“In matters of taste you never are sure—
Your curry’s a poison, your tastelessness pure!”
Borrow’s sturdy forthrightness, his abhorrence of suave ambiguities and formal inanities, found vent in most vigorous and unmistakeable language; dogmatic obiter dicta came from his mouth or his pen like so many cudgel-thwacks. His nature was tense and intense, very excitable and subject to aberrant moods—and he was often the victim of a false ply, as the French would say. It cannot be gainsaid that his suspicions of society ways, and of ordinarily conventional literary men, often betrayed him into tactless discourtesies. It is needless to repeat the anecdotes in which he appears in an unfavourable light, some of them probably exaggerations, as, for instance, the well-known story of Borrow snubbing Thackeray, as told by Dr. Hake. Miss Jay, whose father was of the firm of Jay and Pilgrim, told me (November 22nd, 1893) that Borrow was loud in his denunciation of Thackeray’s meanness on a certain occasion, and she utterly refused to believe Dr. Hake’s version of the alleged boorishness at Hardwick Hall. Borrow was a man of many moods, and Miss Jay seems to have seen him only in his brighter hours: she described him to me as open-hearted and generous, always thought highly of good old ale, and liked Burgundy. “It puts fire into your veins,” he would say; if he poured out wine for anyone, he was angry if they did not drink it. But she never knew him to exceed, and, though she often saw him highly excited, never heard him swear. Very similar accounts appeared in the Eastern Daily Press, of October 1st, 1892, over the signature “E.H.”
Another friend of Borrow’s with whom I had many talks was the late Rev. Whitwell Elwin, at Booton Rectory. He was editor of the Quarterly Review (1854-60), and in 1857 had reviewed “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye” in excellent style, under the
heading “Roving Life in England.” Mr. Elwin and his wife were a most delightful couple, models of old-fashioned courtesy and heart-kindness. He knew Borrow well, and quite discredited the innuendoes and insinuations of many Norwich folk about him. It was a joke with the Murray circle that “big Borrow was second fiddle at his home, and there is ample testimony that his wife was a capable manager and looked after his affairs, literary as well as domestic.” Though Borrow boasted of his proficiency in the Norfolk dialect, Mr. Elwin told him that he had not cultivated it with his usual success. Mr. Elwin died January 1st, 1900, aged eighty-three.
Quite naturally old Mrs. Borrow grew lonely, and weary of the dilapidated house in Willow Lane, so she was removed to Oulton in September, 1849, and there she died August 16th, 1858. Under imperative orders from Dr. Hake, the Borrows left Oulton and got to Yarmouth, where they lived 1853-5 at John Sharman’s, 169, King Street; 1856-7 at 37, Camperdown Place; 1858-9 at 39, Camperdown Place; and finally, November, 1859, to June 30th, 1860, at 24, Trafalgar Place. These tarryings were, however, broken by many excursions—a most interesting one to his kinsfolk in Cornwall in 1853, to Wales in 1854, and the Isle of Man in 1855.
In 1860 Borrow, his wife, and step-daughter, Henrietta Clarke, took up their abode at 22, Hereford Square, Brompton, now distinguished by a County Council tablet. There Borrow remained fourteen years. From there, in 1865, his step-daughter, Henrietta, married Dr. MacOubrey, and then came the most crushing blow of all—the death of his wife, January 30th, 1869.
One is reminded of the epitaph which I have seen on Mrs. Carlyle’s tombstone, in Haddington cemetery, in which Carlyle records that the light of his life is gone out; so Borrow’s life was shadowed after his wife passed away—she who wrote his letters, staved off the “Horrors,” and conducted his financial affairs. Borrow stayed on at Hereford Square until towards the end of 1874. A meeting with C. G. Leland prompted him to issue his last book worth notice—“The Romano-Y-Lavo-Lil”; or Word Book of
the English Gypsy Language. This, in the light of the advance made in philology, and very notably in gypsy lore, proved conclusively that Borrow could now no longer be reckoned a “deep ’Gyptian,” though the impulse of his work undoubtedly stirred up many scholars to pursue the study of the Romany language. In his latter days in London he sometimes had pleasant intercourse with such kindred spirits as Mr. Watts-Dunton, Mr. Hindes Groome, and he was still robust enough at seventy to plunge into an ice-covered pond on a bitterly cold March morning. When he finally retired to his Oulton cottage, where a Mrs. Barbour was his housekeeper until Dr. and Mrs. MacOubrey joined him in 1878, he began to spend much of his time in Norwich. A life-long friend of his was Miss Lucy Brightwell, a prolific writer and most skilful etcher, who died at her house, No. 3, Surrey Street, April 17th, 1875. Here we must perforce quote Dr. Knapp: “Miss Brightwell was an intimate and constant visitor at the Willow Lane house from her early years. Old Mrs. Borrow mentions her in her letters as ‘the child’ and ‘Lucy,’ and the latter in her correspondence calls Mrs. Borrow ‘mother.’ . . . It was in the garden of Miss Brightwell’s house in Surrey Street, Norwich, that the only photograph existing of Mr. Borrow was taken by her brother ‘Tom’ in 1848. This picture is now so faded that it has defied all attempts to reproduce it in this book.” The fact is that Dr. Knapp was refused the use of the photograph, which was not taken by Tom Brightwell, but by Mr. Pulley, a solicitor, of the firm of Field, Son, & Pulley. This picture is now the property of Mrs. Simms Reeve, of Norwich and Brancaster Hall. Her own portrait as a girl is one of several separate figures framed together, Borrow occupying a place in the top row. Fortunately, by the courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. Simms Reeve, this interesting portrait of Borrow, when he was forty-five years of age, has now been reproduced, and it is, perhaps, the most valuable item in this souvenir, it also is lent by Mrs. Simms Reeve for the temporary collection of Borrow relics in Norwich Castle Museum. When he came to Norwich in these later days Borrow used to lodge at Mrs. Church’s, in Lady Lane, off Bethel Street,
known as Ivy House, and much frequented by theatrical people, now adapted to be a Dispensary. A grand-daughter of Borrow’s friend W. Bodham Donne wrote me, in 1902, that “Borrow once lodged at Ivy Cottage, Lady’s Lane, where a dear old Miss Donne was living.” From Lady Lane it is only a few hundred yards to the well-loved little house in Willow Lane, at which his father died, and where his mother lived till her removal to Oulton as stated above.