[197] Mr. Sheriff Robertson's son kindly sends me the following extract from the diary of his father, James Robertson, Sheriff of Orkney:
'Friday, 26th November, 1858.—In the evening Geo. Petrie called with "Bible Borrow." He is a man about 60, upwards of six feet in height, and of an athletic though somewhat gaunt frame. His hair is pure white though a little bit thin on the top, his features high and handsome, and his complexion ruddy and healthy. He was dressed in black, his surtout was old, his shoes very muddy. He spoke in a loud tone of voice, knows Gaelic and Irish well, quoted Ian Lom, Duncan Ban M'Intyre, etc., is publishing an account of Welsh, Irish, and Gaelic bards. He travelled—on foot principally—from Inverness to Thurso, and is going on to-morrow to Zetland. He walked lately through the upper part of Badenoch, Lochaber, and the adjacent counties, and through Mull, which he greatly admired.... In his rambles he associated exclusively with the lower classes, and when I offered to give him letters of introduction to Wm. F. Skene, Robert Chambers, Joseph Robertson, etc., he declined to accept them. His mother died lately and he was travelling, he said, to divert and throw off his melancholy. He talked very freely on all subjects that one broached, but not with precision, and he appeared to me to be an amiable man and a gentleman, but, withal, something of a projector, if not an adventurer. He is certainly eccentric. I asked him to take wine, etc., and he declined. He said he was bred at the High School of Edinburgh, and that he was there in 1813, and mentioned that he was partly educated in Ireland, and that by birth and descent he is an Englishman.'
CHAPTER XXX
THE ROMANY RYE
George Borrow's three most important books had all a very interesting history. We have seen the processes by which The Bible in Spain was built up from notebooks and letters. We have seen further the most curious apprenticeship by which Lavengro came into existence. The most distinctly English book—at least in a certain absence of cosmopolitanism—that Victorian literature produced was to a great extent written on scraps of paper during a prolonged Continental tour which included Constantinople and Budapest. In Lavengro we have only half a book, the whole work, which included what came to be published as The Romany Rye, having been intended to appear in four volumes. The first volume was written in 1843, the second in 1845, after the Continental tour, which is made use of in the description of the Hungarian, and the third volume in the years between 1845 and 1848. Then in 1852 Borrow wrote out an 'advertisement' of a fourth volume,[198] which runs as follows:
Shortly will be published in one volume. Price 10s. The Rommany Rye, Being the fourth volume of Lavengro. By George Borrow, author of The Bible in Spain.
But this volume did not make an appearance 'shortly.' Its author was far too much offended with the critics, too disheartened it may be to care to offer himself again for their gibes. The years rolled on, much of the time being spent at Yarmouth, a little of it at Oulton. There was a visit to Cornwall in 1854, and another to Wales in the same year. The Isle of Man was selected for a holiday in 1855, and not until 1857 did The Romany Rye appear. The book was now in two volumes, and we see that the word Romany had dropped an 'm':