Thomas Seccombe

“ To men of such close and restricted horizons the breath of the Romany Rye is as that of “the wind on the heath, brother.” Hence the stern and unbending jealousy of their cult. Real literary enthusiasts of advanced years are almost as rare in our streets as elderly naval men of the peculiar type discovered by Mr. Gilbert. Yet a chance word in a London thoroughfare has before now elicited this ingenuous confession of faith: “I’d walk any distance to see anything belonging to George Borrow or to read anything fresh of his. ”

“ The man of tongues lacked speech wherewith to make manifest his passion; the vocabulary of the word-master was insufficient to convince the workhouse girl of one of the plainest meanings a man can well have. When the distracted Borrow had reached the decision that it was high time to give over his “mocking and scoffing,” and returned with this resolve to the dingle, Isopel Berners had quitted it, never to return. She ran away to the nearest sea-port, and took shipping to America. Lavengro with some anguish steeled his heart against following her. ”

“ The attraction was so strong that he had serious thoughts of emigrating with “the beauteous Queen of the Dingle,” but he dallied with the idea with characteristic waywardness until it was too late. He sought to postpone awkward decisions, to divert himself and amuse Isopel by making his charmer learn Armenian—the language which he happened at the time to be studying. Isopel bore with it for some time, but the imposition of the verb “to love” in Armenian convinced her that the word-master was not only insane, but also inhuman. ”

“ Already in January, 1843, he wrote to his publisher that he had begun upon a Robinson Borrow, and Murray, Ford, and other friends threw up their caps. The publisher may have well seen a veritable gold mine in prospect. One has only to imagine the fervent curiosity which the personal element in “The Bible in Spain,” so suggestive of mystery and romance, must have exalted in the reading public of 1843, to perceive that any such anticipation was fully warranted by the facts of the case. ”

“ But he was not a clubbable man, Borrow! Nevertheless it was during the years that followed that, like Johnson, he achieved his best title to fame, the wondrous five volumes of autobiography so capriciously planned and so strangely entitled “Lavengro—Romany Rye.” The stimulus in his case was largely, we believe, if not mainly, pecuniary. “Money is our best friend” he wrote to his wife in 1844. He wanted a purse of his own to travel and give dinners with, for the edge of episcopal hospitality was already wearing off. He desired too, no doubt, to put a coping stone to his fame. ”

“ With the exception of Jane Austen (and temporarily speaking, perhaps Charles Dickens) there is hardly any literary character whom it is so dangerous to approach without passports and periphrases (securing retreat, if necessary) and plentiful kow-tows as George Borrow. Among all literary clansmen you shall hardly find one more implacable, more fierce, or more blindly fanatical than your Borrovian. Charles Lamb is almost the only author we can think of (out of Scotland) who is worshipped by his admirers with quite the same canine sort of affection. ”

“ He determined to emulate a purpose so lofty in its detachment, and the mistake cost him dear, for it led him for long years into a veritable cul de sac of literature; it led also to the accentuation of that pseudo-philological mania which played such havoc with the ordinary development of rational ideas in a man in many respects so sane as Borrow.
An entirely erroneous belief in the marketable value of Danish ballads, Welsh triads, Russian folk-songs, and the like in rococo English translations after the Bowring pattern led Borrow to exchange an attorney’s office for a garret in Grub-street. ”

“ As a man of letters he must be judged primarily as a biographer, and, if this be done, it will be found that Borrow has achieved the great object of biography; he has transmitted a great personality. The blemishes in his work are not particularly hard to find. ”

“ The scene of these transactions was a wooded glen or dingle a few miles from Willenhall, in Staffordshire, where Lavengro and Isopel were encamped in their respective tents, having as their neighbours the gipsy clan of which Jasper was the chief. Upon the whole the Dingle chapters are perhaps the most brilliant and the most enduring that Borrow ever achieved. Their interest is greatly enhanced by the fact that they are probably a naked transcript from actual fact, for Borrow was a poor hand at invention. He rarely, if ever, invented a character. ”

“ Pepys died in the early summer of 1703; Borrow was born in July, 1803. Unlike each other in almost every respect, they are dui palor, [213b] as Borrow would say, in one very material point. The reputation of each of them has risen to such a point that, except for injudicious and exaggerated praise, it can have little to fear in the future; and in each case this reputation is based primarily upon autobiography. Among the world’s autobiographers the author of “Lavengro” is entitled, we feel sure, to rank with St. Augustine, Cellini, Pepys, Rousseau, Franklin ”

“ You will find none of them in his works; but you will find “part of the secret, brother,” especially in the Dingle. For there Borrow is at his best, in the open air, among the gipsies—with Jasper, Pakomovna, Tawno, Ursula, the Man in Black, and Belle Berners, interlocutors in dialogues of the greenwood unrivalled since the heyday of the forest of Arden. Once more “Lavengro” badly belied the expectations of those who were looking out for another “Eothen” ”

“ These letters with the addition of a few chapters and a number of insignificant changes made up “The Bible in Spain,” which was published by John Murray on December 10, 1812, when “El Gitano,” as the enthusiastic Ford dubbed the author, literally woke up to find himself famous. His experience for a season was that of “the man Sterne”; he dined with peers, Ambassadors, and Bishops, and, like Major Pendennis, was particularly complacent with Bishops. We might here for a moment compare his position to that of Johnson in 1763. ”

“ He was as conservative as a gipsy or a tramp, while his hatred of novelty was worthy of the race among whom Vaya usted con Dios, y que no haya Novedad! is a common form of valediction. His hatred of æsthetic culture, of sentimental toleration, and of the modern woman amounted to a positive mania. ”