The Life of George Borrow

THE WAYFARER’S LIBRARY
Clement K. Shorter
LONDON & TORONTO: J. M. DENT & SONS, Ltd. NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.
TO AUGUSTINE BIRRELL A FRIEND OF LONG YEARS AND A TRUE LOVER OF GEORGE BORROW C. K. S.
There is a substantial biography of George Borrow in two large volumes by the late Dr. Knapp, an American professor who gave many years of devotion to the subject. But I have had the singular advantage over Dr. Knapp in that all the private letters and personal papers left by Borrow to his step-daughter and heir, Henrietta MacOubrey, have come into my hands. These include Borrow’s letters to his wife and step-daughter, many of which will be found scattered through this biography. This book was first published under the title of George Borrow and his Circle , but I am grateful to a publisher for sending it forth once more in a form which makes it available to a larger public. Certain new letters from Borrow to his wife which have been found since the first appearance of this book have been added, together with other hitherto unprinted documents, making this issue of The Life of George Borrow of much more value than its predecessor.
Clement K. Shorter.
Dec. 9 th , 1919.
George Henry Borrow was born at Dumpling Green near East Dereham, Norfolk, on the 5th of July, 1803. It pleased him to state on many an occasion that he was born at East Dereham.
On an evening of July, in the year 18—, at East D—, a beautiful little town in a certain district of East Anglia, I first saw the light,
he writes in the opening lines of Lavengro , using almost the identical phraseology that we find in the opening lines of Goethe’s Wahrheit und Dichtung . Here is a later memory of Dereham from Lavengro :
What it is at present I know not, for thirty years and more have elapsed since I last trod its streets. It will scarcely have improved, for how could it be better than it was? I love to think on thee, pretty, quiet D—, thou pattern of an English country town, with thy clean but narrow streets branching out from thy modest market-place, with their old-fashioned houses, with here and there a roof of venerable thatch, with thy one half-aristocratic mansion, where resided the Lady Bountiful—she, the generous and kind, who loved to visit the sick, leaning on her golden-headed cane, while the sleek old footman walked at a respectful distance behind. Pretty, quiet D—, with thy venerable church, in which moulder the mortal remains of England’s sweetest and most pious bard.