George Borrow, the Man and His Work

by R. A. J. Walling

This is as far as Dr. Knapp has been able to trace the elusory course of the Wandering Jew of Literature. The theory that he acted as the travelling commissioner of a London newspaper finds no support. By 1827 he was back in Norwich, keeping his mother’s small household accounts, visiting the Tombland Fair to inspect “Marshland Shales,” the glorious chieftain of all the equine race, grubbing for booksellers, writing articles for newspapers. It was a mean and anxious way of life, abominable to Borrow, who hated poverty and was ashamed of it. Therein may be sought the real reason why he “veiled” these years of his life. His next appearance in the literary arena is in the distinguished company of Dr. John Bowring.

The Bowring episode in Borrow’s life is one of its most remarkable and least explicable features. Bowring seems to have been a good friend to Borrow for many years, to have engaged with him in literary collaboration, and to have exerted himself in various directions on his behalf. His reward, so far as Borrow’s works go, is a scurrilous sketch of himself in “Lavengro,” a long denunciation in the Appendix to “The Romany Rye,” and the bitter hatred of a man who knew how to hate as fiercely as he could love intensely. The whole story of their severance is obscure, but there can be little doubt that Borrow was entirely in the wrong, that the charges he made against Bowring of treachery and falsehood were baseless, and that of many people pilloried in Borrow’s books Bowring was among the least deserving such scurvy treatment. We have observed already the circumstances of the first meeting between Borrow and Bowring at Taylor’s house in Norwich. We shall see that Bowring came to his rescue when he was in the sorest straits, and was, in fact, doing much to help him during part of the “veiled period.”

It has been the writer’s fortune to secure [73] a series of letters from Borrow to Bowring, which throw much light upon his schemes and modes of life in the last three of those mysterious years between his return from the Continent and his engagement by the Bible Society. He did not remain long in Norwich. In 1829 he was in London, residing at No. 17, Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, and deeply employed about certain translations of Scandinavian poetry which were to form the basis of a new book on more elaborate lines than those of the “Romantic Ballads.” Bowring and Borrow had a plan for issuing in collaboration a collection of English versions, with interpretations, of those Northern poets whom a purblind public, not yet obsessed by the Scandinavian spirit in poetry and music, resolutely disregarded and despised. This was the “literary project” of which the world heard so much in the Appendix. The arrangements went so far that a prospectus of the work was put out. The title proposed was “The Songs of Scandinavia,” and the collection was to be published in two volumes octavo. The project remained a project, and the niche left by expectant librarians for the two octavo volumes was never filled. But in connection with the negotiations and arrangements between Borrow and Bowring a correspondence occurred which is full of interest and contains one or two characteristic bits of Borrovian humour. Incidentally, the letters, if taken in sequence, and read together with another one of the year 1842, show that, up to a time not far ante-dating the publication of “The Romany Rye,” with its gross attack on Bowring, the two men were on the best possible terms. Indeed, in 1842 Borrow speaks of his old collaborator as “my oldest, I may say my only, friend.” [75]

It were greatly to be wished that the sordid dispute with Bowring might be numbered among the delenda of Borrow’s history, but some mention of it will be necessary. Unhappily, no satisfactory explanation can be given which is at all flattering to Borrow. For these letters prove conclusively that he introduced into “Lavengro” and its sequel opinions about Bowring which he certainly did not hold at the time of which he was writing.

In 1829 their Scandinavian scheme was in the tideway. They had written and they had met for the discussion of their plans; Borrow had done a great deal of translation. He was exceedingly anxious that at any rate the first volume should appear at once; for, as he said in a letter written on the last day of the year, he was “terribly afraid of being forestalled in the Kiampe Viser by some of those Scotch blackguards, who affect to translate from all languages, of which they are fully as ignorant as Lockhart is of Spanish.” The italicised passage is underlined in Borrow’s letter; it is a curious foretaste of some of the choicer invective which he afterwards bestowed on Scott and the Scots, and of his disagreement with Lockhart. The preparations were hurried on with a view to the appearance of the first part of the book in February. The drafting of the prospectus was left to Borrow, and on January 8th (1830) he sent a copy to Bowring for his inspection, inviting “the correction of your master-hand.” He had, he said, “endeavoured to frame a Danish style,” but was not sure whether he had succeeded. “Alter, I pray you,” he exclaimed, “whatever false logic has crept into it, find a remedy for its incoherencies, and render it fit for its intended purpose.” There follows a delightful touch of egotism. He has, he explains, had a rising headache for two days, which has “almost” prevented him from doing anything. But, he adds with fine nonchalance, “I sat down this morning and translated a hundred lines of the ‘May Day’”—as though a hundred lines of English verse were a trifle which he threw off without effort, malgré his “rising headache.”

Bowring examined the prospectus, made what revisions he thought necessary, and sent it back.

“I approve of the prospectus in every respect,” wrote Borrow (January 14th). “It is businesslike, and there is nothing flashy in it. I do not wish to suggest one alteration.” He goes on to describe the energy with which he is working, and speaks of having rendered four hundred lines in one day! The last paragraph of this letter displays Borrow in a different attitude towards reviews and reviewing from that which he adopted in after years. “When you see the foreign editor,” he tells Bowring,

“I should feel much obliged if you would speak to him about my reviewing Tegnér, and inquire whether a good article on Welsh poetry would be received. I have the advantage of not being a Welshman. I would speak the truth, and would give translations from some of the best Welsh poetry; and I really believe that my translations would not be the worst that have been made from the Welsh tongue.”

But this condition of things, in which the romantic ferment caused by Steffens and Oehlenschläger in Denmark was to be reproduced in England by Borrow’s translations, did not last long. Difficulties arose in connection with the publication of the proposed book, and the enthusiasm paled as the year progressed. The two volumes receded from view; the twin mountain in labour finally brought forth a review article of some forty pages. This was despatched in the summer to the Foreign Quarterly Review, was held back for twelve months, and appeared at last in the number for June, 1831. In this Bowring wrote in lively style on Danish and Norwegian literature, and Borrow supplied sixteen specimens of verse.

In the meantime, Bowring was doing what he could to assist his protégé to some profitable employment. He sent him an ancient manuscript which Grundtvig, the Danish poet, wanted to have transcribed. Borrow said (June 7th) the task would not be overpaid at £49, but as he was “doing nothing particular” at the time, and might learn something from it, he would do it for £20. Bowring also exerted his influence to get him work in the magazines. During the summer of 1830, Borrow flitted from Great Russell Street to No. 7, Museum Street, and in the autumn, went to Norwich for a holiday. In the letter (September 14th) in which he tells Bowring of his proposal to leave London for Norwich, we get the first hint of a project which now and then flashed through his mind for a year or two—that of entering the military service: “I have thought of attempting to get into the French service, as I should like prodigiously to serve under Clausel in the next Bedouin campaign.” This remained a thought, though, as we shall see, other plans of the same character went a little further. In the same letter he complained that he was very unwell, but traced his malady to ennui and unsettled prospects, and hoped that cold bathing in October and November would prove of some service to him. There is no reference in this correspondence to one task which he himself asserts he achieved in 1830. That was the translation of Elis Wyn. At the instance of “a little bookseller of my acquaintance” in Smithfield, he rendered from the Welsh Wyn’s, “Visions of the Sleeping Bard.” This was the nearest approach he made to the promise of literary success; but even here his malign fate dogged him. When the little bookseller saw the translation, he begged off the bargain on the plea that “the terrible descriptions of vice and torment would frighten the genteel part of the English public out of their wits. . . . Myn Diawl! I had no idea till I read him in English that Elis Wyn had been such a terrible fellow!” The sly dig at the “genteel” public may be reasonably attributed to the bookmaker rather than to the bookseller.