The Life of George Borrow

by Clement King Shorter

Mary Skepper was certainly a bright, intelligent girl, as I gather from a manuscript poem before me written to a friend on the eve of leaving school. As a widow, living at first with her parents at Oulton Hall, and later with her little daughter in the neighbouring cottage, she would seem to have busied herself with all kinds of philanthropies, and she was clearly in sympathy with the religious enthusiasms of certain neighbouring families of Evangelical persuasion, particularly the Gurneys and the Cunninghams. The Rev. Francis Cunningham was rector of Pakefield, near Lowestoft from 1814 to 1830. He married Richenda, sister of the distinguished Joseph John Gurney and of Elizabeth Fry, in 1816. In 1830 he became vicar of St. Margaret’s, Lowestoft. His brother, John William Cunningham, was vicar of Harrow, and married a Verney of the famous Buckinghamshire family. This John William Cunningham was a great light of the Evangelical Churches of his time, and was for many years editor of The Christian Observer. His daughter Mary Richenda married Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, the well-known judge, and the brother of Sir Leslie Stephen. But to return to Francis Cunningham, whose acquaintance with Borrow was brought about through Mrs. Clarke. Cunningham was a great supporter of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and was the founder of the Paris branch. It was speedily revealed to him that Borrow’s linguistic abilities could be utilised by the Society, and he secured the co-operation of his brother-in-law, Joseph John Gurney, in an effort to find Borrow work in connection with the Society.

We do not meet Mary Clarke again until 1834, when we find a letter from her to Borrow addressed to St. Petersburg, in which she notifies to him that he has been “mentioned at many of the Bible Meetings this year,” adding that “dear Mr. Cunningham” had spoken so nicely of him at an Oulton gathering. “As I am not afraid of making you proud,” she continues, “I will tell you one of his remarks. He mentioned you as one of the most extraordinary and interesting individuals of the present day.” Henceforth clearly Mary Clarke corresponded regularly with Borrow, and one or two extracts from her letters are given by Dr. Knapp. Joseph Jowett of the Bible Society forwarded Borrow’s letters from Russia to Cunningham, who handed them to Mrs. Clarke and her parents. Borrow had proposed to continue his mission by leaving Russia for China, but this Mary Clarke opposed:

I must tell you that your letter chilled me when I read your intention of going as a Missionary or Agent, with the Manchu Scriptures in your hand, to the Tartars, that land of incalculable dangers.

In 1835 Borrow was back in England at Norwich with his mother, and on a visit to Mary Clarke and the Skeppers at Oulton. Mrs. Skepper died just before his arrival in England—that is, in September, 1835—while her husband died in February, 1836. Her only brother died in the following year.

Thus we see Mary Clarke, aged forty-three, left to fight the world with her daughter, aged nineteen, and not only to fight the world but her own family, particularly her brother’s widow, owing to certain ambiguities in her father’s will. It was these legal quarrels that led Mary Clarke and her daughter to set sail for Spain, where Mary had had the indefatigable and sympathetic correspondent during the previous year of trouble. Borrow and Mary Clarke met, as we have seen, at Seville and there, at a later period, they became “engaged.” Mrs. Clarke and her daughter Henrietta sailed for Spain in the Royal Tar, leaving London for Cadiz in June, 1839. Much keen correspondence between Borrow and Mrs. Clarke had passed before the final decision to visit Spain. His mother was one of the few people who knew of Mrs. Clarke’s journey to Seville, and must have understood, as mothers do, what was pending, although her son did not. When the engagement is announced to her—in November, 1839—she writes to Mary Clarke a kindly, affectionate letter:

I shall now resign him to your care, and may you love and cherish him as much as I have done. I hope and trust that each will try to make the other happy.

There is no reason whatever to accept the suggestion that has been made that Borrow married for money. And this because he had said in one of his letters, “It is better to suffer the halter than the yoke,” the kind of thing that a man might easily say on the eve of making a proposal which he was not sure would be accepted. Nor can a casual remark of Borrow’s—“marriage is by far the best way of getting possession of an estate”—be counted as conclusive. That Borrow was all his life devoted to his wife I think is proved by his many letters to her that are given in this volume. Borrow’s further tribute to his wife and stepdaughter in Wild Wales is well known:

Of my wife I will merely say that she is a perfect paragon of wives, can make puddings and sweets and treacle posset, and is the best woman of business in Eastern Anglia. Of my stepdaughter—for such she is, though I generally call her daughter, and with good reason, seeing that she has always shown herself a daughter to me—that she has all kinds of good qualities, and several accomplishments, knowing something of conchology, more of botany, drawing capitally in the Dutch style, and playing remarkably well on the guitar—not the trumpery German thing so called, but the real Spanish guitar.

Borrow belonged to the type of men who would never marry did not some woman mercifully take them in hand. Mrs. Clarke, when she set out for Spain, had doubtless determined to marry Borrow. It is clear that he had no idea of marrying her. Yet he was certainly “engaged,” as we learn from a letter to Mr. Brackenbury, when he wrote a letter from Seville to Mr. Brandram, dated 18th March, in which he said: “I wish very much to spend the remaining years of my life in the northern parts of China, as I think I have a call to those regions. . . . I hope yet to die in the cause of my Redeemer.” Surely never did man take so curious a view of the responsibilities of marriage. Possibly here also Borrow was adapting himself to the language of the Bible Society. He must have known that his proposal would be declined—as it was.

Very soon after the engagement Borrow experienced his third term of imprisonment in Spain, this time, however, only for thirty hours, and all because he had asked the Alcalde, or mayor of the district in which he lived, for his passport, and had quarrelled with his worship over the matter. Borrow gave up the months of this winter of 1839 rather to writing his first important book, The Gypsies of Spain, than to the concerns of the Bible Society, which fidgeted exceedingly, no doubt imaging heavy bills for expenses, with no corresponding reports of the usual character to be read out at meetings. Finally Borrow, with Mrs. Clarke and her daughter, sailed from Cadiz on the 3rd April, 1840, as we have already related. He had with him his Jewish servant, Hayim Ben Attar, and his Arabian horse, Sidi Habismilk, both of which were to astonish the natives of the Suffolk broads. The party reached London on 16th April and stayed at the Spread Eagle Inn, Gracechurch Street. The marriage took place at St. Peter’s Church, Cornhill, on 23rd April, 1840.