The Life of George Borrow

by Herbert George Jenkins

There is no episode in Borrow’s life that has so exercised the minds of commentators and critics as his account of the book he terms in Lavengro, The Life and Adventures of Joseph Sell, the Great Traveller. Some dismiss the whole story as apocryphal; others see in it a grain of truth distorted into something of vital importance; whilst there are a number of earnest Borrovians that accept the whole story as it is written. Dr Knapp has said that Joseph Sell “was not a book at all, and the author of it never said that it was.” This was obviously an error, for the bookseller is credited with saying, “I think I shall venture on sending your book to the press,” [55a] referring to it as a “book” four times in nine lines. Again, in another place, Borrow describes how he rescued himself “from peculiarly miserable circumstances by writing a book, an original book, within a week, even as Johnson is said to have written his Rasselas and Beckford his Vathek.” [55b] This removes all question of the Life and Adventures of Joseph Sell being included in a collection of short stories. The title would not be the same, the date is most probably wrongly given, as in the case of Marshland Shales; but the general accuracy of the account as written seems to be highly probable. Many efforts have been made to trace the story; but so far unsuccessfully. It must be remembered that Borrow loved to stretch the long arm of coincidence; but he loved more than anything else a dramatic situation. He was always on the look out for effective “curtains.”

In favour of the story having been actually written, is the knowledge that Borrow invented little or nothing. Collateral evidence has shown how little he deviated from actual happenings, although he did not hesitate to revise dates or colour events. The strongest evidence, however, lies in the atmosphere of truth that pervades Chapters LV.–LVII. of Lavengro. They are convincing. At one time or another during his career, it would appear that Borrow wrote against time from grim necessity; otherwise he must have been a master of invention, which everything that is known about him clearly shows that he was not.

Joseph Sell has disappeared, a most careful search of the Registers at Stationers’ Hall can show no trace of that work, or any book that seems to suggest it, and the contemporary literary papers render no assistance.

According to Borrow’s own account, one morning on getting up he found that he had only half a crown in the world. It was this circumstance, coupled with the timely notice that he saw affixed to a bookseller’s window to the effect that “A Novel or Tale is much wanted,” that determined him to endeavour to emulate Dr Johnson and William Beckford. He had tired of “the Great City,” and his thoughts turned instinctively to the woods and the fields, where he could be free to meditate and muse in solitude.

When he returned to Milman Street after seeing the bookseller’s advertisement, he found that his resources had been still further reduced to eighteen-pence. He was too proud to write home for assistance, he had broken with Sir Richard Phillips, and he had no reasonable expectation of obtaining employment of any description; for his accomplishments found no place in the catalogue of everyday wants. He was a proper man with his hands, and knew some score or more languages. No matter how he regarded the situation, the facts were obvious. Between him and actual starvation there was the inconsiderable sum of eighteen-pence and the bookseller’s advertisement. The gravity of the situation banished the cloud of despondency that threatened to settle upon him, and also the doubts that presented themselves as to whether he possessed the requisite ability to produce what the bookseller required. The all-important question was, could he exist sufficiently long on eighteen-pence to complete a story? Sir Richard Phillips had told him to live on bread and water. He now did so.

For a week he wrote ceaselessly at the Life and Adventures of Joseph Sell, the Great Traveller. He wrote with the feverish energy of a man who sees the shadow of actual starvation cast across his manuscript. When the tale was finished there remained the work of revision, and after that, worst of all, fears lest the bookseller were already suited.

Fortune, however, was kind to him, and he was successful in extracting for his story the sum of twenty pounds. Borrow had not mixed among gypsies for nothing. He, a starving and unknown author, succeeded in extracting from a bookseller twenty pounds for a story, twice the amount offered by Sir Richard Phillips for a novel on the lines of The Dairyman’s Daughter. It was an achievement.

The first argument against the story, as related by Borrow, is that he was not without resources at the time. Why should he be so impoverished a few weeks after receiving payment for Celebrated Trials? [57] Above all, why did he not realise upon Simpkin & Marshall’s bill for Faustus? He would have experienced no difficulty in discounting a bill accepted by such a firm. It seems hardly conceivable that he should preserve this piece of paper when he had only eighteen-pence in the world. Everything seems to point to the fact that in May 1825 Borrow was not in want of money, and if he were not, why did he almost kill himself by writing the Life and Adventures of Joseph Sell? Again, at that period he had met with no adventures such as might be included in the life of a “Great Traveller,” and Borrow was not an inventive writer. Later he possessed plenty of material; for there can be no question that he roamed about the world for a considerable portion of those seven mysterious years of his life that came to be known as the “Veiled Period.” His accuracy as to actual occurrences has been so emphasised that this particular argument holds considerable significance.

The strongest evidence against Joseph Sell having been written in 1825, however, lies in the fact that Greenwich Fair was held on 23rd May, and not 12th May, as given by Dr Knapp. By his error Dr Knapp makes Borrow leave London a day before the Fair took place that he describes. Borrow must have left London on the day following Greenwich Fair (24th May). If he left later, then those things which tend to confirm his story of the life in the Dingle do not fit in, as will be seen. He certainly could not have left before Greenwich Fair was held.

In one of his brother John’s letters, written at the end of 1829, there is a significant passage, “Let me know how you sold your manuscript.” [58] What manuscript is it that is referred to? There is no record of George having sold a manuscript in the autumn of 1829. The passage can scarcely have reference to some article or translation; it seems to suggest something of importance, an event in George’s life that his brother is anxious to know more about. If this be Joseph Sell, then it explains where Borrow got the money from to go up to London at the end of 1829, when he entered into relations with Dr Bowring. It is merely a theory, it must be confessed; but there is certain evidence that seems to support it. In the first place, Borrow was a chronicler before all else. He possessed an amazing memory and a great gift for turning his experiences into literary material. If he coloured facts, he appears to have done so unconsciously, to judge from those portions of The Bible in Spain that were covered by letters to the Bible Society. Not only are the facts the same, but, with very slight changes, the words in which he relates them. He never hesitated to change a date if it served his purpose, much as an artist will change the position of a tree in a landscape to suit the exigencies of composition. His five volumes of autobiography bristle with coincidences so amazing that, if they were actually true, he must have been the most remarkable genius on record for attracting to himself strange adventures. He met the sailor son of the old Apple-Woman returning from his enforced exile; Murtagh tells him of how the postilion frightened the Pope at Rome by his denunciation, a story Borrow had already heard from the postilion himself; the Hungarian at Horncastle narrates how an Armenian once silenced a Moldavian, the same Moldavian whom Borrow had encountered in London; the postilion meets the man in black again. There are scores of such coincidences, which must be accepted as dramatic embellishments.