George Borrow / A Sermon Preached in Norwich Cathedral on July 6, 1913

by H. C. Beeching

Every reader of the Old Testament is familiar with the two great types which the early Israelitish civilisation sets before us again and again in Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Esau and Jacob—the contrast of the wild and vagabond hunter and the “plain man, dwelling in tents.” These types as they appear in the Bible have in them a characteristically Semitic element, but they have still more of our common humanity. We observe the two types among our

own children, and it is a contrast that interests us all. Our affections perhaps go out to the romantic Esau rather than to his business-like brother; while at the same time we recognise that the future of civilisation must lie not with the child of impulse, but with him who can forecast the future and rank something higher than his momentary whim. It was this fundamental contrast that was so interesting to Borrow. He studied it in the cities and in the wildernesses of this and many other lands; and because he studied it he was not content to accept the easy verdict of civilisation that finds nothing but profanity in Esau, or the equally easy paradox of a return-to-nature philosophy, which finds all virtue in the noble savage. Borrow studied Esau in his wandering life with interested eyes, and won his confidence and a glimpse of his secret; and he studied Jacob in his counting house and workshop with no less understanding, if with a less degree of sympathy; and then he exhibited to his countrymen an ideal which at the time vexed and disquieted them, because there were elements in it drawn from both.

Look first at those which he drew from his intercourse with the gipsies. He was puzzled by the problem of their wonderful persistence. What could be its cause? Their faults were proverbs. They lived by drawing fools into a circle and cheating them. Stealing and lying were first

principles in their code of life. And yet because Borrow held that Nature did not forgive faults, much less allow men to profit by them, he could not but ask whether those gipsies were so thoroughly vicious as was supposed. One day, in a conversation with a gipsy girl under a hedge—one of the strangest talks in the chronicle of literature—he elicited the fact that domestic honour was held among them to be a primary law, and female unchastity an unpardonable offence. And he left that conversation on record for our admonition. That, you will say, is no new ideal to English women. As an ideal, no. But our English practice is something very different. And we have lived to see literature challenge even the ideal.

And then there was the secret, an open one indeed, but hidden from many Englishmen of Borrow’s generation, though it had been recently proclaimed by the gentle and thoughtful poet who lay buried in Borrow’s native town of Dereham, that though civilisation arose from life in cities, yet the joy of life was apt to escape the city liver. The vagabond gipsy had something which man was the better for having, a delight in the sun and air and wind and rain. We in Norwich are not likely to forget those magical words put into the mouth of the gipsy on Mousehold Heath, “There’s night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet things; there’s likewise a wind on the heath. Life

is very sweet, brother.” Allied with this love of nature was a keen satisfaction in manly exercises, walking, riding, boxing, swimming, which Borrow contrasted somewhat scornfully with the baser sports of dog fighting and cock fighting, then in vogue among gentlemen. And as a consequence of this love of the open air and the open country Borrow found in the gipsies a sense of freedom and independence, and so a self-respect, which he compared unfavourably with the mingled arrogance and servility of many city-bred people.

Here then we have some of the elements of the ideal, largely drawn from the despised gipsies, which Borrow held up before his generation. He does not indeed promulgate it as the whole duty of man, though we who have learned the lesson may think he is apt to over-emphasise it. He does not ignore other qualities of manliness. He holds that from the root of a self-respecting freedom, if the environment be but favourable, as with the gipsies it was not, other manly qualities will spring. From the strength of self-respect should spring the courage of truthfulness, and justice, and tenderness, and perseverance. On the love of truth and justice I need not dwell; they are conspicuous in every page that Borrow wrote. Perseverance is still more emphasised, because it was the main contribution of Jacob to the human ideal, the quality most lacking in Esau. Tenderness may seem to be less evident;

and I know it is a common opinion that Borrow’s ideal of life was too self-absorbed to allow of much sympathy with others. I think this view is mistaken. There was undoubtedly a strong stress laid on the duty of protecting one’s own life and personality from outside influence, and a corresponding stress on the duty of respect for the independence of others; but where there was a claim, whether of blood, or friendship, or need, Borrow’s ideal admitted it to the full. I have wished to confine myself this morning to the ideal of conduct which Borrow offers us in his books, because it was a conscious and reasoned ideal, and he wrote to propagate it. The question how far he himself attained to his own standard we are right in passing by unless there was any conspicuous contrast between his theory and his practice. But there was no such contrast. So far as our information goes, Borrow lived by his ideal resolutely. His truthfulness and perseverance and love of justice cannot be questioned; and on the point of tenderness it is not those who knew him best—his mother, or his wife, or his friends—who have found him wanting.

Let me pass on to indicate how this ideal connected itself with religion. The fundamental dogma of Borrow’s religion was the providence of God. So far as I know, he did not formulate his notion of the purpose of the world; he accepted the view of St. Paul, that the creation is

moving to some “divine event”; and that within the great scheme there are numberless subservient ends which man is being urged by Divine admonition to fulfil. Such admonitions come to men in many ways; we speak of them as modes of inspiration; and even those who question the inspiration of prophets do not refuse the word in speaking of poets and musicians. Borrow did not question prophetic inspiration in the past, because he believed in it as a present fact. He believed that to the man who by prayer kept himself in touch with the Divine Spirit intimations were vouchsafed of the Divine will, which brought clear light into the dark places of life. He somewhat shocked the good but precise secretary of the Bible Society by declaring in a letter from Spain that he had been “very passionate in prayer during the last two or three days,” and in consequence, as he thought, saw his way “with considerable clearness”: on another occasion, by saying that he was “what the world calls exceedingly superstitious” because he had changed some plan in consequence of a dream; and again by saying, “My usual wonderful good fortune accompanied me.” For the last expression he apologised; but, whatever the particular expression used, there can be no doubt that Borrow was a firm believer in what our fathers called “particular providences,” “leadings of the Divine Spirit.” He believed, for example, that he was doing the will of God in circulating