[232] Miss Lloyd, who was a Welshwoman. Miss Cobbe lived with her and was doubtless a jealous woman. There are many kindly letters from Miss Lloyd to Borrow in my collection. She seems always to be anxious to invite him to her house.
[233] About three months before her death Miss Cobbe replied to an inquiry made by Mr. James Hooper of Norwich concerning her estimate of Borrow. As it is all but certain that Borrow was never intoxicated in his life, we may find the letter of interest only as giving a point of view:
'Hengwrt, Dolgelley, N. Wales, Jan. 26, 1904.
'I can have no objection to your asking me if my little sketch of George Borrow in my Life is my dernier mot about him. If I were to give my dernier mot, it would be much more to his disadvantage than anything I liked to insert in my biography. I see his American biographer has accused me of 'bitterness.' I do not think that what is contained in my book is 'bitter' at all. But if I were to have told my last interview with him,—when I was driven practically to drive him out of our house, more or less drunk, or mad with some opiate—the charge might have had some colour. He was not a good man, and not a true or honourable one, by any manner of means.'
Here assuredly we miss the fine charity which led Goethe's friend, the Duchess of Weimar, to urge that there was a special moral law for poets. Not for one moment does it occur to Miss Cobbe that her neighbour was a man of genius who had written four imperishable contributions to English literature. To her he was merely a conceited, brusque old man. Concerning the adage that 'no man is a hero to his valet,' well may Carlyle remark that that is more often the fault of the valet than of the hero.
[234] Personal and Family Glimpses of Remarkable People. By Edward W. Whately. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1889.
[235] London Daily Chronicle, July 9, 1913.
[236] There is an interview between Borrow and his wife's medical attendant, Dr. Playfair, recorded in Herbert Jenkins's Life, that is full of poignancy.