GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume 1, Issue 8, 14 February 1914, Page 1

GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE.

' A few years ago Mr Clement K. Shorter, editor of the "Sphere, "gave us what must always remain one of the most informative and interesting books on the Bronte sisters, '/Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle" was the title. . He has now placed admirers of George Borrow under a debt of- gratitude by producing an equally Valuable and delightful work on the author of "The Bible in Spain,"''' Lavengro,'' and *' The Romany Rye.'' It % by the way, the third book oh BorVow that has been published within the last eighteen months,'its predecessors being Mr Herbert Jenkins's amply-documented and ia study of Borrow's.personality and works sy, Mr Edward Thomas. 'Mr Shorter's book has, however, special claims to the attention of all good Borrovians. From the executors of. Henrietta ..MacOubrey, George Borrow's step-daughter- —the '' Old Hen'' of Borrow 's letters —Mr Shorter purchased a large number of Borrow's manuscripts and letters, and of these he has made skilful use in constructing his most detailed and fascinating portrait of the author. Sorrow's Parentage and Youth. - The future author of "The Bible in Spain" was born in 1803, at East Dereham, in Norfolk, his father, a militia captain, being of Cornish descent; and in his youth as fond of a bout at fisticuffs as was his son. His mother, Ann Perfrement, came of a French Huguenot family. If, as it is said was the case, Borrow had.his mother's eyes and features, she must have been a strikingly handsome woman. Captain Borrow's pay was small, and George and his elder brother! lived with %he father wherever he was stationed; George was educated partly at Edinburgh, at the High School, and partly in Norwich, where the Borrows settled down when the father finally retired from the ; Army. 'Articled to a- solicitor, Borrow neglected leg'al studies foT* what became* the passion of his - He certainly had the gift of tongues, for at eighteen,' so Taylor, the translator of Goethe, wrote to a friendy' ;<< he understands twelve languages, English l , Welsh/ Erse, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German, .Danish, French,'ltalian, Spanish, and Portuguese." -Oh the death -of his'father, in 1824, Borrow "walked up to London,' ? to='seek his fortune as a writer. As t6 his life there'you can re^clin." Lavengro,": which is largely autobiographical. Between 182.5 . and/-' 1832 he wandered about England and: the Continent; In 1833-35 he' was in Russia, and then,'in the latter year, went to Spain, Portugal, and. Morocco, as agent for the Bible Society., . Inj 1843 "The Bible in Spain" was published, having been preceded by "The Gypsies in Spain." Ten -years later, came "Lavengro." His other best-known ; works are: —"The Romany Rye "--a sequel -to "Lavengro'.'— published in 1859, and "Wild Wales" (1862). . In. 1881 Borrow died at his cottage at Oulton. <So much for the main facts. of his life. Borrow's Strange Personality.

In no preceding book on the author of "Lavehgro" do we get so complete a picture of Sorrow's personality as that now given us. . Mr Shorter does not; disguise the fact that Borrow was vain, egotistical, truculent at times in manner, and a man who bitterly resented adverse criticism. But he shows us a Borrow who, on the whole, was a very wonderful, if a very eccentric character. The man's astounding gift for acquiring

foreign languages, his equally astounding literary indus- i try, his admiration of all that is real and true, his j worship of physical and mental virility, and above all his intense sympathy with, and love of, wild Nature and a simple life —all this Mr Shorter makes abundantly , clear. He was undoubtedly sincere in some of his prejudices. That wearisomely recurrent abuse of '' the Pope and all his wqrks,'' and his anti-Jacobite craze — which, by the way, led him to attack Sir Walter Scott so unfairly—were genuine enough. But, by practising the juaicious art of skipping 1 , as 1 confess I do when reading Borrow, these fads and foibles need hot trouble the reader, and what a glorious feast of entertainment remains. ; Mr Shorter ! warns us that Borrow is not, always to be trusted as to the accounts he gave of his wanderings. There can be little doubt that there is as much romance as there is fact in 1 "The Bible in Spain,'' and-hiis travels in India, to which he would : mysteriously refer, never took place. But: the young man-who 1 spoke and wrote twelve languages at eighteen, and who, befbre he was twenty-five, went to St. Peters- j burg and translated the into Manchu —and supervised • its . printing —the man who could, and did, talk with the gypsies of Spain, and Hungary, and England as freely as to his brother; the man who wrote could- well be--pardoned,-a, certain "em ; broidery" of facts. Two Interesting Portraits.. As to Borrow's personal appearance in later life, a Norwich friend is quoted by Mr Shorter as having ; said: — ' _ . ' ! As I .recall hirn, he was a fine p,owerfullybuilt man, of about six feet high. He had a cleanshaven face, .with a feesk complexion, almost approaching to the florid, and never a wrinkle, even at sixty, except at the; corners 6f his dark and over-, prominent eyes. He 'had; a shoek of-silvery whitehair. He always wore a very badly brushed silk hat, a ■• black frock coat, and trousers,, the coat all buttoned down, before j low .shoes and-white socks. He was a, tireless walker,.with extraordinary powers of eudurance, and w;aS; also very handy with his • fists, as ift those ; days,< a, gentlemen required to be, more than he does now.. ,- , The immortal Major Bagstoek was not better entitled to call himself ''tough,'"air, tough I ,'*' than Vas the author of "Lavengro.'" For "Mr Watts Dunton tells us that - • . > . ; at seventy years of age '.' . . he would walk to Putney, meet one of us at Rockhainpton, roam about Wimbledon and Richmond' Park, bathe in the Fen Ponds with a north-east wind cutting across the icy water like a razor, and run about the grass afterwards, like a boy, stride about the park for hours,' 'and then, after fasting for hours, eat a dinner that would have' done Sir Walter Scott's eyes good to see, and-walk all the way home to •Hereford Square. And if the physique of the man was bracing, his conversation, unless he happened to- be suffering from one of his occasional fits of depression, was still more so. Its freshness, raciness,' and eccentric whim; no pen could describe. There is a kind of humour the delight of which is that while you smile at the pictures it draws, you smile quite as much to' think there is a mind" so

whimsically, so crotchety, and odd as to draw them. This was the humour of Borrow. Lavengro. ... Lavengro, is, of course, Borrow's masterpiece, though, oddly enough, I met an ardent fellow Borrovian the other day who would fain convince me .that• "Wild Wales" merits that distinction. In ''Lavengrp,'J -half autobiography, half romance, one gets, I thi.iik, more of the real Borrow, than in all his other books put together. A "Tinker Quixotte" Henley calls ..the, hero, and, later on, in one of the best .appreciations;'of Borrow that we have, gives an inimitable little verbal etching of the curiously complex character-of the author — ''the artist-tramp, the tinker who can write, the horsecoper with a twang of Hamlet, and a habit of Monte Ghristb—that is George Borrow! " The title of "Laven-. gro," as Borrow. first would have it,, was A Drama." The title finally chosen was "Lavengro, the Scholar, the Gipsy, the Priest,'' and the book duly made its appearance in 1851. Borrow had high hopes of a success, but, alas, "Lavengro" proved no "best-seller" as the phrase now goes. "The Athenaeum" and "Blackwood's Magazine" pronounced it a failure. The first edition of 3000 copies was not exhausted for some years.' It was not until 1878, when Borrow was living a semi-hermit at Oulton,- a soured, disappointed and very lonely old man, that John Murray ventured to put a s.econd edition on the market. To-day "Lavengro" has come to its own.' You can buy the story in goodness knows how many editions, frtfm a shilling upwards, akiA no Victorian book, save perhaps "Pickwick," is more frequently quoted. We all know "Lavengro" nowadays. : Mr Bitrell has written its praises in one of his delightful essays (in "Res Judicatae"},; Mr Watts Dunton —a personal friend of Borrow in the latter's old age-—Mr Seecombe, Mr Edward Thomas, Canon.Beecha host,., of others have waxed enthusiastic over the fine f resk open-air and striking originality of the story. But the reading public of the Victorian 'fifties would have none of it. The special public which had been attracted- by the.. very title of ''The Bible in Spain" and, which had been, too, in all probability, somewhat staggered;by certain of the adventures of" the Bible Society's agent, were shocked at Borrow's praise of ale. They were not interested in the gypsies, and one can well JLmagine,, how they roust 'have sniffed and snorted at 'that famous tw ; enty-sixth chapter, wherein occurs" Borrow ? s never eUlogy of "the bruisers of England." Borrow 1 was terribly disappointed;- for he had put his whole soul into the book, which) as Mr-' Shorter shows very clearly, had taken him many years to write. Mr Shorter''s books "contains a number, of interesting portrait's of Borrow, his family, and his friends, also facsimiles of his manuscripts, and pictures of various places intimately connected with his life and works. On every book-shelf which' houses a set of Borrow, this fascinating and valuable book- of Mr Shorter V should find a place. Those who do not know Borrow's books should get a copy 6f "The BookmanV (for October, 1913), which contains a long and interesting article on the author of ."Lavengro."'? .There are several cheap editions -of the works in " Everyman's Library," and other series of reprints. Personally I prefer the edition published by John Lane. For library editions you must go to Borrow's old publisher, John Murray.