Isopel Berners

“ The daydream in which I had been a little time before indulging, of marrying Isopel Berners, of going with her to America, and having by her a large progeny, who were to assist me in felling trees, cultivating the soil, and who would take care of me when I was old, was now thoroughly dispelled. Isopel had deserted me, and was gone to America by herself, where, perhaps, she would marry some other person, and would bear him a progeny, who would do for him what in my dream I had hoped my progeny by her would do for me. ”

“ For instance, the tall girl, Isopel Berners—the most vigorous sketch he has given us—is perfect as she is adorable. Among heroines she stands quite alone; there is none other that is in the least like her. Yet she is in many of her qualities typical of a class. Among the very bravest of all human beings in the British Islands are, or were, the nomadic girls of the high road and the dingle. Their bravery is not only an inherited quality: it is in every way fostered by their mode of life. ”

“ Petulengro, fixed her large blue eyes full upon his wife. Both these females were very handsome—but how unlike! Belle fair, with blue eyes and flaxen hair; Mrs. Petulengro with olive complexion, eyes black, and hair dark—as dark as could be. Belle, in demeanour calm and proud; the gypsy graceful, but full of movement and agitation. And then how different were those two in stature! The head of the Romany rawnie scarcely ascended to the breast of Isopel Berners. I could see that Mrs. Petulengro gazed on Belle with unmixed admiration: so did her husband. ”

“ His chest was broad, and his arms seemed powerful; but, upon the whole, he looked a very caitiff. “I am sorry that man has lost his wife,” thought I; “for I am sure he p. 292will never get another.” What surprises me is, that he ever found a woman disposed to unite her lot with his!
After tea I got up and strolled about the field. My thoughts were upon Isopel Berners. I wondered where she was, and how long she would stay away. At length becoming tired and listless, I determined to return to the dingle, and resume the reading of the Bible at the place where I had left off. ”

“ We shall go to America, and be so happy together.” On reaching the bottom of the dingle, however, I saw seated near the fire, beside which stood the kettle simmering, not Isopel Berners, but a gypsy girl, who told me that Miss Berners when she went away had charged her to keep up the fire, and have the kettle boiling against my arrival. Startled at these words, I inquired at what hour Isopel had left, and whither she was gone, and was told that she had left the dingle, with her cart, about two hours after I departed ”

“ I can scarcely be disappointed; if such an ugly scoundrel as Sylvester had no difficulty in getting such a nice wife as Ursula, surely I, who am not a tenth part so ugly, cannot fail to obtain the hand of Isopel Berners, uncommonly fine damsel though she be. Husbands do not grow upon hedge-rows ”

“ I say, brother, let me tell you your dukkerin, with respect to her, you will never . . .”
“I want to hear no dukkerin, Ursula.”
“Do let me tell you your dukkerin, brother, you will never manage . . .”
“I want to hear no dukkerin, Ursula, in connection with Isopel Berners. Moreover, it is Sunday, we will change the subject; it is surprising to me that, after all you have undergone, you should still look so beautiful. I suppose you do not think of marrying again, Ursula?”
“No, brother, one husband at a time is quite enough for any reasonable mort; especially such a good husband as I have got.” ”

“ The reader can believe what he likes, and as much as he likes. In the old woman on London Bridge and her convict son, in the man in black (how unlike Goldsmith's!) , in the Flaming Tinman, in Ursula, the wife of Sylvester. There is but one person in whom you must believe, every hour of the day and of the night, else are you indeed unworthy—you must believe in Isopel Berners. A stranger and more pathetic figure than she is not to be seen flitting about in the great shadow-dance men call their life. ”

“ And yet I suppose it would be considered ridiculous in these fine days to call Borrow a great artist. His fascination, his hold upon his reader, is not the fascination or the hold of the lords of human smiles and tears. They enthrall us; Borrow only bewitches. Isopel Berners, hastily limned though she be, need fear comparison with no damsel that ever lent sweetness to the stage, relish to rhyme, or life to novel. She can hold up her head and take her own part amidst all the Rosalinds, Beatrices, and Lucys that genius has created and memory can muster. ”

“ You never were more entirely mistaken in your life. It is true that Belle—or to give her her proper title—Miss Isopel Berners, was a young lady of doubtful origin, who had been educated in the workhouse. ”

“ Petulengro; “that is, if the p. 252look comes from a woman: not that I am disposed to doubt that this female gentlewoman is able to knock him down either one way or the other. I have heard of her often enough, and have seen her once or twice, though not so near as now. Well, ma’am, my wife and I are come to pay our respects to you; we are both glad to find that you have left off keeping company with Flaming Bosville, and have taken up with my pal; he is not very handsome, but a better . . . .”
“I take up with your pal, as you call him; you had better mind what you say,” said Isopel Berners ”

“ In the evening I left the dingle, and sat down with Mr. Petulengro and his family by the door of his tent. Mr. Petulengro soon began talking of the letter which I had received in the morning. “Is it not from Miss Berners, brother?” said he. I told him it was. “Is she coming back, brother?” “Never,” said I; “she is gone to America, and has deserted me.” “I always knew that you two were never destined for each other,” said he. “How did you know that?” I inquired. “The dook told me so, brother; you are born to be a great traveller.” ”

“ In Wild Wales we have George Borrow in his most genial mood. There are none of the hairbreadth escapes and grim experiences of The Bible in Spain, none of the romance and the glamour of Lavengro and its sequel, but there is good humour, a humour that does not obtain in the three more important works, and there is an amazing amount of frank candour of a biographical kind. We even have a reference to Isopel Berners, referred to by Captain Bosvile as 'the young woman you used to keep company with ... a fine young woman and a virtuous.' It is the happiest of Borrow's books, and not unnaturally. ”

“ The old woman looked at me for a moment—“Well, young p. 357man,” said she, “there are some—especially those who can read—who don’t like to open their letters when anybody is by, more especially when they come from young women. Well, I won’t intrude upon you, but leave you alone with your letter. I wish it may contain something pleasant. God bless you,” and with these words she departed.
I sat down on my stone, with my letter in my hand. I knew perfectly well that it could have come from no other person than Isopel Berners; but what did the letter contain? ”

“ Yes, it seems cruel to tell the author this, but Sinfi, and not Winifred, with all her charm, is evidently the favourite of his English public. That admirable novelist, Mr. Richard Whiteing, said in the ‘Daily News’ that ‘Sinfi Lovell is one of the most finished studies of its type and kind in all romantic literature.’
I have somewhere seen Sinfi compared with Isopel Berners. ”

“ For the present he could study her character, amuse himself with her idiosyncrasies, and as a return for her devotion and faithful affection teach her Armenian. Extremely touching!
But the episode of Isopel Berners is only one illustration, albeit a very significant one, of Borrow’s calculating selfishness. No man could prove a more interesting companion than he ”

“ From these pictures it is a far cry to the creation of Jasper Petulengro and Isopel Berners. The most noteworthy figure in The Zincali is the gypsy soldier of Valdepeñas, an unholy rascal. 'To lie, to steal, to shed human blood'—these are the most marked characteristics with which Borrow endows the gypsies of Spain. 'Abject and vile as they have ever been, the gitános have nevertheless found admirers in Spain,' says the author who came to be popularly recognised as the most enthusiastic admirer of the gypsies in Spain and elsewhere. ”

“ Let the matters of my sister and Jasper Petulengro alone, brother; you must travel in their company some time before you can understand them; they are a strange two, up to all kind of chaffing: but two more regular Romans don’t breathe, and I’ll tell you, for your instruction, that there isn’t a better mare-breaker in England that Jasper Petulengro, if you can manage Miss Isopel Berners as well as . ”

“ A spiritual ancestor of Anatole France’s marvellous full-length figure of Jerôme Coignard, Borrow’s conception takes us back first to Rabelais and secondly to the seventeenth-century conviction of the profound Machiavellism of Jesuitry.
The man in black and Jasper are great, but the master attraction of the region that we are to traverse is admittedly Isopel Berners. ”

“ Finally he reaches Horncastle, and sells the animal at the horse fair there for £150. Here, in August 1825, the narrative of his life abruptly ends. {43}
It must not be supposed by any means that the interest of Borrow’s two autobiographical volumes is concentrated in the last eighteen chapters of Lavengro and the first sixteen chapters of the Romany Rye. The quality of continuity is, it is true, best preserved in the dingle episode. Artistically the Brynhildic figure of Isopel serves as the best relief that could be found for Borrow’s own “Titanic self.” ”

“ The hair with the shilling attached to it eventually became a treasured possession of the Romany Rye.
Rude as some of these characteristics may appear, we are left in no manner of doubt as to the essential nobility, befitting her name, of Miss Berners—her character and bearing. Her carriage, especially of the neck and shoulders, reminded the postilion of the Marchioness of ---; and he took her unhesitatingly for a young lady of high rank and distinction, who had temporarily left her friends, and was travelling in the direction of Gretna Green with the fortunate Rye. ”

“ But we can hardly doubt that somewhere hereabouts is the historic spot where Borrow fought and vanquished the Flaming Tinman, that here he lived with Miss Berners ‘in an uncertificated manner,’ that under an adjoining thorn-bush he held his astounding conversation with Ursula, and that from here, wearied of her companion’s frigid regard and strange bantering, poor Isopel turned away with her little donkey-cart and a heavy heart. ”

“ In the intensity of their love or their hate they were capable of suffering or inflicting death; these Berners, whose friendship was almost as fatal as their enmity; these Berners, who “never spared man in their hate or woman in their love;” these Berners of the burning heart; these Berners of the boiling blood; these Berners of Black Hall; and whose sole representative now was Sybil, the last daughter of their line, who concentrated in her own ardent, intense nature all the most beautiful, all the most terrible attributes of her strong and fiery race. ”

“ He spoke as one speaks of sacred things.
"All Europe," he said, "was pleased to discuss what was called the elopement of the Princess Isobel with Feurgéres the player. The gutter-press of the world filled their columns with sensational and scandalous lies. We at no time made any reply. There was no need. If now I break the silence of years it is that Isobel shall know the truth. It is you, Mr. Greatson, who will tell her this, and many other things. Listen carefully to what I say. The husband of the Princess Isobel was a blackguard, a man unfit for the society of any self-respecting woman. ”

“ It will be for Isobel's good. I myself shall stand sponsor for her to the world. I shall have discovered her in the convent here, and I shall take her back to her rightful place with triumph. All your difficulties then will vanish, your end will have been creditably and adequately attained. For myself the advantage is obvious. A difference to Adelaide it must make, but it will inevitably be less if the credit of her discovery remains with me. Have I made myself clear, Mr. Greatson?"
"Perfectly," I answered. "But you forget there is Isobel herself to be considered. She is no longer a child. ”

“ Greatson. To be your guardian, Isobel, would not be seemly. That you will better understand—to-morrow."
"Indeed!" she protested, "I would sooner hear it now from your own lips—if, indeed, it must be so!"
He shook his head very slowly, but with a decision more finite than the most emphatic negation which words could have framed.
"I must go away, Isobel," he said, "and you and I must remain apart. I will only ask you to remember me by this. I am the man your mother loved. Nothing else in my life is worth considering—but that. I am one of those with whom fate has dealt a little hardly. ”

“ Where she went to school, what she did at her aunt's, where she bought her clothes—things like that don't really concern any of us——"
"Not if there's nothing to hide," said Isobel suddenly. "But it seems as if there is something in Beryl's case—and so she won't talk about it."
"Why on earth should there be anything to hide! If she's been unhappy—why should she wish to talk about it? Let her forget it. Come, Isobel, I know you'll be a good sport, and not bother her with any more questions. Let's give her a happy time while she's here, shan't we? ”