These devices never succeed, except where their extravagance makes us laugh heartily—as when on Salisbury Plain he meets returning from Botany Bay the long lost son of his old London Bridge apple-woman. The devices are unnecessary and remain as stiffening stains upon a book that is otherwise full of nature and human nature.
CHAPTER XXV—“LAVENGRO” AND “THE ROMANY RYE”: THE CHARACTERS
As the atmosphere of the two autobiographical books is more intense and pure than that of “The Bible in Spain,” so the characters in it are more elaborate. “The Bible in Spain” contained brilliant sketches and suggestions of men and women. In the autobiography even the sketches are intimate, like that of the “Anglo-Germanist,” William Taylor; and they are not less surprising than the Spanish sketches, from the Rommany chal who “fought in the old Roman fashion. He bit, he kicked, and screamed like a wild cat of Benygant; casting foam from his mouth, and fire from his eyes”—from this man upwards and downwards. Some are highly finished, and these are not always the best. For example, the portrait of his father, the stiff, kindly, uncomprehending soldier, strikes me as a little too much “done to a turn.” It is a little too like a man in a book, and so perfectly consistent, except for that one picturesque weakness—the battle with Big Ben, whose skin was like a toad. Borrow probably saw and cared very little for his father, and therefore found it too easy to idealise and produce a mere type, chiefly out of his head. His mother is more certainly from life, and he could not detach himself from her sufficiently to make her clear; yet he makes her his own mother plainly enough. His brother has something of the same unreality and perfection as his father. These members of his family belong to one distinct class of studies which includes among others the
publisher, Sir Richard Phillips. They are of persons not quite of his world whom he presents to us with admiration, or, on the other hand, with dislike, but in either case without sympathy. They do not contribute much to the special character of the autobiography, except in humour. The interviews with Sir Richard Phillips, in particular, give an example of Borrow’s obviously personal satire, poisonous and yet without rancour. He is a type. He is the charlatan, holy and massive and not perfectly self-convincing. When Borrow’s money was running low and he asked the publisher to pay for some contributions to a magazine, now deceased:
“‘Sir,’ said the publisher, ‘what do you want the money for?’
“‘Merely to live on,’ I replied; ‘it is very difficult to live in this town without money.’
“‘How much money did you bring with you to town?’ demanded the publisher.
“‘Some twenty or thirty pounds,’ I replied.
“‘And you have spent it already?’
“‘No,’ said I, ‘not entirely; but it is fast disappearing.’