'For fear of being knocked down by the colliers, who will be all out and drunk.'
'If not more than two attack me,' said I, 'I shan't so much mind. With this book I am sure I can knock down one, and I think I can find play for the other with my fists.'
[229] When searching for the home of Goronwy Owen Borrow records a meeting with one of his descendants—a little girl of seven or eight years of age, named Ellen Jones, who in recent years has been interviewed as to her impressions of Borrow's visit. 'He did speak funny Welsh,' she says, ' ... he could not pronounce the "ll." 'He had plenty of words, but bad pronunciation.'—Herbert Jenkins: Life of Borrow, p. 418. But Borrow in Wild Wales frequently admits his imperfect acquaintance with spoken Welsh.
CHAPTER XXXIII
LIFE IN LONDON, 1860-1874
George Borrow's earlier visits to London are duly recorded, with that glamour of which he was a master, in the pages of Lavengro. Who can cross London Bridge even to-day without thinking of the apple-woman and her copy of Moll Flanders; and many passages of Borrow's great book make a very special appeal to the lover of London. Then there was that visit to the Bible Society's office made on foot from Norwich, and the expedition a few months later to pass an examination in the Manchu language. When he became a country squire and the author of the very successful Bible in Spain Borrow frequently visited London, and his various residences may be traced from his letters. Take, for example, these five notes to his wife, the first apparently written in 1848, but all undated:
To Mrs. George Borrow
Tuesday afternoon.