It is not unnatural that those who remembered Borrow as one of William Taylor’s “harum-scarum” young men, who at one time intended to “abuse religion and get prosecuted,” should find in his appointment as an agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society a subject for derisive mirth. Harriet Martineau’s voice was heard well above the rest. “When this polyglott gentleman appeared before the public as a devout agent of the Bible Society in foreign parts,” she wrote, “there was one burst of laughter from all who remembered the old Norwich days.” [105] Like hundreds of other men, Borrow had, in youth, been led to somewhat hasty and ill-considered conclusions; but this in itself does not seem to be sufficiently strong reason why he should not change his views. Many young men pass through an aggressively irreligious phase without suffering much harm. Harriet Martineau was rather too precipitate in assuming that what a man believes, or disbelieves, at twenty, he holds to at thirty; such a view negatives the reformer. Perhaps the chief cause of the change in Borrow’s views was that he had touched the depths of failure. Here was an opening that promised much. He was a diplomatist when it suited his purpose, and if the old poison were not quite gone out of his system, he would hide his wounds, or allow the secretaries to bandage them with mild reproof.
Very different from the attitude of Harriet Martineau was that of John Venning, an English merchant resident at Norwich and recently returned from St Petersburg, where his charity and probity had placed him in high favour with the Emperor and the Goverment officials. Mr Venning gave Borrow letters of introduction to a number of influential personages at St Petersburg, including Prince Alexander Galitzin and Baron Schilling de Canstadt. Dr Bowring obtained a letter from Lord Palmerston to someone whose name is not known. There were letters of introduction from other hands, so that when he was ready to sail Borrow found himself “loaded with letters of recommendation to some of the first people in Russia. Mr Venning’s packet has arrived with letters to several of the Princes, so that I shall be protected if I am seized as a spy; for the Emperor is particularly cautious as to the foreigners whom he admits. It costs £2, 7s. 6d. merely for permission to go to Russia, which alone is enough to deter most people.” [106]
Before leaving England, Borrow paid into his mother’s account at her bank the sum of seventeen pounds, an amount that she had advanced to him either during his unproductive years, or on account of his expenses in connection with the expedition to St Petersburg.
CHAPTER VII
AUGUST 1833–JANUARY 1834
On 19th/31st July 1833 Borrow set out on a journey that was to some extent to realise his ambitions. He was to be trusted and encouraged and, what was most important of all, praised for what he accomplished; for Borrow’s was a nature that responded best to the praise and entire confidence of those for whom he worked.
Travelling second class for reasons of economy, he landed at Hamburg at seven in the morning of the fourth day, after having experienced “a disagreeable passage of three days, in which I suffered much from sea-sickness.” [107a] Exhausted by these days of suffering and want of sleep, the heat of the sun brought on “a transient fit of delirium,” [107b] in other words, an attack of the “Horrors.” Two fellow-passengers (Jews), with whom he had become acquainted, conveyed him to a comfortable hotel, where he was visited by a physician, who administered forty drops of laudanum, caused his head to be swathed in wet towels, ordered him to bed, and charged a fee of seven shillings. The result was that by the evening he had quite recovered.
One of Borrow’s first duties was to write a lengthy letter to Mr Jowett, telling him of his movements, describing the city, the service at a church he attended, the lax morality of the Hamburgers in permitting rope-dancers in the park, and the opening of dancing-saloons, “most infamous places,” on the Lord’s day. “England, with all her faults,” he proceeds, “has still some regard to decency, and will not tolerate such a shameless display of vice on so sacred a season, when a decent cheerfulness is the freest form in which the mind or countenance ought to invest themselves.” In conclusion, he announced his intention of leaving for Lübeck on the sixth, [108a] and he would be on the Baltic two days later en route for St Petersburg. “My next letter, provided it pleases the Almighty to vouchsafe me a happy arrival, will be from the Russian capital.” By “a fervent request that you will not forget me in your prayers,” he demonstrated that Mr Jowett’s hint had not been forgotten.
The distance between Hamburg and Lübeck is only about thirty miles, yet it occupied Borrow thirteen hours, so abominable was the road, which “was paved at intervals with huge masses of unhewn rock, and over this pavement the carriage was very prudently driven at a snail’s pace; for, had anything approaching speed been attempted, the entire demolition of the wheels in a few minutes must have been the necessary result. No sooner had we quitted this terrible pavement than we sank to our axle-trees in sand, mud, and water; for, to render the journey perfectly delectable, the rain fell in torrents and ceaselessly.” [108b] The state of the road Borrow attributed to the ill-nature of the King of Denmark, for immediately on leaving his dominions it improved into an excellent carriageway.
On 28th July/9th August Borrow took steamer from Travemünde, and three days later landed at St Petersburg. His first duty was to call upon Mr Swan, whom he found “one of the most amiable and interesting characters” he had ever met. The arrival of a coadjutor caused Mr Swan considerable relief, as he had suffered in health in consequence of his uninterrupted labours in transcribing the Manchu manuscript.
Borrow was enthusiastic in his admiration of the capital of “our dear and glorious Russia.” St Petersburg he considered “the finest city in the world” [109] other European capitals were unworthy of comparison. The enormous palaces, the long, straight streets, the grandeur of the public buildings, the noble Neva that flows majestically through “this Queen of the cities,” the three miles long Nevsky Prospect, paved with wood; all aroused in him enthusiasm and admiration. “In a word,” he wrote to his mother, “I can do little else but look and wonder.” All that he had read and heard of the capital of All the Russias had failed to prepare him for this scene of splendour. The meeting and harmonious mixing of East and West early attracted his attention. The Oriental cultivation of a twelve-inch beard among the middle and lower classes, placed them in marked contrast with the moustached or clean-shaven patricians and foreigners. In short, Russia gripped hold of and warmed Borrow’s imagination. Here were new types, curious blendings of nationalities unthought of and strange to him, a mine of wealth to a man whose studies were never books, except when they helped him the better to understand men.