Clement K. Shorter.
Dec. 9th, 1919.
CONTENTS
chap. | PAGE | |
Introduction | ||
I. | Captain Borrow of the West NorfolkMilitia | |
II. | Borrow’s Mother | |
III. | John Thomas Borrow | |
IV. | A Wandering Childhood | |
V. | The Gurneys and the Taylors ofNorwich | |
VI. | At the Norwich GrammarSchool | |
VII. | In a Lawyer’s Office | |
VIII. | An Old-time Publisher | |
IX. | “Faustus” and“Romantic Ballads” | |
X. | “Celebrated Trials” andJohn Thurtell | |
XI. | Borrow and the Fancy | |
XII. | Eight Years of Vagabondage | |
XIII. | Sir John Bowring | |
XIV. | Borrow and the BibleSociety | |
XV. | St. Petersburg and John P.Hasfeld | |
XVI. | The ManchuBible—“Targum”—“TheTalisman” | |
XVII. | Three Visits to Spain | |
XVIII. | Borrow’s SpanishCircle | |
XIX. | Mary Borrow | |
XX. | “The Children of the OpenAir” | |
XXI. | “The Bible inSpain” | |
XXII. | Richard Ford | |
XXIII. | In Eastern Europe | |
XXIV. | “Lavengro” | |
XXV. | A Visit to Cornish Kinsmen | |
XXVI. | In the Isle of Man | |
XXVII. | Oulton Broad and Yarmouth | |
XXVIII. | In Scotland and Ireland | |
XXIX. | “The RomanyRye” | |
XXX. | Edward Fitzgerald | |
XXXI. | “Wild Wales” | |
XXXII. | Life in London | |
XXXIII. | Friends of Later Years | |
XXXIV. | Henrietta Clarke | |
XXXV. | The Aftermath | |
Index | ||
CHAPTER I
Captain Borrow of the West Norfolk Militia
George Henry Borrow was born at Dumpling Green near East Dereham, Norfolk, on the 5th of July, 1803. It pleased him to state on many an occasion that he was born at East Dereham.
On an evening of July, in the year 18—, at East D—, a beautiful little town in a certain district of East Anglia, I first saw the light,
he writes in the opening lines of Lavengro, using almost the identical phraseology that we find in the opening lines of Goethe’s Wahrheit und Dichtung. Here is a later memory of Dereham from Lavengro:
What it is at present I know not, for thirty years and more have elapsed since I last trod its streets. It will scarcely have improved, for how could it be better than it was? I love to think on thee, pretty, quiet D—, thou pattern of an English country town, with thy clean but narrow streets branching out from thy modest market-place, with their old-fashioned houses, with here and there a roof of venerable thatch, with thy one half-aristocratic mansion, where resided the Lady Bountiful—she, the generous and kind, who loved to visit the sick, leaning on her golden-headed cane, while the sleek old footman walked at a respectful distance behind. Pretty, quiet D—, with thy venerable church, in which moulder the mortal remains of England’s sweetest and most pious bard.
Then follows an exquisite eulogy of the poet Cowper, which readers of Lavengro know full well. Three years before Borrow was born William Cowper died in this very town, leaving behind him so rich a legacy of poetry and of prose, and moreover so fragrant a memory of a life in which humour and pathos played an equal part. It was no small thing for a youth who aspired to any kind of renown to be born in the neighbourhood of the last resting-place of the author of The Task.