CHAPTER XXIII
MARCH 1844–1848
In March 1844 Borrow, unable longer to control the Wanderlust within him, gave up the struggle, and determined to make a journey to the East. He was in London on the 20th, as Lady Eastlake (then Miss Elizabeth Rigby) testifies in her Journal. “Borrow came in the evening,” she writes: “now a fine man, but a most disagreeable one; a kind of character that would be most dangerous in rebellious times—one that would suffer or persecute to the utmost. His face is expressive of wrong-headed determination.” [361]
He left London towards the end of April for Paris, from which he wrote to John Murray, 1st May:—
“Vidocq wishes very much to have a copy of my Gypsies of Spain, and likewise one of the Romany Gospels. On the other side you will find an order on the Bible Society for the latter, and perhaps you will be so kind as to let one of your people go to Earl Street to procure it. You would oblige me by forwarding it to your agent in Paris, the address is Monsr. Vidocq, Galerie Vivienne, No. 13 . . . V. is a strange fellow, and amongst other things dabbles in literature. He is meditating a work upon Les Bohemiens, about whom I see he knows nothing at all. I have no doubt that the Zincali, were it to fall into his hands, would be preciously gutted, and the best part of the contents pirated. By the way, could you not persuade some of the French publishers to cause it to be translated, in which event there would be no fear. Such a work would be sure to sell. I wish Vidocq to have a copy of the book, but I confess I have my suspicions; he is so extraordinarily civil.”
From Paris he proceeded to Vienna, and thence into Hungary and Transylvania, where he remained for some months. He is known to have been “in the steppe of Debreczin,” [362a] to Koloszvar, through Nagy-Szeben, or Hermannstadt, on his journey through Roumania to Bucharest. He visited Wallachia “for the express purpose of discoursing with the Gypsies, many of whom I found wandering about.” [362b]
So little is known of Borrow’s Eastern Journey that the following account, given by an American, has a peculiar interest:—
“My companions, as we rode along, related some marvellous stories of a certain English traveller who had been here [near Grosswardein] and of his influence over the Gypsies. One of them said that he was walking out with him one day, when they met a poor gypsy woman. The Englishman addressed her in Hungarian, and she answered in the usual disdainful way. He changed his language, however, and spoke a word or two in an unknown tongue. The woman’s face lighted up in an instant, and she replied in the most passionate, eager way, and after some conversation dragged him away almost with her. After this the English gentleman visited a number of their most private gatherings and was received everywhere as one of them. He did more good among them, all said, than all the laws over them, or the benevolent efforts for them, of the last half century. They described his appearance—his tall, lank, muscular form, and mentioned that he had been much in Spain, and I saw that it must be that most ubiquitous of travellers, Mr Borrow.” [362c]
This was the fame most congenial to Borrow’s strange nature. Dinners, receptions, and the like caused him to despise those who found pleasure in such “crazy admiration for what they called gentility.” It was his foible, as much as “gentility nonsense” was theirs, to find pleasure in the rôle of the mysterious stranger, who by a word could change a disdainful gypsy into a fawning, awe-stricken slave. Fame to satisfy George Borrow must carry with it something of the greatness of Olympus.
A glimpse of Borrow during his Eastern tour is obtained from Mrs Borrow’s letters to John Murray. After telling him that she possesses a privilege which many wives do not (viz.), permission to open her Husband’s letters during his absence, she proceeds:—
“The accounts from him are, I am thankful to say, very satisfactory. It is extraordinary with what marks of kindness even Catholics of distinction treat him when they know who he is, but it is clearly his gift of tongues which causes him to meet with so many adventures, several of which he has recorded of a most singular nature.” [363]