OULTON BROAD AND YARMOUTH
George Borrow wandered far and wide, but he always retraced his footsteps to East Anglia, of which he was so justly proud. From his marriage in 1840 until his death in 1881 he lived twenty-seven years at Oulton or at Yarmouth. 'It is on sand alone that the sea strikes its true music,' Borrow once remarked, 'Norfolk sand'—and it was in the waves and on the sands of the Norfolk coast that Borrow spent the happiest hours of his restless life. Oulton Cottage is only about two miles from Lowestoft, and so, walking or driving, these places were quite near one another. But both are in Suffolk. Was it because Yarmouth—ten miles distant—is in Norfolk that it was always selected for seaside residence? I suspect that the careful Mrs. Borrow found a wider selection of 'apartments' at a moderate price. In any case the sea air of Yarmouth was good for his wife, and the sea bathing was good for him, and so we find that husband and wife had seven separate residences at Yarmouth during the years of Oulton life.[185] But Oulton was ever to be Borrow's headquarters, even though between 1860 and 1874 he had a house in London. Borrow was thirty-seven years of age when he settled down at Oulton.
Copyright of Mrs. Simms Reeve
A HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED PORTRAIT OF GEORGE BORROW
Taken in the garden of Mrs. Simms Reeve of Norwich in 1848. This is the only photograph of George Borrow extant, although two paintings of him exist, one by Henry Wyndham Phillips, which forms the frontispiece of this volume, taken in 1843, and an earlier portrait by his brother John, which will be found facing page 32
He was, he tells us in The Romany Rye, 'in tolerably easy circumstances and willing to take some rest after a life of labour.' Their home was a cottage on the Broad, for the Hall, which was also Mrs. Borrow's property, was let on lease to a farmer.[186] The cottage, however, was an extremely pleasant residence with a lawn running down to the river. A more substantial house has been built on this site since Borrow's day. The summer-house is generally assumed to be the same, but has certainly been reroofed since the time when Henrietta Clarke drew the picture of it that is reproduced in this book. Probably the whole summer-house is new, but at any rate the present structure stands on the site of the old one. Here Borrow did his work, wrote and wrote and wrote, until he had, as he said, 'Mountains of manuscripts.' Here first of all he completed The Zincali (1841), commenced in Seville; then he wrote or rather arranged The Bible in Spain (1843), and then at long intervals, diversified by extensive travel holidays, he wrote Lavengro (1851), The Romany Rye (1857), and Wild Wales (1860),—these are the five books and their dates that we most associate with Borrow's sojourn at Oulton. When Wild Wales was published he had removed to London. Borrow brought with him to Oulton, as we have said, a beautiful Arabian horse, Sidi Habismilk, and a Jewish servant, Hayim Ben Attar. The horse remained to delight the neighbourhood. It followed Borrow like a dog when he was not riding it. The Jew had soon had enough of this rural retreat and sighed for a sunnier clime. Thus, under date 1843, I find among my Borrow Papers the following letter to a firm of shipbrokers: