The Life of George Borrow

by Clement King Shorter

I have only one letter to Mrs. Borrow written during this tour:

To Mrs. George Borrow

Penquite, 27th Janry. 1854.

My dear Carreta,—I just write you a line to inform you that I have got back safe here from the Land’s End. I have received your two letters, and hope you received mine from the Land’s End. It is probable that I shall yet visit one or two places before I leave Cornwall. I am very much pleased with the country. When you receive this if you please write a line by return of post I think you may; the Trethinnick people wish me to stay with them for a day or two. When you see the Cobbs pray remember me to them; I am sorry Horace has lost his aunt, he will miss her. Love to Hen. Ever yours, dearest,

G. Borrow.

(Keep this.)

It was the failure of The Romany Rye that prevented Borrow from writing the Cornish book that he had caused to be advertised in the flyleaf of that work. Borrow would have made a beautiful book upon Cornwall. Even the title, Penquite and Pentyre; or, The Head of the Forest and the Headland, has music in it. And he had in these twenty weeks made himself wonderfully well acquainted not only with the topography of the principality, but with its folklore and legend. The gulf that ever separated the Borrow of the notebook and the unprepared letter from the Borrow of the finished manuscript was extraordinary, and we may deplore with Mr. Walling the absence of this among Borrow’s many unwritten books.

Borrow was back in Yarmouth at the end of February, 1854—he had not fled the country as Dalrymple had suggested—but in July he was off again for his great tour in Wales, in which he was accompanied by his wife and daughter. Of that tour we must treat in another and later chapter, for Wild Wales was not published until 1862. The year following his great tour in Wales he went on a trip to the Isle of Man.

CHAPTER XXVI
In the Isle of Man

The holiday which Borrow gave himself the year following his visit to Wales, that is to say, in September, 1855, is recorded in his unpublished diaries. He never wrote a book as the outcome of that journey, although he caused one to be advertised under the title of Bayr Jairgey and Glion Doo: Wanderings in Search of Manx Literature. Borrow, it will be remembered, learnt the Irish language as a mere child, much to his father’s disgust. Although he never loved the Irish people, the Celtic Irish, that is to say, whose genial temperament was so opposed to his own, he did love the Irish language, which he more than once declared had incited him to become a student of many tongues. He never made the mistake into which so many have fallen of calling it “Erse.” He was never an accurate student of the Irish language, but among Englishmen he led the way in the present-day interest in that tongue—an interest which is now so pronounced among scholars of many nationalities, and has made in Ireland so definite a revival of a language that for a time seemed to be on the way to extinction. Two translations from the Irish are to be found in his Targum published so far back as 1835, and many other translations from the Irish poets were among the unpublished manuscripts that he left behind him. It would therefore be with peculiar interest that he would visit the Isle of Man which, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was an Irish-speaking land, but in 1855 was at a stage when the language was falling fast into decay. What survived of it was still Irish with trifling variations in the spelling of words. “Cranu,” a tree, for example, had become “Cwan,” and so on—although the pronunciation was apparently much the same. When the tall, white-haired Englishman talked to the older inhabitants who knew something of the language they were delighted. “Mercy upon us,” said one old woman, “I believe, sir, you are of the old Manx!” Borrow was actually wandering in search of Manx literature, as the title of the book that he announced implied. He inquired about the old songs of the island, and of everything that survived of its earlier language. Altogether Borrow must have had a good time in thus following his favourite pursuit.

But these stories are less human than a notebook in my hands. This is a long leather pocket-book, in which, under the title of “Expedition to the Isle of Man,” we have, written in pencil, a quite vivacious account of his adventures. It records that Borrow and his wife and daughter set out through Bury to Peterborough, Rugby, and Liverpool. It tells of the admiration with which Peterborough’s “noble cathedral” inspired him. Liverpool he calls a “London in miniature”:

Strolled about town with my wife and Henrietta; wonderful docks and quays, where all the ships of the world seemed to be gathered—all the commerce of the world to be carried on; St. George’s Crescent; noble shops; strange people walking about, an Herculean mulatto, for example; the old china shop; cups with Chinese characters upon them; an horrible old Irishwoman with naked feet; Assize Hall a noble edifice.

The party left Liverpool on 20th August, and Borrow, when in sight of the Isle of Man, noticed a lofty ridge of mountains rising to the clouds:

Entered into conversation with two of the crew—Manx sailors—about the Manx language; one, a very tall man, said he knew only a very little of it as he was born on the coast, but that his companion, who came from the interior, knew it well; said it was a mere gibberish. This I denied, and said it was an ancient language, and that it was like the Irish; his companion, a shorter man, in shirt sleeves, with a sharp, eager countenance, now opened his mouth and said I was right, and said that I was the only gentleman whom he had ever heard ask questions about the Manx language. I spoke several Irish words which they understood.