What a world of adventure do the mere names of these places call up. Borrow entered the Peninsula at an exciting period of its history. Traces of the great war in which Napoleon’s legions faced those of Wellington still abounded. Here and there a bridge had disappeared, and some of Borrow’s strange experiences on ferry-boats were indirectly due to the results of Napoleon’s ambition. Everywhere there was still war in the land. Portugal indeed had just passed through a revolution. The partisans of the infant Queen Maria II. had been fighting with her uncle Dom Miguel for eight years, and it was only a few short months before Borrow landed at Lisbon that Maria had become undisputed queen. Spain, to which Borrow speedily betook himself, was even in a worse state. She was in the throes of a six years’ war. Queen Isabel II., a child of three, reigned over a chaotic country with her mother Dona Christina as regent; her uncle Don Carlos was a formidable claimant to the throne and had the support of the absolutist and clerical parties. Borrow’s political sympathies were always in the direction of absolutism; but in religion, although a staunch Church of England man, he was certainly an anti-clerical one in Roman Catholic Spain. In any case he steered judiciously enough between contending factions, describing the fanatics of either side with vigour and sometimes with humour. Mr. Brandram’s injunction to Borrow “to be on his guard against becoming too much committed to one particular party” seems to have been unnecessary.
Borrow’s three expeditions to Spain have more to be said for them than had his journey to St. Petersburg. The work of the Bible Society was and is at its highest point of human service when distributing either the Old or the New Testament in Christian countries, Spain, England, or another. Few there be to-day in any country who, in the interests of civilisation, would deny to the Bible a wider distribution. In a remote village of Spain a Bible Society’s colporteur, carrying a coloured banner, sold me a copy of Cipriano de Valera’s New Testament for a peseta. But in the minds of the worthy people who ran the Bible Society eighty years ago it was not so much that humanity was to be bettered as that Roman Catholicism was to be worsened. Every New Testament sold in Spain was in the eyes of the English fanatic who subscribed his silver a blow to the Church of that land. Otherwise and as to the humanising influence of the propaganda it may be said that the villages of Spain that Borrow visited could even at that time compare favourably, morally and educationally, with villages of his own county of Norfolk at the same period. The morals of the agricultural labourers of the English fen country eighty years ago were a scandal, and the peasantry read nothing; more than half of them could not read. They had not, moreover, the humanising passion for song and dance that Andalusia knew. But this is not to deny that the Bible Society under Borrow’s instrumentality did a good work in Spain, nor that they did it on the whole in a broad and generous way. Borrow admits that there was a section of the Roman Catholic clergy “favourably disposed towards the circulation of the Gospel,” and the Society actually fixed upon a Roman Catholic version of the Spanish Bible, that by Scio de San Miguel, although this version Borrow considered a bad translation. Much has been said about the aim of the Bible Society to provide the Bible without notes or comment—in its way a most meritorious aim, although then as now opposed to the instinct of a large number of the priests of the Roman Church. It is true that their attitude does not in any way possess the sanction of the ecclesiastical authorities. It may be urged, indeed, that the interpretation of the Bible by a priest, usually of mature judgment, and frequently of a higher education than the people with whom he is associated, is at least as trustworthy as its interpretation at the hands of very partially educated young women and exceedingly inadequately equipped young men who to-day provide interpretation and comment in so many of the Sunday Schools of Protestant countries.
Behold George Borrow, then, first in Portugal and a little later in Spain, upon his great mission—avowedly at first a tentative mission—rather to see what were the prospects for Bible distribution than to distribute Bibles. But Borrow’s zeal knew no such limitations. Before very long he had a shop in one of the principal streets of Madrid—the Calle del Principe—much more in the heart of things than the very prosperous Bible Society of our day ventures upon. [113] Meanwhile he is at present in Portugal not very certain of his movements, and he writes to his old friend Dr. Bowring the following letter with a request with which Bowring complied, although in the coldest manner:
To Dr. John Bowring
Evora in the Alemtejo, 27 Decr., 1835.
Dear Sir,—Pray excuse me for troubling you with these lines. I write to you, as usual, for assistance in my projects, convinced that you will withhold none which it may be in your power to afford, more especially when by so doing you will perhaps be promoting the happiness of our fellow creatures. I returned from dear, glorious Russia about three months since, after having edited there the Manchu New Testament in eight volumes. I am now in Portugal, for the Society still do me the honour of employing me. For the last six weeks I have been wandering amongst the wilds of the Alemtejo and have introduced myself to its rustics, banditti, etc., and become very popular amongst them, but as it is much more easy to introduce oneself to the cottage than the hall (though I am not entirely unknown in the latter), I want you to give or procure me letters to the most liberal and influential minds of Portugal. I likewise want a letter from the Foreign Office to Lord De Walden, in a word, I want to make what interest I can towards obtaining the admission of the Gospel of Jesus into the public schools of Portugal which are about to be established. I beg leave to state that this is my plan, and not other persons’, as I was merely sent over to Portugal to observe the disposition of the people, therefore I do not wish to be named as an Agent of the B.S., but as a person who has plans for the mental improvement of the Portuguese; should I receive these letters within the space of six weeks it will be time enough, for before setting up my machine in Portugal I wish to lay the foundation of something similar in Spain. When you send the Portuguese letters direct thus:
Mr. George Borrow,
to the care of Mr. Wilby,
Rua Dos Restauradores, Lisbon.I start for Spain to-morrow, and I want letters something similar (there is impudence for you) for Madrid, which I should like to have as soon as possible. I do not much care at present for an introduction to the Ambassador at Madrid, as I shall not commence operations seriously in Spain until I have disposed of Portugal. I will not apologise for writing to you in this manner, for you know me, but I will tell you one thing, which is that the letter which you procured for me, on my going to St. Petersburg, from Lord Palmerston, assisted me wonderfully. I called twice at your domicile on my return; the first time you were in Scotland, the second in France, and I assure you I cried with vexation. Remember me to Mrs. Bowring and God bless you.
G. Borrow.
P.S.—I am told that Mendizábal is liberal, and has been in England; perhaps he would assist me.
During this eleven months’ stay in the Peninsula Borrow made his way to Madrid, and here he interviewed the British Minister, Sir George Villiers, afterwards fourth Earl of Clarendon, and had received a quite remarkable encouragement from him for the publication and distribution of the Bible. He also interviewed the Spanish Prime Minister, Mendizábal, “whom it is as difficult to get nigh as it is to approach the North Pole,” and he has given us a picturesque account of the interview in The Bible in Spain. It was agreed that 5,000 copies of the Spanish Testament were to be reprinted from Scio’s text at the expense of the Bible Society, and all these Borrow was to handle as he thought fit. Then Borrow made his way to Granada, where, under date 30th August, 1836, his autograph may be read in the visitors’ book of the Alhambra:
George Borrow Norvicensis.
Here he studied his friends the gypsies, now and probably then, as we may assume from his Zincali, the sordid scum on the hillside of that great city, but now more assuredly than then unutterably demoralised by the numerous but curious tourists who visit this rabble under police protection, the very policeman or gendarme not despising a peseta for his protective services. But Borrow’s hobbies included the Romanies of every land, and a year later he produced and published a gypsy version of the Gospel of St. Luke. In October, 1836, Borrow was back in England. He found that the Bible Society approved of him. In November of the same year he left London for Cadiz on his second visit to Spain. The journey is described in The Bible in Spain; but here, from my Borrow Papers, is a kind letter that Mr. Brandram wrote to Borrow’s mother on the occasion:
No. 10 East Street, Jany. 11, 1837.
My dear Madam,—I have the joyful news to send you that your son has again safely arrived at Madrid. His journey we were aware was exceedingly perilous, more perilous than we should have allowed him to take had we sooner known the extent of the danger. He begs me to write, intending to write to you himself without delay. He has suffered from the intense cold, but nothing beyond inconvenience. Accept my congratulations, and my best wishes that your dear son may be preserved to be your comfort in declining years—and may the God of all consolation himself deign to comfort your heart by the truths of that holy volume your son is endeavouring, in connection with our Society, to spread abroad.—Believe me, dear Madam, yours faithfully,
A. Brandram.
Mrs. Borrow, Norwich.
A brilliant letter from Seville followed soon after, and then he went on to Madrid, not without many adventures. “The cold nearly killed me,” he said. “I swallowed nearly two bottles of brandy; it affected me no more than warm water.” This to kindly Mr. Brandram, who clearly had no teetotaler proclivities, for the letter, as he said, “filled his heart with joy and gladness.” Meanwhile those five thousand copies of the New Testament were a-printing, Borrow superintending the work with the assistance of a new friend, Dr. Usoz. “As soon as the book is printed and issued,” he tells Mr. Brandram, “I will ride forth from Madrid into the wildest parts of Spain, . . .” and so, after some correspondence with the Society which is quite entertaining, he did. The reader of The Bible in Spain will note some seventy separate towns and villages that Borrow visited, not without countless remarkable adventures on the way. “I felt some desire,” he says in The Romany Rye, “to meet with one of those adventures which upon the roads of England are generally as plentiful as blackberries in autumn.” Assuredly in this tour of Spanish villages Borrow met with no lack of adventures. The committee of the Bible Society authorised this tour in March, 1837, and in May Borrow started off on horseback attended by his faithful servant, Antonio. This tour was to last five months, and “if I am spared,” he writes to his friend Hasfeld, “and have not fallen a prey to sickness, Carlists, banditti, or wild beasts, I shall return to Madrid.” He hopes a little later, he tells Hasfeld, to be sent to China. We have then a glimpse of his servant, the excellent Antonio, which supplements that contained in The Bible in Spain. “He is inordinately given to drink, and is of so quarrelsome a disposition that he is almost constantly involved in some broil.” Not all his weird experiences were conveyed in his letters to the Bible Society’s secretary. Some of these letters, however—the more highly coloured ones—were used in The Bible in Spain, word for word, and wonderful reading they must have made for the secretary, who indeed asked for more, although, with a view to keeping Borrow humble—an impossible task—Mr. Brandram takes occasion to say “Mr. Graydon’s letters, as well as yours, are deeply interesting,” Graydon being a hated rival, as we shall see. The question of money was also not overlooked by the assiduous secretary. “I know you are no accountant,” he writes, “but do not forget there are some who are,” and a financial document was forwarded to Borrow about this time as a stimulus and a warning.
But Borrow was happy, for next to the adventures of five glorious months in the villages between Madrid and Coruña nothing could be more to his taste than a good, wholesome quarrel. He was imprisoned by order of the Spanish Government and released on the intervention of the British Embassy. He tells the story so graphically in The Bible in Spain that it is superfluous to repeat it; but here he does not tell of the great quarrel with regard to Lieutenant Graydon that led him to attack that worthy zealot in a letter to the Bible Society. This attack did indeed cause the Society to recall Graydon, whose zealous proclamation of anti-Romanism must, however, have been more to the taste of some of its subscribers than Borrow’s “trimming” methods. Moreover, Graydon worked for love of the cause and required no salary, which must always have been in his favour. Borrow was ten days in a Madrid prison, and there, as ever, he had extraordinary adventures if we may believe his own narrative, but they are much too good to be torn from their context. Suffice to say here that in the actual correspondence we find breezy controversy between Borrow and the Society. Borrow thought that the secretary had called in question the accuracy of his statements as to this or that particular in his conduct. Ever a fighter, he appealed to the British Embassy for confirmation of his word, and finally Mr. Brandram suggested he should come back to England for a time and talk matters over with the members of the committee. An interesting letter to his future wife belongs to this period: