[173] Mr. Murray published Lavengro in an edition of 3000 copies in 1851, a second edition (incorrectly called the third) was not asked for until 1872.
[174] Jenkins's Life, p. 387.
[175] Some XVIII. Century Men of Letters: Biographical Essays, by the Rev. Whitwell Elwin, sometime Editor of The Quarterly Review, With a Memoir by his son Warwick Elwin, 2 vols. John Murray, 1902.
[176] Whitwell Elwin was Rector of Booton, Norfolk—a family living—from 1849 to his death, aged 83, on 1st January 1900. He succeeded Lockhart as editor of The Quarterly Review in 1853, and resigned in 1860. He was born in 1816, and educated at Caius College, Cambridge. Thackeray called him 'a grandson of the late Rev. Dr. Primrose,' thereby recognising in Elwin many of the kindly qualities of Goldsmith's admirable creation.
[177] Mr. James Hooper, of Norwich, whose kindness in placing this and many other documents at my disposal I have already acknowledged. This letter was first published in The Sphere, December 19, 1903.
CHAPTER XXVI
A VISIT TO CORNISH KINSMEN
If Borrow had been a normal man of letters he would have been quite satisfied to settle down at Oulton, in a comfortable home, with a devoted wife. The question of money was no longer to worry him. He had moreover a money-making gift, which made him independent in a measure of his wife's fortune. From The Bible in Spain he must have drawn a very considerable amount, considerable, that is, for a man whose habits were always somewhat penurious. The Bible in Spain would have been followed up, were Borrow a quite other kind of man, by a succession of books almost equally remunerative. Even for one so prone to hate both books and bookmen there was always the wind on the heath, the gypsy encampment, the now famous 'broad,' not then the haunt of innumerable trippers. But Borrow ever loved wandering more than writing. Almost immediately after his marriage—in 1840—he hinted to the Bible Society of a journey to China; a year later, in June 1841, he suggested to Lord Clarendon that Lord Palmerston might give him a consulship: he consulted Hasfeld as to a possible livelihood in Berlin, and Ford as to travel in Africa. He seems to have endured residence at Oulton with difficulty during the succeeding three years, and in 1844 we find him engaged upon the continental travel that we have already recorded. In 1847 he had hopes of the consulship at Canton, but Bowring wanted it for himself, and a misunderstanding over this led to an inevitable break of old friendship. Borrow's passionate love of travel was never more to be gratified at the expense of others. He tried hard, indeed, to secure a journey to the East from the British Museum Trustees, and then gave up the struggle. Further wanderings, which were many, were to be confined to Europe and indeed to England, Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Man. His first journey, however, was not at his own initiative. Mrs. Borrow's health was unequal to the severe winters at Oulton, and so the Borrows made their home at Yarmouth from 1853 to 1860. During these years he gave his vagabond propensities full play. No year passed without its record of wandering. His first expedition was the outcome of a burst of notoriety that seems to have done for Borrow what the success of his Bible in Spain could not do—revealed his identity to his Cornish relations. The Bury Post of 17th September 1853 recorded that Borrow had at the risk of his life saved at least one member of a boat's crew wrecked on the coast at Yarmouth: