CHAPTER XX
DECEMBER 1839–MAY 1840
It was probably about this time (1839) that
“The Marqués de Santa Coloma met Borrow again at Seville. He had great difficulty in finding him out; though he was aware of the street in which he resided, no one knew him by name. At last, by dint of inquiry and description, some one exclaimed, ‘Oh! you mean el Brujo’ (the wizard), and he was directed to the house. He was admitted with great caution, and conducted through a lot of passages and stairs, till at last he was ushered into a handsomely furnished apartment in the ‘mirador,’ where Borrow was living with his wife and daughter. . . It is evident . . . that, to his Spanish friends at least, he thus called Mrs Clarke and her daughter Henrietta his wife and daughter: and the Marqués de Santa Coloma evidently believed that the young lady was Borrow’s own daughter, and not his step-daughter merely (!). At the time the roads from Seville to Madrid were very unsafe. Santa Coloma wished Borrow to join his party, who were going well armed. Borrow said he would be safe with his Gypsies. Both arrived without accident in Madrid; the Marqués’s party first. Borrow, on his arrival, told Santa Coloma that his Gypsy chief had led him by by-paths and mountains; that they had not slept in a village, nor seen a town the whole way.” [316]
It must be confessed that Mr Webster was none too reliable a witness, and it seems highly improbable that Borrow would wish to pass Mrs Clarke off as his wife before their marriage. The fact of their occupying the same house may have seemed to their Spanish friends compromising, as it unquestionably was; but had he spoken of Mrs Clarke as his wife, it would have left her not a vestige of reputation.
On arriving at Madrid Borrow found that Lord Clarendon’s successor, Mr Arthur Aston, had not yet arrived, he therefore presented his complaint to the Chargé d’Affaires, the Hon. G. S. S. Jerningham, who had succeeded Mr Sothern as private secretary. Mr Sothern had not yet left Madrid to take up his new post as First Secretary at Lisbon, and therefore presented Borrow to Mr Jerningham, by whom he was received with great kindness. He assured Mr Jerningham that for some time past he had given up distributing the Scriptures in Spain, and he merely claimed the privileges of a British subject and the protection of his Government. The First Secretary took up the case immediately, forwarding Borrow’s letter to Don Perez de Castro with a request for “proper steps to be taken, should Mr Borrow’s complaint . . . be considered by His Excellency as properly founded.” Borrow himself was doubtful as to whether he would obtain justice, “for I have against me,” he wrote to Mr Brandram (24th December), “the Canons of Seville; and all the arts of villany which they are so accustomed to practise will of course be used against me for the purpose of screening the ruffian who is their instrument. . . . I have been, my dear Sir, fighting with wild beasts.”
The rather quaint reply to Borrow’s charges was not forthcoming until he had left Spain and was living at Oulton. It runs: [317]
Madrid, 11th May 1840.
Sir,
Under date of 20th December last, Mr Perez de Castro informed Mr Jerningham that in order to answer satisfactorily his note of 8th December re complaint made by Borrow, he required a faithful report to be made. These have been stated by the Municipality of Seville to the Civil Governor of that City, and are as follows:—
“When Borrow meant to undertake his journey to Cadiz towards the end of last year, he applied to the section of public security for his Passport, for which purpose he ought to deliver his paper of residence which was given to him when he arrived at Seville. That paper he had not presented in its proper time to the Alcalde of his district, on which account this person had not been acquainted as he ought with his residence in the district, and as his Passport could not be issued in consequence of this document not being in order, Borrow addressed, through the medium of a Servant, to the house of the said district Alcalde that the defect might be remedied. That functionary refused to do so, founded on the reasons already stated; and for the purpose of overcoming his resistance he was offered a gratification, the Servant with that intent presenting half a dollar. The Alcalde, justly indignant, left his house to make the necessary complaint respecting their indecorous action when he met Borrow, who, surprised at the refusal of the Alcalde, expressed to him his astonishment, addressing insulting expressions not only against his person but against the authorities of Spain, who, he said, he was sure were to be bought at a very small price—crying on after this, Long live the Constitution, Death to the Religion, and Long live England. These and other insults gave rise to the Alcalde proceeding to his arrest and the assistance of the armed force of Veterans, and not of the National Militia, as Borrow supposed, making a detailed report to the Constitutional Alcalde, who forwarded it original to the Captain General of the Province as Judge Protector of Foreigners, leaving him under detention at his disposition. He did the same with another report transmitted by the said functionary, in which reference to a Lady who lived at the Gate of Xerez; he denounced Borrow as a seducer of youth in matters of Religion by facilitating to them the perusal of prohibited books, of which a copy, that was in the hands of the Ecclesiastical Governor, was likewise transmitted to the Captain General. These antecedents were sufficient to have authorised a summary to have been formed against Borrow, but the repeated supplications of the British Vice-Consul, Mr Williams, who among other things stated that Borrow laboured under fits of madness, had the effect of causing the above Constitutional Alcalde to forgive him the fault committed and recommend to the Captain General that the matter should be dropped, which was acceded to, and he was put at liberty. The above facts, official proofs of which exist in the Captain General’s Office, clearly disprove the statement of Borrow, who ungrateful for the generous hospitality which he has received, and for the consideration displayed towards him on account of his infirmity, and out of deference to the request of the British Vice-Consul, makes an unfounded complaint against the very authorities who have used attentions towards him which he is certainly not deserving; it being worthy of remark, in order to prove the bad faith of his procedure, that in his own exposé, although he disfigures facts at pleasure, using a language little decorous, he confesses part of his faults, such as the offering of money to pay, as he says, ‘the legal or extra-legal dues that might be exacted, and his having twice challenged the Alcalde.’
“I should consider myself wanting towards your enlightened sense of justice if, after the reasons given, I stopped to prove the just and prudent conduct of Seville authorities.
“Hope he will therefore be completely satisfied, especially after the want of exactitude on Borrow’s part.
From
Evaristo Perez De Castro.”
To Mr Aston. [319]
And so the matter ended. The Spanish authorities knew that they no longer had a Sir George Villiers to deal with, and had recourse to that trump card of weak and vacillating diplomatists—delay. Whatever Borrow’s offence, the method of his arrest and imprisonment was in itself unlawful.
It was Borrow’s intention on his return to England to endeavour to obtain an interview with some members of the House of Lords, in order to acquaint them with the manner in which Protestants were persecuted in Spain. They were debarred from the exercise of their religion from being married by Protestant rites, and the common privileges of burial were denied them. He was anxious for Protestant England, lest it should fall a victim to Popery. This fear of Rome was a very real one to Borrow. He marvelled at people’s blindness to the danger that was threatening them, and he even went so far as to entreat his friends at Earl Street “to drop all petty dissensions and to comport themselves like brothers” against their common enemy the Pope.
Unfortunately Borrow had shown to a number of friends one of his letters to Mr Brandram dealing with the Seville imprisonment, and had even allowed several copies of it to be taken “in order that an incorrect account of the affair might not get abroad.” The result was an article in a London newspaper containing remarks to the disparagement of other workers for the Gospel in Spain. Borrow disavowed all knowledge of these observations.