Elizabeth Harvey also tells how, when a cousin of hers was staying at Cromer, the landlady went to her one day and said, “O, Miss, there’s such a curious gentleman been. I don’t know what to think of him, I asked him what he would like for dinner, and he said, ‘Give me a piece of flesh.’” “What sort of gentleman was it?” enquired the cousin, and on hearing the description recognised George Borrow, and explained that the strange visitor merely wanted a rump-steak, a favourite dish with him.
As he did not shoot or hunt, he obtained exercise either by riding or walking. At times “he suffered from sleeplessness, when he would get up and walk to Norwich (25 miles) and return the next night recovered” [333a] yet Borrow has said that “he always had the health of an elephant.”
He was proud of the Church and took great pleasure in showing to his friends the brasses it contained, including one bearing an effigy of Sir John Fastolf, whom he considered to be the original of Falstaff. He was also “very fond of his trees. He quite fretted if by some mischance he lost one.” [333b]
His methods with the country people round Oulton were calculated to earn for him a reputation for queerness. “Curiosity is the leading feature of my character” [333c] he confessed, and the East Anglian looks upon curiosity in others with marked suspicion. It was impossible for Borrow to walk far without getting into conversation with someone or other. He delighted in getting people to tell their histories and experiences; “when they used some word peculiar to Norfolk (or Suffolk) country men, he would say ‘Why, that’s a Danish word.’ By and bye the man would use another peculiar expression, ‘Why, that’s Saxon’; a little further on another, ‘Why, that’s French.’ And he would add, ‘Why, what a wonderful man you are to speak so many languages.’ One man got very angry, but Mr Borrow was quite unconscious that he had given any offence.” [334a]
He took pleasure in puzzling people about languages. Elizabeth Harvey tells [334b] how he once put a book before her telling her to read it, and on her saying she could not, he replied, “You ought; it’s your own language.” The volume was written in Saxon. Yet for all this he hated to hear foreign words introduced into conversation. When he heard such adulterations of the English language he would exclaim jocosely, “What’s that, trying to come over me with strange languages?” [334c]
Borrow’s first thoughts on settling down were of literature. He had material for several books, as he had informed Mr Brandram. Putting aside, at least for the present, the translations of the ballads and songs, he devoted himself to preparing for the press a book upon the Spanish Gypsies. During the five years spent in Spain he had gathered together much material. He had made notes in queer places under strange and curious conditions, “in moments snatched from more important pursuits—chiefly in ventas and posadás” [334d]—whilst engaged in distributing the Gospel. It was a book of facts that he meant to write, not theories, and if he sometimes fostered error, it was because at the moment it was his conception of truth. Very little remained to do to the manuscript. Mrs. Borrow had performed her share of the work in making a fair copy for the printer. Borrow’s subsequent remark that the manuscript “was written by a country amanuensis and probably contains many ridiculous errata,” was scarcely gracious to the wife, who seems to have comprehended so well the first principle of wifely duty to an illustrious and, it must be admitted, autocratic genius—viz., self-extinction.
“No man could endure a clever wife,” Borrow once confided to the unsympathetic ear of Frances Power Cobbe; but he had married one nevertheless. No woman whose cleverness had not reached the point of inspiration could have lived in intimate association with so capricious and masterful a man as George Borrow. John Hasfeldt, in sending his congratulations, had seemed to suggest that Borrow was one of those abstruse works of nature that require close and constant study. “When your wife thoroughly knows you,” he wrote, “she will smooth the wrinkles on your brow and you will be so cheerful and happy that your grey hair will turn black again.”
“In November 1840 a tall athletic gentleman in black called upon Mr Murray, offering a manuscript for perusal and publication.” [335a] Fifteen years before, the same “tall athletic gentleman” had called a dozen times at 50a Albemarle Street with translations of Northern and Welsh ballads, but “never could see Glorious John.” Borrow had determined to make another attempt to see John Murray, and this time he was successful. He submitted the manuscript of The Zincali, which Murray sent to Richard Ford [335b] that he might pronounce upon it and its possibilities. “I have made acquaintance,” Ford wrote to H. U. Addington, 14th Jan. 1841, “with an extraordinary fellow, George Borrow, who went out to Spain to convert the gypsies. He is about to publish his failure, and a curious book it will be. It was submitted to my perusal by the hesitating Murray.” [335c] On Ford’s advice the book was accepted for publication, it being arranged that author and publisher should share the profits equally between them.
On 17th April 1841 there appeared in two volumes The Zincali; [336a] or, An Account of the Gypsies in Spain. With an original Collection of their Songs and Poetry, and a copious Dictionary of their Language. By George Borrow, late Agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society in Spain. It was dedicated to the Earl of Clarendon, G.C.B. (Sir George Villiers), in “remembrance of the many obligations under which your Lordship has placed me, by your energetic and effectual interference in time of need.” The first edition of 750 copies sufficed to meet the demand of two years. Ford, however, wrote to Murray: “The book has created a great sensation far and wide. I was sure it would, and I hope you think that when I read the MS. my opinion and advice were sound.” [336b]
