My last example shall be the house of Dolau Cothi, near Pumpsaint, in Caermarthenshire:
“After breakfast I departed for Llandovery. Presently I came to a lodge on the left-hand beside an ornamental gate at the bottom of an avenue leading seemingly to a gentleman’s seat. On inquiring of a woman who sat at the door of the lodge to whom the grounds belonged, she said to Mr. Johnes, and that if I pleased I was welcome to see them. I went in and advanced along the avenue, which consisted of very noble oaks; on the right was a vale in which a beautiful brook was running north and south. Beyond the vale to the east were fine wooded hills. I thought I had never seen a more pleasing locality, though I saw it to great disadvantage, the day being dull, and the season the latter fall. Presently, on the avenue making a slight turn, I saw the house, a plain but comfortable gentleman’s seat with wings. It looked to the south down the dale. ‘With what satisfaction I could live in that house,’ said I to myself, ‘if backed by a couple of thousands a-year. With what gravity could I sign a warrant in its library, and with what dreamy comfort translate an ode of Lewis Glyn Cothi, my tankard of rich ale beside me. I wonder whether the proprietor is fond of the old bard and keeps good ale. Were I an Irishman instead of a Norfolk man I would go in and ask him.’”
To the merit of this the whole book, perhaps the whole of Borrow’s work, contributes. Simple-looking tranquil successes of this kind are the privilege of a master, and when they occur they proclaim the master with a voice which, though gentle, will find but few confessing to be deaf to it. They are not frequent in “Wild Wales.” Borrow had set himself too difficult a task to succeed altogether
with his methods and at his age. Wales was not unknown land; De Quincey, Shelley, and Peacock, had been there in his own time; and Borrow had not sufficient impulse or opportunity to transfigure it as he had done Spain; nor had he the time behind him, if he had the power still, to treat it as he had done the country of his youth in “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye.”
CHAPTER XXXII—“ROMANO LAVO-LIL”
Ambition, with a little revenge, helped to impel Borrow to write “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye.” Some of this ambition was left over for “Wild Wales,” which he began and finished before the publication of “The Romany Rye.” There was little of any impulse left for the writing of books after “Wild Wales.” In 1862 and 1863 he published in “Once a Week” some translations in prose and verse, from Manx, Russian, Danish and Norse—one poem, on Harald Harfagr, being illustrated by Frederick Sandys. He never published the two-volume books, advertised as “ready for the press” in 1857, “Celtic Bards, Chiefs, and Kings,” “Kaempe Viser . . . translated from the Ancient Danish,” “Northern Skalds, Kings and Earls.”
Borrow was living in Hereford Square, seeing many people, occasionally dining well, walking out into the suburban country, and visiting the Gypsy camps in London. He made notes of his observations and conversations, which, says Knapp, “are not particularly edifying,” whatever that may mean. Knapp gives one example from the manuscript, describing the race at Brompton, on October 14, 1861, between Deerfoot, the Seneca Indian, and Jackson, the “American Deer.” Borrow also wrote for the “Antiquities of the Royal School of Norwich,” an autobiography too long for insertion. This survived to be captured and printed by Knapp. It is very inaccurate, but it serves to corroborate parts of “Lavengro,” and its inaccuracy, though now transparent, is characteristically exaggerated or picturesque.
Borrow’s scattered notes would perhaps never have been published in his lifetime, but for an accident. In 1870 Charles Godfrey Leland, author of “Hans Breitmann,” introduced himself to Borrow as one who had read “The Zincali,” “Lavengro,” and “The Romany Rye,” five times. Borrow answered that he would be pleased to see him at any time. They met and Leland sent Borrow his “Breitmann Ballads” because of the German Romany ballad in it, and his “Music Lesson of Confucius” because of the poem in it inspired by Borrow’s reference to Svend Vonved in “The Romany Rye.” Leland confessed in a genial familiar way what “an incredible influence” Borrow’s books had had on him, and thanked him for the “instructions in ‘The Romany Rye’ as to taking care of a horse on a thirty-mile ride.” Borrow became jealous of this American “Romany Rye.” Leland, suspecting nothing, wrote offering him the dedication of his “English Gypsies.” John Murray assured Leland that Borrow received this letter, but it was never acknowledged except by the speedy announcement of a new book—“Romano Lavo-Lil: a word book of the Romany or English Gypsy Language, by George Borrow, with specimens of Gypsy poetry, and an account of certain Gypsyries or places inhabited by them, and of various things relating to Gypsy life in England.” Leland speaks of the affair in “The Gypsies,” saying that he had nothing but pleasant memories of the good old Romany Rye:
“A grand old fellow he was—a fresh and hearty giant, holding his six-feet-two or three inches as uprightly at eighty as he ever had at eighteen. I believe that was his age, but may be wrong. Borrow was like one of the old Norse heroes, whom he so much admired, or an old-fashioned Gypsy bruiser, full of craft and merry tricks. One of these he played on me, and I bear him no malice for it. The manner of the joke was this: I had written