My dear Sir,—I return you my most sincere thanks for your kind letter of the 2nd inst., and though you have not been successful in your application to the Belgian authorities in my behalf, I know full well that you did your utmost, and am only sorry that at my instigation you attempted an impossibility. The Belgians seem either not to know or not to care for the opinion of the great Cyrus, who gives this advice to his captains: 'Take no heed from what countries ye fill up your ranks, but seek recruits as ye do horses, not those particularly who are of your own country, but those of merit.' The Belgians will only have such recruits as are born in Belgium, and when we consider the heroic manner in which the native Belgian army defended the person of their new sovereign in the last conflict with the Dutch, can we blame them for their determination? It is rather singular, however, that, resolved as they are to be served only by themselves, they should have sent for 50,000 Frenchmen to clear their country of a handful of Hollanders, who have generally been considered the most unwarlike people in Europe, but who, if they had had fair play given them, would long ere this time have replanted the Orange flag on the towers of Brussels, and made the Belgians what they deserve to be—hewers of wood and drawers of water. And now, my dear Sir, allow me to reply to a very important part of your letter. You ask me whether I wish to purchase a commission in the British Service, because in that case you would speak to the Secretary at War about me. I must inform you, therefore, that my name has been for several years upon the list for the purchase of a commission, and I have never yet had sufficient interest to procure an appointment. If I can do nothing better I shall be very glad to purchase; but I will pause two or three months before I call upon you to fulfil your kind promise. It is believed that the militias will be embodied in order to be sent to that unhappy country Ireland, and, provided I can obtain a commission in one of them and they are kept in service, it would be better than spending £500 upon one in the line. I am acquainted with the colonels of the two Norfolk regiments, and I dare say that neither of them would have any objection to receive me. If they are not embodied I will most certainly apply to you, and you may say when you recommend me that, being well grounded in Arabic, and having some talent for languages, I might be an acquisition to a corps in one of our Eastern colonies. I flatter myself that I could do a great deal in the East provided I could once get there, either in a civil or military capacity. There is much talk at present about translating European books into the two great languages, the Arabic and Persian. Now I believe that with my enthusiasm for those tongues I could, if resident in the East, become in a year or two better acquainted with them than any European has been yet, and more capable of executing such a task. Bear this in mind, and if, before you hear from me again, you should have any opportunity to recommend me as a proper person to fill any civil situation in those countries, or to attend any expedition thither, I pray you to lay hold of it, and no conduct of mine shall ever give you reason to repent of it.—I remain, my dear Sir, your most obliged and obedient servant,
George Borrow.
P.S.—Present my best remembrances to Mrs. Bowring and to Edgar, and tell them that they will both be starved. There is now a report in the street that twelve corn-stacks are blazing within twenty miles of this place. I have lately been wandering about Norfolk, and I am sorry to say that the minds of the peasantry are in a horrible state of excitement. I have repeatedly heard men and women in the harvest-field swear that not a grain of the corn they were cutting should be eaten, and that they would as lieve be hanged as live. I am afraid all this will end in a famine and a rustic war.
Borrow's next letter to Bowring that has been preserved is dated 1835 and was written from Portugal. With that I will deal when we come to Borrow's travels in the Peninsula. Here it sufficeth to note that during the years of Borrow's most urgent need he seems to have found a kind friend if not a very zealous helper in the 'Old Radical' whom he came to hate so cordially.
FOOTNOTES:
[85] Autobiographical Reflections of Sir John Bowring. With a Brief Memoir by Lewin B. Bowring. Henry S. King and Co., London, 1877.
[86] The Romany Rye Appendix, ch. xi.
[87] Kindly placed at my disposal by Mr. Wilfred J. Bowring, Sir John Bowring's grandson. The rights which I hold through the executors of George Borrow's stepdaughter, Mrs. MacOubrey, over the Borrow correspondence enable me to publish in their completeness letters which three previous biographers, all of whom have handled the correspondence, have published mainly in fragments.
[88] The manuscript of The Death of Balder came into the hands of Mr. William Jarrold of Norwich through Mr. Webber of Ipswich, who purchased a large mass of Borrow manuscripts that were sold at Borrow's death, most of which were re-purchased by Dr. Knapp. His firm, Jarrold and Sons, issued The Death of Balder, from the Danish of Johannes Ewald, in 1889.