George Borrow and His Circle Part 9

[54] See Timbs's article on Phillips in his _Walks and Talks about London_, 1865. Timbs was wont to recall, as the late W. L. Thomas of the _Graphic_ informed me, that while at the _Ill.u.s.trated London News_ he got so exasperated with Herbert Ingram, the founder and proprietor, that he would frequently write and post a letter of resignation, but would take care to reach the office before Ingram in the morning in order to withdraw it.

[55] Another London book before me, which bears the imprint 'Richard Phillips, Bridge Street,' is ent.i.tled _The Picture of London for 1811_.

Mine is the twelfth edition of this remarkable little volume.

[56] In _Lavengro_.

[57] Legh Richmond (1772-1827), the author of _The Dairyman's Daughter_ and _The Young Cottager_, which had an extraordinary vogue in their day.

A few years earlier than this Princess Sophia Metstchersky translated the former into the Russian language, and Borrow must have seen copies when he visited St. Petersburg. Richmond was the first clerical secretary of the Religious Tract Society, with which _The Dairyman's Daughter_ has always been one of the most popular of tracts.

[58] Phillips at his death in 1840 left a widow, three sons, and four daughters. One son was Vicar of Kilburn.

[59] _Lavengro_, ch. x.x.xix.

[60] _Ueber die nachsten Ursachen der materiellen Erscheinungen des Universums_, von Sir Richard Phillips, nach dem Englischen bearbeitet von General von Theobald und Prof. Dr. Lebret. Stuttgart, 1826.

CHAPTER X

_FAUSTUS_ AND _ROMANTIC BALLADS_

In the early pages of _Lavengro_ Borrow tells us nearly all we are ever likely to know of his sojourn in London in the years 1824 and 1825, during which time he had those interviews with Sir Richard Phillips which are recorded in our last chapter. Dr. Knapp, indeed, prints a little note from him to his friend Kerrison, in which he begs his friend to come to him as he believes he is dying. Roger Kerrison, it would seem, had been so frightened by Borrow's depression and threats of suicide that he had left the lodgings at 16 Milman Street, Bedford Row, and removed himself elsewhere, and so Borrow was left friendless to fight what he called his 'horrors' alone. The depression was not unnatural. From his own vivid narrative we learn of Borrow's bitter failure as an author. No one wanted his translations from the Welsh and the Danish, and Phillips clearly had no further use for him after he had compiled his _Newgate Lives and Trials_ (Borrow's name in _Lavengro_ for _Celebrated Trials_), and was doubtless inclined to look upon him as an impostor for professing, with William Taylor's sanction, a mastery of the German language which had been demonstrated to be false with regard to his own book. No 'spirited publisher' had come forward to give reality to his dream thus set down:

I had still an idea that, provided I could persuade any spirited publisher to give these translations to the world, I should acquire both considerable fame and profit; not, perhaps, a world-embracing fame such as Byron's; but a fame not to be sneered at, which would last me a considerable time, and would keep my heart from breaking;--profit, not equal to that which Scott had made by his wondrous novels, but which would prevent me from starving, and enable me to achieve some other literary enterprise. I read and re-read my ballads, and the more I read them the more I was convinced that the public, in the event of their being published, would freely purchase, and hail them with the merited applause.

He has a tale to tell us in _Lavengro_ of a certain _Life and Adventures of Joseph Sell, the Great Traveller_, the purchase of which from him by a publisher at the last moment saved him from starvation and enabled him to take to the road, there to meet the many adventures that have become immortal in the pages of _Lavengro_. Dr. Knapp has encouraged the idea that _Joseph Sell_ was a real book, ignoring the fact that the very t.i.tle suggests doubts, and was probably meant to suggest them. In Norfolk, as elsewhere, a 'sell' is a word in current slang used for an imposture or a cheat, and doubtless Borrow meant to make merry with the credulous. There was, we may be perfectly sure, no _Joseph Sell_, and it is more reasonable to suppose that it was the sale of his translation of Klinger's _Faustus_ that gave him the much needed money at this crisis.

Dr. Knapp pictures Borrow as carrying the ma.n.u.script of his translation of _Faustus_ with him to London. There is not the slightest evidence of this. It may be reasonably a.s.sumed that Borrow made the translation from Klinger's novel during his sojourn in London. It is true the preface is dated 'Norwich, April 1825,' but Borrow did not leave London until the end of May 1825, that is to say, until after he had negotiated with 'W.

Simpkin and R. Marshall,' now the well-known firm of Simpkin and Marshall, for the publication of the little volume. That firm, unfortunately, has no record of the transaction. My impression is that Borrow in his wandering after old volumes on crime for his great compilation, _Celebrated Trials_, came across the French translation of Klinger's novel published at Amsterdam. From that translation he acknowledges that he borrowed the plate which serves as frontispiece--a plate ent.i.tled 'The Corporation Feast.' It represents the corporation of Frankfort at a banquet turned by the devil into various animals. It has been erroneously a.s.sumed that Borrow had had something to do with the designing of this plate, and that he had introduced the corporation of Norwich in vivid portraiture into the picture. Borrow does, indeed, interpolate a reference to Norwich into his translation of a not too complimentary character, for at that time he had no very amiable feelings towards his native city. Of the inhabitants of Frankfort he says:

They found the people of the place modelled after so unsightly a pattern, with such ugly figures and flat features, that the devil owned he had never seen them equalled, except by the inhabitants of an English town called Norwich, when dressed in their Sunday's best.[61]

In the original German version of 1791 we have the town of Nuremberg thus satirised. But Borrow was not the first translator to seize the opportunity of adapting the reference for personal ends. In the French translation of 1798, published at Amsterdam, and ent.i.tled _Les Aventures du Docteur Faust_, the translator has subst.i.tuted Auxerre for Nuremberg. What makes me think that Borrow used only the French version in his translation is the fact that in his preface he refers to the engravings of that version, one of which he reproduced; whereas the engravings are in the German version as well.

Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger (1752-1831), who was responsible for Borrow's 'first book,' was responsible for much else of an epoch-making character. It was he who by one of his many plays, _Sturm und Drang_, gave a name to an important period of German Literature. In 1780 von Klinger entered the service of Russia, and in 1790 married a natural daughter of the Empress Catherine. Thus his novel, _Faust's Leben, Thaten und Hollenfahrt_, was actually first published at St. Petersburg in 1791. This was seventeen years before Goethe published his first part of _Faust_, a book which by its exquisite poetry was to extinguish for all self-respecting Germans Klinger's turgid prose. Borrow, like the translator of Rousseau's _Confessions_ and of many another cla.s.sic, takes refuge more than once in the asterisk. Klinger's _Faustus_, with much that was bad and even b.e.s.t.i.a.l, has merits. The devil throughout shows his victim a succession of examples of 'man's inhumanity to man.'

Borrow's translation of Klinger's novel was reprinted in 1864 without any acknowledgment of the name of the translator, and only a few stray words being altered.[62] Borrow nowhere mentions Klinger's name in his latter volume, of which the t.i.tle-page runs:

Faustus: His Life, Death, and Descent into h.e.l.l. Translated from the German. London: W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 1825.

I doubt very much if he really knew who was the author, as the book in both the German editions I have seen as well as in the French version bears no author's name on its t.i.tle-page. A letter of Borrow's in the possession of an American collector indicates that he was back in Norwich in September 1825, after, we may a.s.sume, three months' wandering among gypsies and tinkers. It is written from Willow Lane, and is apparently to the publishers of _Faustus_:

As your bill will become payable in a few days, I am willing to take thirty copies of _Faustus_ instead of the money. The book has been _burnt_ in both the libraries here, and, as it has been talked about, I may perhaps be able to dispose of some in the course of a year or so.

This letter clearly demonstrates that the guileless Simpkin and the equally guileless Marshall had paid Borrow for the right to publish _Faustus_, and even though part of the payment was met by a bill, I think we may safely find in the transaction whatever verity there may be in the Joseph Sell episode. 'Let me know how you sold your ma.n.u.script,'

writes Borrow's brother to him so late as the year 1829. And this was doubtless _Faustus_. The action of the Norwich libraries in burning the book would clearly have had the sympathy of one of its few reviewers had he been informed of the circ.u.mstance. It is thus that the _Literary Gazette_ for 16th July 1825 refers to Borrow's little book:

This is another work to which no respectable publisher ought to have allowed his name to be put. The political allusions and metaphysics, which may have made it popular among a low cla.s.s in Germany, do not sufficiently season its lewd scenes and coa.r.s.e descriptions for British palates. We have occasionally publications for the fireside--these are only fit for the fire.

Borrow returned then to Norwich in the autumn of 1825 a disappointed man so far as concerned the giving of his poetical translations to the world, from which he had hoped so much. No 'spirited publisher' had been forthcoming, although Dr. Knapp's researches have unearthed a 'note' in _The Monthly Magazine_, which, after the fas.h.i.+on of the antic.i.p.atory literary gossip of our day, announced that Olaus Borrow was about to issue _Legends and Popular Superst.i.tions of the North_, 'in two elegant volumes.' But this never appeared. Quite a number of Borrow's translations from divers languages had appeared from time to time, beginning with a version of Schiller's 'Diver' in _The New Monthly Magazine_ for 1823, continuing with s...o...b..rg's 'Ode to a Mountain Torrent' in _The Monthly Magazine_, and including the 'Deceived Merman.'

These he collected into book form and, not to be deterred by the coldness of heartless London publishers, issued them by subscription.

Three copies of the slim octavo book lie before me, with separate t.i.tle-pages:

(1) Romantic Ballads, Translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces by George Borrow. Norwich: Printed and Published by S. Wilkin, Upper Haymarket, 1826.

(2) Romantic Ballads, Translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces by George Borrow. London: Published by John Taylor, Waterloo Place, Pall Mall, 1826.

(3) Romantic Ballads, Translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces, by George Borrow. London: Published by Wightman and Cramp, 24 Paternoster Row, 1826.[63]

The book contains an introduction in verse by Allan Cunningham, whose acquaintance Borrow seems to have made in London. It commences:

Sing, sing, my friend, breathe life again Through Norway's song and Denmark's strain: On flowing Thames and Forth, in flood, Pour Haco's war-song, fierce and rude.

Cunningham had not himself climbed very far up the literary ladder in 1825, although he was forty-one years of age. At one time a stonemason in a Scots village, he had entered Chantrey's studio, and was 'superintendent of the works' to that eminent sculptor at the time when Borrow called upon him in London, and made an acquaintance which never seems to have extended beyond this courtesy to the younger man's _Danish Ballads_. The point of sympathy of course was that in the year 1825 Cunningham had published _The Songs of Scotland, Ancient and Modern_.

But Allan Cunningham, whose _Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters_ is his best remembered book to-day, scarcely comes into this story.

There are four letters from Cunningham to Borrow in Dr. Knapp's _Life_, and two from Borrow to Cunningham. The latter gave his young friend much good advice. He told him, for example, to send copies of his book to the newspapers--to the _Literary Gazette_ in particular, and 'Walter Scott must not be forgotten.' Dr. Knapp thinks that the newspapers were forgotten, and that Borrow neglected to send to them. In any case not a single review appeared. But it is not exactly true that Borrow ignored the usual practice of authors so entirely as Dr. Knapp supposes. There is a letter to Borrow among my Borrow Papers from Francis Palgrave the historian, who became Sir Francis Palgrave seven years later, which throws some light upon the subject:

To George Borrow

PARLIAMENT ST., _17 June 1826._

MY DEAR SIR,--I am very much obliged to you for the opportunity that you have afforded me of perusing your spirited and faithful translating of the Danish ballads. Mr. Allan Cunningham, who, as you will know, is an ancient minstrel himself, says that they are more true to the originals and more truly poetical than any that he has yet seen. I have delivered one copy to Mr. Lockhart, the new editor of the _Quarterly Review_, and I hope he will notice it as it deserves. Murray would probably be inclined to publish your translations.--I remain, dear sir, your obedient and faithful servant,

FRANCIS PALGRAVE.

It is probable that he did also send a copy to Scott, and it is Dr.

Knapp's theory that 'that busy writer forgot to acknowledge the courtesy.' It may be that this is so. It has been the source of many a literary prejudice. Carlyle had a bitterness in his heart against Scott for much the same cause. Rarely indeed can the struggling author endure to be ignored by the radiantly successful one. It must have been the more galling in that a few years earlier Scott had been lifted by the ballad from obscurity to fame. Borrow did not in any case lack encouragement from Allan Cunningham: 'I like your Danish ballads much,'

he writes. 'Get out of bed, George Borrow, and be sick or sleepy no longer. A fellow who can give us such exquisite Danish ballads has no right to repose.'[64] Borrow, on his side, thanks Cunningham for his 'n.o.ble lines,' and tells him that he has got 'half of his _Songs of Scotland_ by heart.'

Five hundred copies of the _Romantic Ballads_ were printed in Norwich by S. Wilkin, about two hundred being subscribed for, mainly in that city, the other three hundred being dispatched to London--to Taylor, whose name appears on the London t.i.tle-page, although he seems to have pa.s.sed on the book very quickly to Wightman and Cramp, for what reason we are not informed. Borrow tells us that the two hundred subscriptions of half a guinea 'amply paid expenses,' but he must have been cruelly disappointed, as he was doomed to be more than once in his career, by the lack of public appreciation outside of Norwich. Yet there were many reasons for this. If Scott had made the ballad popular, he had also destroyed it for a century--perhaps for ever--by subst.i.tuting the novel as the favourite medium for the storyteller. Great ballads we were to have in every decade from that day to this, but never another 'best seller' like _Marmion_ or _The Lady of the Lake_. Our _popular_ poets had to express themselves in other ways. Then Borrow, although his verse has been underrated by those who have not seen it at its best, or who are incompetent to appraise poetry, was not very effective here, notwithstanding that the stories in verse in _Romantic Ballads_ are all entirely interesting. This fact is most in evidence in a case where a real poet, not of the greatest, has told the same story. We owe a rendering of 'The Deceived Merman' to both George Borrow and Matthew Arnold, but how widely different the treatment! The story is of a merman who rose out of the water and enticed a mortal--fair Agnes or Margaret--under the waves; she becomes his wife, bears him children, and then asks to return to earth. Arriving there she refuses to go back when the merman comes disconsolately to the churchdoor for her. Here are a few lines from the two versions, which demonstrate that here at least Borrow was no poet and that Arnold was a very fine one:

GEORGE BORROW

'Now, Agnes, Agnes list to me, Thy babes are longing so after thee.'

'I cannot come yet, here must I stay Until the priest shall have said his say,'

And when the priest had said his say, She thought with her mother at home she'd stay.

'O Agnes, Agnes list to me, Thy babes are sorrowing after thee,'

'Let them sorrow and sorrow their fill, But back to them never return I will.'

MATTHEW ARNOLD

We climbed on the graves, on the stones worn with rains, And we gazed up the aisles through the small leaded panes.

She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear: 'Margaret, hist! come quick we are here!

Dear heart,' I said, 'we are long-alone; The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan,'

But, ah, she gave me never a look, For her eyes were sealed on the holy book!

Loud prays the priest; shut stands the door.