George Borrow.'
[201] Mr. Sampson has written an admirable introduction to The Romany Rye in Methuen's 'Little Library,' but he goes rather far in his suggestion that Borrow instead of writing 'Joseph Sell' for £20, possibly obtained that sum by imitating 'the methods of Jerry Abershaw, Galloping Dick,' or some of the 'fraternity of vagabonds' whose lives Borrow had chronicled in his Celebrated Trials, in other words, that he stole the money.
[202] The Romany Rye, Appendix, ch. vii.
[203] It is interesting to note that all the surviving members of Sir Walter Scott's family belong to the Roman Catholic Church, as do certain members of the family of Newman's opponent, Charles Kingsley. Several members of Charles Dickens's family are also Roman Catholics.
[204] Essays Critical and Historical by John Henry Cardinal Newman, vol. i., Longmans. See also Apologia pro Vita Sua, pp. 96-97.
CHAPTER XXXI.
EDWARD FITZGERALD
Edward FitzGerald once declared that he was about the only friend with whom Borrow had never quarrelled.[205] There was probably no reason for this exceptional amity other than the 'genius for friendship' with which FitzGerald has been rightly credited. There were certainly, however, many points of likeness between the two men which might have kept them at peace. Both had written copiously and out of all proportion to the public demand for their work. Both revelled in translation. FitzGerald's eight volumes in a magnificent American edition consists mainly of translations from various tongues which no man presumably now reads. All the world has read and will long continue to read his translation or paraphrase of Omar Khayyám's Rubáiyát. 'Old Fitz,' as his friends called him, lives by that, although his letters are among the best in literature. Borrow wrote four books that will live, but had publishers been amenable he would have published forty, and all as unsaleable as the major part of FitzGerald's translations. Both men were Suffolk squires, and yet delighted more in the company of a class other than their own, FitzGerald of boatmen, Borrow of gypsies; both were counted eccentrics in their respective villages. Perhaps alone among the great Victorian authors they lived to be old without receiving in their lives any popular recognition of their great literary achievements. But FitzGerald had a more cultivated mind than Borrow. He loved literature and literary men whilst Borrow did not. His criticism of books is of the best, and his friendships with bookmen are among the most interesting in literary history. 'A solitary, shy, kind-hearted man,' was the verdict upon him of the frequently censorious Carlyle. When Anne Thackeray asked her father which of his friends he had loved best, he answered 'Dear old Fitz, to be sure,' and Tennyson would have said the same. Borrow had none of these gifts as a letter-writer and no genius for friendship. The charm of his style, so indisputable in his best work, is absent from his letters; and his friends were alienated one after another. Borrow's undisciplined intellect and narrow upbringing were a curse to him, from the point of view of his own personal happiness, although they helped him to achieve exactly the work for which he was best fitted. Borrow's acquaintance with FitzGerald was commenced by the latter, who, in July 1853, sent from Boulge Hall, Suffolk, to Oulton Hall, in the same county, his recently published volume Six Dramas of Calderon. He apologises for making so free with 'a great man; but, as usual, I shall feel least fear before a man like yourself who both do fine things in your own language and are deep read in those of others.' He also refers to 'our common friend Donne,' so that it is probable that they had met at Donne's house.[206] The next letter, also published by Dr. Knapp, that FitzGerald writes to Borrow is dated from his home in Great Portland Street in 1856. He presents his friend with a Turkish Dictionary, and announces his coming marriage to Miss Barton, 'Our united ages amount to 96!—a dangerous experiment on both sides'—as it proved. The first reference to Borrow in the FitzGerald Letters issued by his authorised publishers is addressed to Professor Cowell in January 1857: