IN EASTERN EUROPE
In 1844 Borrow set out for the most distant holiday that he was ever to undertake. Passing through London in March 1844, he came under the critical eye of Elizabeth Rigby, afterwards Lady Eastlake, that formidable critic who four years later—in 1848—wrote the cruel review of Jane Eyre in The Quarterly that gave so much pain to Charlotte Brontë. She was not a nice woman. These sharp, 'clever' women-critics rarely are; and Borrow never made a pleasant impression when such women came across his path—instance Harriet Martineau, Frances Cobbe, and Agnes Strickland. We should sympathise with him, and not count it for a limitation, as some of his biographers have done. The future Lady Eastlake thus disposes of Borrow in her one reference to him:
March 20.—Borrow came in the evening; now a fine man, but a most disagreeable one; a kind of character that would be most dangerous in rebellious times—one that would suffer or persecute to the utmost. His face is expressive of strong-headed determination.[167]
Quoting this description of Borrow, Dr. Knapp describes it as 'shallow'—for 'he was one of the kindest of men, as my documents show.' The description is shallow enough, because the writer had no kind of comprehension of Borrow, but then, perhaps, his champion had not. Borrow was neither one of the 'kindest of men' nor the reverse. He was a good hater and a whole-hearted lover, and to be thus is to fill a certain uncomfortable but not discreditable place in the scheme of things. About a month later Borrow was on the way to the East, travelling by Paris and Vienna. From Paris he wrote to Mr. John Murray that Vidocq 'wished much to have a copy of my Gypsies in Spain,' but suspects the Frenchman of desiring to produce a compressed translation. Will Mr. Murray have the book translated into French? he asks, and so circumvent his wily friend.[168] In June he is in Buda Pesth, whence he wrote to his wife: