrey Hills--for a breath of fresh air.'

In appearance, at the time I knew him, Borrow was neither thin nor stout, but well proportioned and apparently of great strength.

During this sojourn in London, which was undertaken because Oulton and Yarmouth did not agree with his wife, Borrow suffered the tragedy of her loss. Borrow dragged on his existence in London for another five years, a much broken man. It is extraordinary how little we know of Borrow during that fourteen years' sojourn in London; how rarely we meet him in the literary memoirs of this period. Happily one or two pleasant friends.h.i.+ps relieved the sadness of his days; and in particular the reminiscences of Walter Theodore Watts-Dunton a.s.sist us to a more correct appreciation of the Borrow of these last years of London life.

Of Mr. Watts-Dunton's 'memories,' we shall write in our next chapter.

Here it remains only to note that Borrow still continued to interest himself in his various efforts at translation, and in 1861 and 1862 the editor of _Once a Week_ printed various ballads and stories from his pen. The volumes of this periodical are before me, and I find ill.u.s.trations by Sir John Millais, Sir E. J. Poynter, Simeon Solomon and George Du Maurier; stories by Mrs. Henry Wood and Harriet Martineau, and articles by Walter Thornbury.

In 1862 _Wild Wales_ was published, as we have seen. In 1865 Henrietta married William MacOubrey, and in the following year, Borrow and his wife went to visit the pair in their Belfast home. In the beginning of the year 1869 Mrs. Borrow died, aged seventy-three. There are few records of the tragedy that are worth perpetuating.[236] Borrow consumed his own smoke. With his wife's death his life was indeed a wreck. No wonder he was so 'rude' to that least perceptive of women, Miss Cobbe.

Some four or five years more Borrow lingered on in London, cheered at times by walks and talks with Gordon Hake and Watts-Dunton, and he then returned to Oulton--a most friendless man:--

What land has let the dreamer from its gates, What face beloved hides from him away?

A dreamer outcast from some world of dreams, He goes for ever lonely on his way.

Like a great pine upon some Alpine height, Torn by the winds and bent beneath the snow Half overthrown by icy avalanche, The lone of soul throughout the world must go.

Alone among his kind he stands alone, Torn by the pa.s.sions of his own strange heart, Stoned by continual wreckage of his dreams, He in the crowd for ever is apart.

Like the great pine that, rocking no sweet rest, Swings no young birds to sleep upon the bough, But where the raven only comes to croak-- 'There lives no man more desolate than thou!'