Of course not. The moment a man begins to write about himself, to delve in the past, to ransack the storehouse of his memory; then—if he has anything of the literary artist about him, and otherwise his book will not be worth the paper it is written on—he will take in a partner to assist him. That partner’s name is Romance.
As a revelation of temperament, the Confessions of Rousseau and the Mémoires of Casanova are, one feels, delightfully trustworthy. But no sane reader ever
imagines that he is reading an accurate transcript from the life of these adventurous gentlemen. The difference between the editions of De Quincey’s Opium Eater is sufficient to show how the dreams have expanded under popular approbation.
Borrow himself suggests this romantic method when he says, “What is an autobiography? Is it a mere record of a man’s life, or is it a picture of the man himself?” Certainly, no one carried the romantic colouring further than he did. When he started to write his own life in Lavengro he had no notion of diverging from the strict line of fact. But the adventurer Vagabond moved uneasily in the guise of the chronicler. He wanted more elbow-room. He remembered all that he hoped to encounter, and from hopes it was no far cry to actualities.
Things might have happened so! Ye gods, they did happen so! And after all it matters little to us the exact proportion of fact and fiction. What does matter is that the superstructure he has raised upon the foundation of fact is as strange and unique as the palace of Aladdin.
However much he suggested the typical Anglo-Saxon in real life, there was the true Celt whenever he took pen in hand.
A stranger blend of the Celt and the Saxon indeed it would be hard to find. The Celtic side is not uppermost in his temperament—this strong, assertive, prize-fighting, beer-loving man (a good drinker, but never a drunkard) seems far more Saxon than anything else. De Quincey had no small measure of the John Bull in
Readers of Mr. Watts-Dunton’s charming romance Aylwin will recall the emphasis laid on the passionate love of the Welsh for a tiny strip of Welsh soil. Borrow understood all this; he had a rare sympathy with the Cymric Celt. You can trace the Celt in his scenic descriptions, in his feeling for the spell of antiquity, his restlessness of spirit. And yet in his appearance there was little to suggest the Celt. Small wonder that many of his friends spoke of this white-haired giant of six foot three as if he was first and foremost an excellent athlete.
Certainly he had in full measure an Englishman’s delight and proficiency in athletics—few better at running, jumping, wrestling, sparring, and swimming.