beams of the morning sun shining full on her noble face and figure.’ It seems probable that this fair, which took the party about two hours to reach, was the Tamworth horse and cattle fair held on July 26.
Again, Borrow tells us that ‘a young moon gave a feeble light,’ as he mounted the coach to Amesbury, and on May 24 the moon was in its first quarter. [0h] The planet Jupiter, too, he could have seen after 10 p.m. on June 3, but his reference to the position of Ursus Major on the evening of his talk with Ursula is less satisfactory. ‘On arriving at the mouth of the dingle, which fronted the east, I perceived,’ says Borrow, ‘that Charles’s Wain was nearly opposite to it high above in the heavens, by which I knew that the night was tolerably well advanced.’ But on July 24, as I learn, Charles’s Wain was in the N.W., and at midnight or 1 a.m. lay nearly due north, and as low down in the sky as it could be. This, however, is perhaps to consider too closely. Indeed, the general accuracy of this part of Borrow’s story renders it probable that it was expanded from a brief diary kept at the time.
It will be seen that the dates thus arrived at differ from those of Borrow’s biographer. According to Professor Knapp, [0i] Borrow visits Greenwich Fair on May 12, 1825, writes ‘Joseph Sell’ May 13 to 18, and disposes of the MS. on the 20th; leaves London on the 22nd, reaches Amesbury on the 23rd; leaves Salisbury May 26, and meets author (man who touches) May 30. On May 31 he buys Slingsby’s pony, is in dingle June 1, visited by Leonora on the 5th, and drugged by Mrs. Herne on the 8th. He passes Sunday, June 12, and the following week with Peter Williams and his wife, on the 21st he sees
them to the border, turns back with Petulengro and settles in Mumpers’ Dingle. His fight with the Flaming Tinman, Professor Knapp tells us, must have occurred about the end of June. The Professor’s chronology, however, seems to me derived from a calculation—not in itself over-exact [0j]—based upon the erroneous idea that the fair took place on May 12. [0k] This is traceable to a statement in Thorpe [0l] that ‘the fair lasted as a “hog” and pleasure fair, and was held on May 12 and October 11, till 1872’; but Thorpe here refers to a later period, and there is no doubt that in 1825 the Greenwich Fair was held on Whit-Monday, May 23.
Not the least interesting corollary from this correction is the discovery that ‘that extraordinary work,’ the ‘Life of Joseph Sell,’ was never written. To me Borrow’s insistent iteration of the bare statement that he wrote such a book is in itself suspicious, and it is not a little strange that a work for which ‘during the last few months (before August, 1825) there has been a prodigious demand’[0m] should have entirely disappeared from the face of the earth. The name ‘Sell,’ which in some curious fashion seems to carry conviction to Professor Knapp’s mind, [0n] seems to me a singularly inauspicious one, especially
when coming from a writer who, like Pakomovna, was ‘born not far from the sign of the gammon,’ and who boasts in his appendix of having inserted deliberate misstatements in his books in order to deceive and mislead his critics. [0o] But why should Borrow pretend to have written this book? Chiefly, I think, to emphasize that independence of character of which he so frequently boasts, and which, after his marriage fifteen years later to a well-to-do widow, he is perhaps a little apt to antedate. [0p] However Borrow obtained the money which enabled him to leave London, it is plain that it was not by writing ‘Joseph Sell’ at the time and in the manner described. If he were in as desperate circumstances as he represents, he probably accepted Mr. Petulengro’s offer, [0q] unless we are to suppose that he imitated the methods of Jerry Abershaw, Galloping Dick, or some of the ‘fraternity of vagabonds’ whose lives Borrow had chronicled in his ‘Celebrated Trials.’
Borrow’s narrative after his arrival at Stafford becomes
dull, shadowy, and unconvincing—a strong argument against its truth; for while Borrow easily lived the life romantic, he seems to have lacked the power to imagine it. He describes himself as accepting a somewhat nondescript office at the posting-inn on the Great North Road, where he remains for an undefined but considerable period, and meets again with Francis Ardrey and the Rev. Mr. Platitude. On leaving the inn he refuses to accept the landlord’s offer of an honorarium of £10, and sets off with his horse to Horncastle Fair. He meets with an accident a day’s journey from his destination, which confines him for eight days in the house of the old man who could read Chinese crockery, but could not tell what was o’clock. Ultimately he reaches Horncastle before the end of the fair, sells his horse to Jack Dale the jockey, and journeys towards Norwich, where we part with him at Spalding.
These statements are mutually irreconcilable. Horncastle Fair was held from August 10 (the Feast of St. Lawrence) to August 21, and had ‘just begun’ on the day following his accident; but, as his journey lasted six days, this leaves no time at all for his experiences at the inn, where he must have stopped for some weeks, and apparently a much longer period, as ‘a kind of overlooker in the stables.’ If, on the other hand, we allow even a fortnight for his stop at the inn, for which £10 would be handsome payment, then he could not have arrived at Horncastle before the end of the fair. Which part of his story, if any, are we to accept?
The Stafford story is decidedly weak. Borrow, being no fool, would not have journeyed north for two days on his road to Horncastle, nor would Ardrey have taken coach to Stafford en route for a lion fight at Warwick, which had taken place several days before. Mr. Platitude’s reappearance is extremely artificial, and the ostler’s