Borrow could not avoid making himself impressive and mysterious. He was impressive and mysterious without an effort; the individual or the public was impressed, and he was naturally tempted to be more impressive. Thus, in December of the year 1832 he had to go to London for his first meeting with the Bible Society, who had been recommended to give him work where he could use his knowledge of languages. As he was at Norwich, the distance was a hundred and twelve miles, and as he was poor he walked. He spent fivepence-halfpenny on a pint of ale, half-pint of milk, a roll of bread and two apples during the journey, which took him twenty-seven hours. He reached the Society’s office early in the morning and waited for the secretary. When the secretary arrived he hoped that Borrow had slept well on his journey. Borrow said that, as far as he knew, he had not slept, because he had walked. The secretary’s surprise can be imagined from this alone, or if not, from what followed. For Borrow went on talking, and told the man, among other things, that he was stolen by Gypsies when he was a boy—had
passed several years with them, but had at last been recognised at a fair in Norfolk, and brought home to his family by an uncle. It was not to be expected that Borrow would conceal from the public “several years” of this kind. Nevertheless, in none of his books has he so much as hinted at a period of adoption with Gypsies when he was a boy. Nor has that massive sleuth-hound, Dr. Knapp, discovered any traces of such an adoption. If there is any foundation for the story except Borrow’s wish to please the secretary, it is the escapade of his fourteenth or fifteenth year—when he and three other boys from Norwich Grammar School played truant, intending to make caves to dwell in among the sandhills twenty miles away on the coast, but were recognised on the road, deceitfully detained by a benevolent gentleman and within a few days brought back, Borrow himself being horsed on the back of James Martineau, according to the picturesque legend, for such a thrashing that he had to lie in bed a fortnight and must bear the marks of it while he was flesh and blood. Borrow celebrated this escapade by a ballad in dialogue called “The Wandering Children and the Benevolent Gentleman. An Idyll of the Roads.” [{13a}] There may have been another escapade of the same kind, for Dr Knapp [{13b}] prints an account of how Borrow, at the age of fifteen, and two schoolfellows lived for three days in a cave at Acle when they ought to have been at school. But his companions were the same in both stories, and “three days in a cave” is a very modest increase for such a story in half-a-century. It was only fifteen years later that Borrow took revenge upon the truth and told the story of his exile with the Gypsies.
Probably every man has more or less clearly and more or less constantly before his mind’s eye an ideal self which
the real seldom more than approaches. This ideal self may be morally or in other ways inferior, but it remains the standard by which the man judges his acts. Some men prove the existence of this ideal self by announcing now and then that they are misunderstood. Or they do things which they afterwards condemn as irrelevant or uncharacteristic and out of harmony. Borrow had an ideal self very clearly before him when he was writing, and it is probable that in writing he often described not what he was but what in a better, larger, freer, more Borrovian world he would have actually become. He admired the work of his Creator, but he would not affect to be satisfied with it in every detail, and stepping forward he snatched the brush and made a bolder line and braver colour. Also he ardently desired to do more than he ever did. When in Spain he wrote to his friend Hasfeldt at St. Petersburg, telling him that he wished to visit China by way of Russia or Constantinople and Armenia. When indignant with the Bible Society in 1838 he suggested retiring to “the Wilds of Tartary or the Zigani camps of Siberia.” He continued to suggest China even after his engagement to Mrs. Clarke.
Just as he played up to the Secretary in conversation, so he played up to the friends and the public who were allured by the stories left untold or half-told in “The Zincali” and “The Bible in Spain.” Chief among his encouragers was Richard Ford, author (in 1845) of the “Handbook for Travellers in Spain and Readers at Home,” a man of character and style, learned and a traveller. In 1841, before “The Bible in Spain” appeared, Ford told Borrow how he wished that he had told more about himself, and how he was going to hint in a review that Borrow ought to publish the whole of his adventures for the last twenty years. The publisher’s reader, who saw the manuscript of “The Bible in Spain” in 1842, suggested that
Borrow should prefix a short account of his birth, parentage, education and life. But already Borrow had taken Ford’s hint and was thinking of an autobiography. By the end of 1842 he was suggesting a book on his early life, studies and adventures, Gypsies, boxers, philosophers; and he afterwards announced that “Lavengro” was planned and the characters sketched in 1842 and 1843. He saw himself as a public figure that had to be treated heroically. Read, for example, his preface to the second edition of “The Zincali,” dated March 1, 1843. There he tells of his astonishment at the success of “The Zincali,” and of John Murray bidding him not to think too much of the book but to try again and avoid “Gypsy poetry, dry laws, and compilations from dull Spanish authors.”
“Borromeo,” he makes Murray say to him, “Borromeo, don’t believe all you hear, nor think that you have accomplished anything so very extraordinary. . . .”
And so, he says, he sat down and began “The Bible in Spain.” He proceeds to make a picture of himself amidst a landscape by some raving Titanic painter’s hand:
“At first,” he says, “I proceeded slowly,—sickness was in the land and the face of nature was overcast,—heavy rain-clouds swam in the heavens,—the blast howled amid the pines which nearly surround my lonely dwelling, and the waters of the lake which lies before it, so quiet in general and tranquil, were fearfully agitated. ‘Bring lights hither, O Hayim Ben Attar, son of the miracle!’ And the Jew of Fez brought in the lights, for though it was midday I could scarcely see in the little room where I was writing. . . .