The Life of George Borrow

by Herbert George Jenkins

The writing of the Appendix had aroused in Borrow all his old enthusiasm, and he appears to have come to the determination to publish a number of works, including a veritable library of translations. At the end of The Romany Rye appeared a lengthy list of books in preparation. [438]

In August 1857 Borrow paid a second visit to Wales, walking “upwards of four hundred miles.” Starting from Laugharne in Carmarthenshire, he visited Tenby, Pembroke, Milford Haven, Haverford, St David’s, Fishguard, Newport, Cardigan, Lampeter; passing into Brecknockshire, he eventually reached Mortimer’s Cross in Hereford and thence to Shrewsbury. In October he was at Leighton, Donnington and Uppington, where he found traces of Gronwy Owen, the one-time curate and all-time poet.

Throughout his life Borrow had shown by every action and word written about her, the great love he bore his mother. When his wife wrote to her and he was too restless to do so himself, he would interpolate two or three lines to “My dear Mamma.” She was always in his thoughts, and he never wavered in his love for her and devotion to her comfort; whilst she looked upon him as only a mother so good and so tender could look upon a son who had become her “only hope.”

For many years of her life it had been ordained that this brave old lady should live alone. [439] In the middle of August 1858 the news reached Borrow that his mother had been taken suddenly ill. She was in her eighty-seventh year, and at such an age all illnesses are dangerous. Borrow hastened to Oulton, and arrived just in time to be with her at the last.

Thus on 16th August 1858, of “pulmonary congestion,” died Anne Borrow, who had followed her husband about with his regiment, and had reared and educated her two boys under circumstances of great disadvantage. She had lost one; but the other, her youngest born, whom she had so often shielded from his father’s reproaches, had been spared to her, and she had seen him famous. Upon her grave in Oulton Churchyard the son caused to be inscribed the words, “She was a good wife and a good mother,” than which no woman can ask more. [440a]

The death of his mother was a great shock to Borrow. “He felt the blow keenly,” Mrs Borrow wrote to John Murray, “and I advised a tour in Scotland to recruit his health and spirits.” Accordingly he went North early in October, leaving his wife and Henrietta at Great Yarmouth. He visited the Highlands, walking several hundred miles. Mull struck him as “a very wild country, perhaps the wildest in Europe.” Many of its place-names reminded him strongly of the Isle of Man. At the end of November he finished up the tour at Lerwick in Shetland, where he bought presents for his “loved ones,” having seen Greenock, Glasgow, Perth, Aberdeen, Inverness, Wick, Thurso among other places. His impressions were not altogether favourable to the Scotch. “A queerer country I never saw in all my life,” he wrote later . . . “a queerer set of people than the Scotch you would scarcely see in a summer’s day.” [440b]

In the following year (1859) an excursion was made to Ireland by Borrow and his family. Making Dublin his headquarters, where he left his wife and Henrietta comfortably settled, he tramped to Connemara and the Giant’s Causeway, the expedition being full of adventure and affording him “much pleasure,” in spite of the fact that he was “frequently wet to the skin, and indifferently lodged.”

Borrow had inherited from his mother some property at Mattishall Burgh, one and a half miles from his birth-place, consisting of some land, a thatched house and outbuildings, now demolished. This was let to a small-holder named Henry Hill. Borrow thought very highly of his tenant, and for hours together would tramp up and down beside him as he ploughed the land, asking questions, and hearing always something new from the amazing stores of nature knowledge that Henry Hill had acquired. This Norfolk worthy appears to have been possessed of a genius for many things. He was well versed in herbal lore, a self-taught ’cellist, playing each Sunday in the Congregational Chapel at Mattishall, and an equally self-taught watch-repairer; but his chief claim to fame was as a bee-keeper, local tradition crediting him with being the first man to keep bees under glass. He would solemnly state that his bees, whom he looked upon as friends, talked to him. On Sundays the country folk for miles round would walk over to Mattishall Burgh to see old Henry Hill’s bees, and hear him expound their lore. It was perforce Sunday, there was no other day for the Norfolk farm-labourer of that generation, who seemed always to live on the verge of starvation. Borrow himself expressed regret to Henry Hill that it had not been possible to add the education of the academy to that of the land. He saw that the combination would have produced an even more remarkable man.

In Norfolk all strangers are regarded with suspicion. Lifelong friendships are not contracted in a day. The East Anglian is shrewd, and requires to know something about those whom he admits to the sacred inner circle of his friendship. Borrow was well-known in the Mattishall district, and was looked upon with more than usual suspicion. He was unquestionably a strange man, in speech, in appearance, in habits. He could and would knock down any who offended him; but, worst of all, he was the intimate of gypsies, sat by their fires, spoke in their tongue. The population round about was entirely an agricultural one, and all united in hating the gypsies as their greatest enemies, because of their depredations. Add to this the fact that Borrow was a frequenter of public-houses, of which there were seven in the village, and was wont to boast that you could get at the true man only after he had been mellowed into speech by good English ale. Then he would open his heart and unburden his mind of all the accumulated knowledge that he possessed, and add something to the epic of the soil. Borrow’s overbearing manner made people shy of him. On one occasion he told John, the son and successor of Henry Hill, that he ought to be responsible for the debt of his half-brother; the debt, it may be mentioned, was to Borrow.

There is no better illustration of the suspicion with which Borrow was regarded locally, than an incident that occurred during one of his visits to Mattishall. He called upon John Hill at Church Farm to collect his rent. The evening was spent very agreeably. Borrow recited some of his ballads, quoted Scripture and languages, and sang a song. He was particularly interested on account of Mrs Hill being from London, where she knew many of his haunts. He remained the whole evening with the family and partook of their meal; but was allowed to go to one of the seven public-houses for a bed, although there were spare bedrooms in the house that he might have occupied. Such was the suspicion that Borrow’s habits created in the minds of his fellow East Anglians. [442]