“I have often thought what a field for usefulness and affectionate attention, on the part of ministers and Christian friends, is opened by the frequent attacks and lingering progress of consumptive illness. How many such precious opportunities are daily lost, where Providence seems in so marked a way to afford time and space for serious and Godly instruction! Of how many may it be said: ‘The way of peace have they not known’; for not one friend ever came nigh to warn them to ‘flee from the wrath to come.’
“But the Dairyman’s Daughter was happily made acquainted with the things which belonged to her everlasting peace before the present disease had taken root in her constitution. In my visits to her I might be said rather
to receive information than to impart it. Her mind was abundantly stored with Divine truths, and her conversations truly edifying. The recollection of it still produces a thankful sensation in my heart.”
Nevertheless, when Borrow had bought a copy of this book he was willing to do what was asked, and to attempt also to translate into German Phillips’ “Proximate Causes of the Material Phenomena of the Universe,” or what the translator called “his tale of an apple and a pear.” But Phillips changed his mind about the “Dairyman’s Daughter” and commissioned a compilation of “Newgate Lives and Trials” instead. Borrow failed with the translation of the “Proximate Causes” but liked very well the compiling of the “Celebrated Trials”—of Joan of Arc, Cagliostro, Mary Queen of Scots, Raleigh, the Gunpowder Plotters, Queen Caroline, Thurtell, the Cato Street Conspirators, and many more—in six volumes. He also wrote reviews for Phillips’ Magazine, and contributed more translations of poetry and many scraps of “Danish Traditions and Superstitions,” like the following:
“At East Hessing, in the district of Calling, there was once a rural wedding; and when the morning was near at hand, the guests rushed out of the house with much noise and tumult. When they were putting their horses to the carts, in order to leave the place, each of them boasted and bragged of his bridal present. But when the uproar was at the highest, and they were all speaking together, a maiden dressed in green, and with a bulrush plaited over her head, came from a neighbouring morass, and going up to the fellow who was noisiest and bragged most of his bridal gift, she said, ‘What will you give to Lady Bœ?’ The boor, who was half intoxicated from the brandy and ale he had swallowed, seized a whip, and answered, ‘Three strokes of my waggon-whip.’ But at the same moment he fell a corpse to the ground.”
If translation like this is journeyman’s work for the journeyman, for Borrow it was of great value because it familiarised him with the marvellous and the supernatural and so helped him towards the expression of his own material and spiritual adventures. The wild and often other-worldly air of much of his work is doubtless due to his wild and other-worldly mind, but owes a considerable if uncertain debt to his reading of ballads and legends, which give a little to the substance of his work and far more to the tone of it. Among other things translated at this time he mentions the “Saga of Burnt Njal.”
He was not happy in London. He had few friends there, and perhaps those he had only disturbed without sweetening his solitude. One of these was a Norwich friend, named Roger Kerrison, who shared lodgings with him at 16, Millman Street, Bedford Row. Borrow confided in Kerrison, and had written to him before leaving Norwich in terms of perhaps unconsciously worked-up affection. But Borrow’s low spirits in London were more than Kerrison could stand. When Borrow was proposing a short visit to Norwich his friend wrote to John Thomas Borrow, suggesting that he should keep his brother there for a time, or else return with him, for this reason. Borrow had “repeatedly” threatened suicide, and unable to endure his fits of desperation Kerrison had gone into separate lodgings: if his friend were to return in this state and find himself alone he would “again make some attempt to destroy himself.” Nothing was done, so far as is known, and he did not commit suicide. It is a curious commentary on the work of hack writers that this youth should have written as a note to his translation of “The Suicide’s Grave,” [{85}] that it was not translated for its sentiments but for its poetry; “although the path of human life is rough
and thorny, the mind may always receive consolation by looking forward to the world to come. The mind which rejects a future state has to thank itself for its utter misery and hopelessness.” His malady was youth, aggravated, the food reformer would say, by eating fourteen pennyworth of bread and cheese at a meal, and certainly aggravated by literary ambition.
Judging from the thirty-first chapter of “Lavengro,” he was exceptionally sensitive at this time to all impressions—probably both pleasant and unpleasant. He describes himself on his first day gazing at the dome of St. Paul’s until his brain became dizzy, and he thought the dome would fall and crush him, and he shrank within himself, and struck yet deeper into the heart of the big city. He stood on London Bridge dazed by the mighty motion of the waters and the multitude of men and “horses as large as elephants. There I stood, just above the principal arch, looking through the balustrade at the scene that presented itself—and such a scene! Towards the left bank of the river, a forest of masts, thick and close, as far as the eye could reach; spacious wharfs, surmounted with gigantic edifices; and, far away, Cæsar’s Castle, with its White Tower. To the right, another forest of masts, and a maze of buildings, from which, here and there, shot up to the sky chimneys taller than Cleopatra’s Needle, vomiting forth huge wreaths of that black smoke which forms the canopy—occasionally a gorgeous one—of the more than Babel city. Stretching before me, the troubled breast of the mighty river, and, immediately below, the main whirlpool of the Thames—the Maelstrom of the bulwarks of the middle arch—a grisly pool, which, with its superabundance of horror, fascinated me. Who knows but I should have leapt into its depths?—I have heard of such things—but for a rather startling occurrence which broke the spell. As I stood upon the bridge, gazing into the jaws of the
pool, a small boat shot suddenly through the arch beneath my feet. There were three persons in it; an oarsman in the middle, whilst a man and woman sat at the stern. I shall never forget the thrill of horror which went through me at this sudden apparition. What!—a boat—a small boat—passing beneath that arch into yonder roaring gulf! Yes, yes, down through that awful water-way, with more than the swiftness of an arrow, shot the boat, or skiff, right into the jaws of the pool. A monstrous breaker curls over the prow—there is no hope; the boat is swamped, and all drowned in that strangling vortex. No! the boat, which appeared to have the buoyancy of a feather, skipped over the threatening horror, and the next moment was out of danger, the boatman—a true boatman of Cockaigne, that—elevating one of his skulls in sign of triumph, the man hallooing, and the woman, a true Englishwoman that—of a certain class—waving her shawl. Whether any one observed them save myself, or whether the feat was a common one, I know not; but nobody appeared to take any notice of them. As for myself, I was so excited, that I strove to clamber up the balustrade of the bridge, in order to obtain a better view of the daring adventurers. Before I could accomplish my design, however, I felt myself seized by the body, and, turning my head, perceived the old fruit-woman, who was clinging to me.”