Little remains to record. Some there are who remember Borrow’s tall figure in the streets of Norwich. The old city—“the Norwich I love”—seemed to draw him irresistibly from his hermitage. Nor is this to be wondered at; for all accounts I have seen, and heard also, of the Oulton domestic arrangements during the last few years of his life, agree that they were deplorable. Mr. Elwin told me that, after the death of Borrow’s wife, the home was not well looked after, and that Mr. Cooke (Murray’s cousin and partner) “told him with tears in his eyes how neglected the home was, and how the noble old man was broken up.” Miss Jay also informed me that “after Mrs. Borrow’s death Mrs. MacOubrey was wanting in tact to manage him and the affairs of the family, hence the gradual decline of household matters into the disorder and neglect referred to by visitors to Oulton in Borrow’s latter days.” No wonder the weary old Lav-engro was glad to revisit the scenes of his youth, and found it restful to spend much of his time in the Norfolk Hotel (which stood where the Hippodrome now is), talking with his friends, with a glass before him—“of course to pay for the seat,” remarks Dr. Knapp, with an apparent attempt at sarcasm. I know a gentleman in Norwich now who remembers Borrow’s visits to the Subscription Library opposite the Guildhall, and his adjournments to the “Norfolk” after asking my informant to join him in a glass of brandy and water.
Borrow’s death, July 26th, 1881, was very sudden. Left alone in the house, he was found dead when Dr. and Mrs. MacOubrey returned from a drive to Lowestoft. “It seems fitting,” says Mr. Jenkins, “that he should die alone”; but he justly adds, “whatever the facts, it was strange to leave so old and so infirm a man quite unattended.” Dr. Knapp affirms that Borrow “had earnestly requested
them not to go away, because he felt that he was in a dying state.” The corpse of the worn-out veteran was detained in Oulton from July 26th to August 4th—“by reason of the absence of a physician’s certificate,” says Dr. Knapp. Borrow was buried in Brompton Cemetery beside his wife.
At the time of his death Borrow was practically forgotten, and even first-rate handbooks omitted his name from their obituaries. The case is altered now, and the Borrow Celebration, of which this souvenir will be one memento, bears eloquent testimony to the fact.
Those who enter the Valley of Vision with George Borrow, those who come into touch with the glamour and witchery of him, will ever find a new light in life, and travel in new avenues of happiness. The present Celebration will bring fresh fame to Norwich, and no doubt will give an immense impulse to Borrovian sentiment in his beloved city. We are never likely to have another Borrow!
A FLOWER FROM BORROW’S GRAVE.
A simple flower with heart of gold,
What should’st thou know of mortal sorrow?
Though thou hadst grown in London mould,
Above the grave of mighty Borrow.
So firm the hold, thy creeping root,
So true thy purchase on the stone,
Thou there defiest the city soot,
The careless step, the heat of noon.
An emblem fair of Lavengro,
Thou art in all thy brave upbringing;
Obscure, he wandered to and fro,
Wrote joy on earth by faith upspringing.
Like thee he loved the windy heath;
He did not fear though storms might rave,
He dreaded not the earth beneath,
He chose his own, a London grave.