The Life of George Borrow

by Herbert George Jenkins

By the middle of May 1835 Borrow saw the end of his labours in sight. On 3rd/15th May he wrote asking for instructions relative to the despatch of the bulk of the volumes, and also as to the disposal of the type. “As for myself,” he continues, “I suppose I must return to England, as my task will be speedily completed. I hope the Society are convinced that I have served them faithfully, and that I have spared no labour to bring out the work, which they did me the honor of confiding to me, correctly and within as short a time as possible. At my return, if the Society think that I can still prove of utility to them, I shall be most happy to devote myself still to their service. I am a person full of faults and weaknesses, as I am every day reminded by bitter experience, but I am certain that my zeal and fidelity towards those who put confidence in me are not to be shaken.” [140]

On 15th/27th June he reported the printing completed and six out of the eight volumes bound, and that as soon as the remaining two volumes were ready, he intended to take his departure from St Petersburg; but a new difficulty arose. The East had laid a heavy hand upon St Petersburg. “To-morrow, please God!” met the energetic Westerner at every turn. The bookbinder delayed six weeks because he could not procure some paper he required. But the real obstacle to the despatch of the books was the non-arrival of the Government sanction to their shipment. Nothing was permitted to move either in or out of the sacred city of the Tsars without official permission. Probably those responsible for the administration of affairs had never in their experience been called upon to deal with a man such as Borrow. To apply to him the customary rules of procedure was to bring upon “the House of Interior Affairs” a series of visits and demands that must have left it limp with astonishment.

On 16th/28th July Borrow wrote to the Bible Society, “I herewith send you a bill of lading for six of the eight parts of the New Testament, which I have at last obtained permission to send away, after having paid sixteen visits to the House of Interior Affairs.” [141a] He expresses a hope that in another fortnight he will have despatched the remaining two volumes and have “bidden adieu to Russia”; but it was dangerous to anticipate the official course of events in Russia. Even to the last Borrow was tormented by red tape. Early in August the last two volumes were ready for shipment to England; but he could not obtain the necessary permission. He was told that he ought never to have printed the work, in spite of the license that had been granted, and that grave doubts existed in the official mind as to whether or no he really were an agent of the Bible Society. At length Borrow lost patience and told the officials that during the week following the books would be despatched, with or without permission, and he warned them to have a care how they acted. These strong measures seem to have produced the desired result.

Despite his many occupations on behalf of the Bible Society, Borrow found time in which to translate into Russian the first three Homilies of the Church of England, and into Manchu the Second. His desire was that the Homily Society should cause these translations to be printed, and in a letter to the Rev. Francis Cunningham he strove to enlist his interest in the project, offering the translations without fee to the Society if they chose to make use of them. [141b] As “a zealous, though most unworthy, member of the Anglican Church,” he found that his “cheeks glowed with shame at seeing dissenters, English and American, busily employed in circulating Tracts in the Russian tongue, whilst the members of the Church were following their secular concerns, almost regardless of things spiritual in respect to the Russian population.” [142a]

Borrow also translated into English “one of the sacred books of Boudh, or Fo,” from Baron Schilling de Canstadt’s library. The principal occupation of his leisure hours, however, was a collection of translations, which he had printed by Schultz & Beneze, and published (3rd/ 15th June 1835) under the title of Targum, or Metrical Translations from Thirty Languages and Dialects. [142b] In a prefatory note, the collection is referred to as “selections from a huge and undigested mass of translation, accumulated during several years devoted to philological pursuits.” Three months later he published another collection entitled The Talisman, From the Russian of Alexander Pushkin. With Other Pieces. [143a] There were seven poems in all, two after Pushkin, one from the Malo-Russian, one from Mickiewicz, and three “ancient Russian Songs.” Again the printers were Schultz & Beneze. Each of these editions appears to have been limited to one hundred copies. [143b]

Writing in the Athenæum, [143c] J. P. H[asfeldt] says:—“The work is a pearl in literature, and, like pearls, derives value from its scarcity, for the whole edition was limited to about a hundred copies.” W. B. Donne admired the translations immensely, considering “the language and rhythm as vastly superior to Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome.” [143d]

Whilst the last two volumes of the Manchu New Testament were waiting for paper (probably for end-papers), Borrow determined to pay a hurried visit to Moscow, “by far the most remarkable city it has ever been my fortune to see.” One of his principal objects in visiting the ancient capital of Russia was to see the gypsies, who flourished there as they flourished nowhere else in Europe. They numbered several thousands, and many of them inhabited large and handsome houses, drove in their carriages, and were “distinguishable from the genteel class of the Russians only . . . by superior personal advantages and mental accomplishments.” [143e] For this unusual state of prosperity the women were responsible, “having from time immemorial cultivated their vocal powers to such an extent that, although in the heart of a country in which the vocal art has arrived at greater perfection than in any other part of the world, the principal Gypsy choirs in Moscow are allowed by the general voice of the public to be unrivalled and to bear away the palm from all competitors. It is a fact notorious in Russia that the celebrated Catalani was so filled with admiration for the powers of voice displayed by one of the Gypsy songsters, who, after the former had sung before a splendid audience at Moscow, stepped forward and with an astonishing burst of melody ravished every ear, that she [Catalani] tore from her own shoulders a shawl of immense value which had been presented to her by the Pope, and embracing the Gypsy, compelled her to accept it, saying that it had been originally intended for the matchless singer, which she now discovered was not herself.” [144a]

These Russian gypsy singers lived luxurious lives and frequently married Russian gentry or even the nobility. It was only the successes, however, who achieved such distinction, and there were “a great number of low, vulgar, and profligate females who sing in taverns, or at the various gardens in the neighbourhood, and whose husbands and male connections subsist by horse-jobbing and such kinds of low traffic.” [144b]

One fine evening Borrow hired a calash and drove out to Marina Rotze, “a kind of sylvan garden,” about one and a half miles out of Moscow, where this particular class of Romanys resorted. “Upon my arriving there,” he writes, “the Gypsies swarmed out of their tents and from the little tracteer or tavern, and surrounded me. Standing on the seat of the calash, I addressed them in a loud voice in the dialect of the English Gypsies, with which I have some slight acquaintance. A scream of wonder instantly arose, and welcomes and greetings were poured forth in torrents of musical Romany, amongst which, however, the most pronounced cry was: ah kak mi toute karmuma [145a]—‘Oh how we love you’; for at first they supposed me to be one of their brothers, who, they said, were wandering about in Turkey, China, and other parts, and that I had come over the great pawnee, or water, to visit them.” [145b]

On several other occasions during his stay at Moscow, Borrow went out to Marina Rotze, to hold converse with the gypsies. He “spoke to them upon their sinful manner of living,” about Christianity and the advent of Christ, to which the gypsies listened with attention, but apparently not much profit. The promise that they would soon be able to obtain the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth in their own tongue interested them far more on account of the pleasurable strangeness of the idea, than from any anticipation that they might derive spiritual comfort from such writings.