When Borrow was actually in Spain he was much influenced by the conditions of the moment. The sun of Spain would shine so that he prized it above English civilization. The anarchy and wildness of Spain at another time would make him hate both men and land. But more lasting than joy in the sun and misery at the sight of misery was the feeling that he was “adrift in Spain, the land of old renown, the land of wonder and mystery, with better opportunities of becoming acquainted with its strange secrets and peculiarities than, perhaps, ever yet were afforded to any individual, certainly to a foreigner.” When he entered it, by crossing a brook, out of Portugal, he shouted the Spanish battle-cry in ecstasy, and in the end he described his five years in Spain as, “if not the most eventful”—he cannot refrain from that vainglorious dark hint—yet “the most happy years” of his existence. Spain was to him “the most magnificent country in the world”: it was also “one of the few countries in Europe where poverty is not treated with contempt, and I may add, where the wealthy are not blindly idolized.” His book is a song of wild Spain when Spain was Spain.
Borrow, as we already know, had in him many of the powers that go to make a great book, yet “The Zincali” was not a great book. The important power developed
or employed later which made “The Bible in Spain” a great book was the power of narrative. The writing of those letters from Spain to the Bible Society had taught him or discovered in him the instinct for proportion and connection which is the simplest, most inexplicable and most essential of literary gifts. With the help of this he could write narrative that should suggest and represent the continuity of life. He could pause for description or dialogue or reflection without interrupting this stream of life. Nothing need be, and nothing was, alien to the narrator with this gift; for his writing would now assimilate everything and enrich itself continually.
The reader could follow, as he preferred, the Bible distribution in particular, or the Gypsies, or Borrow himself, through the long ways and dense forests of the book, and through the moral darkness of Spain. It could be treated as a pious book, and as such it was attacked by Catholics, as “Lavengro” still is. For certainly Borrow made no secret of his piety. When “a fine young man of twenty-seven, the only son of a widowed mother . . . the best sailor on board, and beloved by all who were acquainted with him” was swept off the ship in which Borrow was sailing, and drowned, as he had dreamed he would be, the author exclaimed: “Truly wonderful are the ways of Providence!” When a Spanish schoolmaster suggested that the Testament was unintelligible without notes, Borrow informed him that on the contrary the notes were far more difficult, and “it would never have been written if not calculated of itself to illume the minds of all classes of mankind.” The Bible was, in his published words, “the well-head of all that is useful and conducive to the happiness of society”; and he told the poor Catalans that their souls’ welfare depended on their being acquainted with the book he was selling at half the cost price. He could write not unlike the author of “The Dairyman’s Daughter,”
as when he exclaimed: “Oh man, man, seek not to dive into the mystery of moral good and evil; confess thyself a worm, cast thyself on the earth, and murmur with thy lips in the dust, Jesus, Jesus!” He thought the Pope “the head minister of Satan here on earth,” and inspired partly by contempt of Catholics, he declared that “no people in the world entertain sublimer notions of the uncreated eternal God than the Moors . . . and with respect to Christ, their ideas even of Him are much more just than those of the Papists.” And he said to the face of the Spanish Prime Minister: “It is a pleasant thing to be persecuted for the Gospel’s sake.” Nor was this pure cant; for he meant at least this, that he loved conflict and would be fearless and stubborn in battle; and, as he puts it, he was “cast into prison for the Gospel’s sake.”
In 1843, no doubt, what first recommended this book to so many thousands was the Protestant fervour and purpose of the book, and the romantic reputation of Spain. At this day Borrow’s Bible distribution is mainly of antiquarian and sectarian interest. We should not estimate the darkness of Madrid by the number of Testaments there in circulation and daily use, nor on the other hand should we fear, like Borrow, to bring them into contempt by making them too common. Yet his missionary work makes the necessary backbone of the book. He was, as he justly said, “no tourist, no writer of books of travels.” His work brought him adventure as no mere wandering could have done. What is more, the man’s methods are still entertaining to those who care nothing about the distribution itself. Where he found the remains of a robber’s camp he left a New Testament and some tracts. To carry the Bibles over the flinty hills of Galicia and the Asturias he bought “a black Andalusian stallion of great power and strength, . . . unbroke, savage and furious”: the cargo, he says, would tame the animal. He fixed his advertisement on the
church porch at Pitiegua, announcing the sale of Testaments at Salamanca. He had the courage without the ferocity of enthusiasm, and in the cause of the Bible Society he saw and did things which little concerned it, which in fact displeased it, but keep this book alive with a great stir and shout of life, with a hundred pages where we are shown what the poet meant by “forms more real than living men.” We are shown the unrighteous to the very life. What matters it then if the author professes the opinion that “the friendship of the unrighteous is never of long duration”? Nevertheless, these pious ejaculations are not without their value in the composition of the author’s amazing character.
Borrow came near to being a perfect traveller. For he was, on the one hand, a man whose individuality was carved in clear bold lines, who had a manner and a set of opinions as remarkable as his appearance. Thus he was bound to come into conflict with men wherever he went: he would bring out their manners and opinions, if they had any. But on the other hand he had abounding curiosity. He was bold but not rude: on the contrary he was most vigilantly polite. He took snuff, though he detested it; he avoided politics as much as possible: “No, no!” he said, “I have lived too long with Romany chals and Petulengres to be of any politics save Gypsy politics,” in spite of what he had said in ’32 and was to say again in ’57. When he and the Gypsy Antonio came to Jaraicejo they separated by Antonio’s advice. The Gypsy got through the town unchallenged by the guard, though not unnoticed by the townspeople. But Borrow was stopped and asked by a man of the National Guard whether he came with the Gypsy, to which he answered, “Do I look a person likely to keep company with Gypsies?” though, says he, he probably did. Then the National asked for his passport:
“I remembered having read that the best way to win a Spaniard’s heart is to treat him with ceremonious civility. I therefore dismounted, and taking off my hat, made a low bow to the constitutional soldier, saying, ‘Señor Nacional, you must know that I am an English gentleman travelling in this country for my pleasure. I bear a passport, which on inspecting you will find to be perfectly regular. It was given me by the great Lord Palmerston, Minister of England, whom you of course have heard of here. At the bottom you will see his own handwriting. Look at it and rejoice; perhaps you will never have another opportunity. As I put unbounded confidence in the honour of every gentleman, I leave the passport in your hands whilst I repair to the posada to refresh myself. When you have inspected it, you will perhaps oblige me so far as to bring it to me. Cavalier, I kiss your hands.’
“I then made him another low bow, which he returned with one still lower, and leaving him now staring at the passport and now looking at myself, I went into a posada, to which I was directed by a beggar whom I met.