CHAPTER V
IN FOREIGN PARTS
“Romance brought up” the year 1832. It was a year full of events with an important bearing on the course of Borrow’s life. In the first place, he became acquainted with the Skeppers, of Oulton Hall, near Lowestoft. The introduction to this family issued in a friendship with Mr. Skepper’s sister, the widow of a young naval officer named Clarke. In Mrs. Clarke, a woman somewhat older than himself—she was thirty-six and he was twenty-nine—he met the woman who was to bring into his life its fairest influence and its rarest happiness. But the story of this romance must be postponed for a few pages in order to the relation of a sequence of affairs without which it cannot be understood. They resulted from sundry conversations about Borrow—between the Skeppers and the Rev. Francis Cunningham, Rector of Pakefield, and in turn between Cunningham and Joseph Gurney, his brother-in-law, from whose meadows at Earlham George had fished in boyhood.
Both Cunningham and Gurney were interested in the work of the Bible Society, and between them the idea was hatched of employing Borrow’s philological learning in its behalf. The Society happened at the moment to be looking for a man to superintend the printing of the New Testament in Manchu. There were many negotiations, and ultimately the engagement was consummated which made Borrow’s modest fortune.
To go to St. Petersburg on this business of the Bible Society’s was an adventure after Borrow’s own heart. He had passed through some exceedingly stormy waters, and in this employment he found a secure and congenial harbour. He could well afford to regard lightly the critical attitude of certain people in Norwich, who did not forget to recall the episode of “godless Billy Taylor.” Their temper was reflected in the letter of Harriet Martineau referring to Borrow as a “polyglot gentleman,” and remarking that his appearance as “a devout agent of the Bible Society” evoked “one shout of laughter from all who remembered the old Norwich days.” Borrow did not like their laughter, and he did not forgive their contempt. But for the time he was too busy with the actualities of his new situation to trouble about them, and too elated with his suddenly brightened prospects to be cast down by the jeers of the scornful.
He was going a journey into a far country, and he was going on a more or less philological errand. His task was to undertake the production in the Russian capital of the Manchu version of the Sacred Books made by Lipotsof. Invited to London to see the officials of the Society, he set off in high spirits—and on foot. The long road stretched for a hundred and twelve miles between Norwich and London—that road which some ten years before he had travelled by coach with the little green box of poetical translations. He now tramped it in 27½ hours, and his expenses en route amounted to fivepence halfpenny! This feat was one of his favourite boasts. It was, in its way, a remarkable achievement. Few big, healthy young men would care to undertake such long-sustained exertion on a pint of ale, half a pint of milk, a roll of bread, and two apples. But such is Borrow’s tale of his commissariat arrangements on this expedition.
The Society desired him to learn the Manchu language before he set out for Russia. They gave him six months for the purpose. Even for a meteoric philologist like Borrow, who swallowed a language by memorising its dictionary, six months meant short commons. He could not possibly acquire more than a nodding acquaintance with that most difficult of the tongues of Babel. However, he set about his task with zeal.
There is one amusing passage in the correspondence between him and the Secretary of the Bible Society. Observe the true Borrovian spirit asserting itself in the letter where he expresses pleasure at the prospect of “becoming useful to the Deity, to man, and to myself.” Observe the solemn admonition of the good secretary, when he perceived that a sense of human frailty was not one of Borrow’s most striking characteristics: “Doubtless you mean the prospect of glorifying God.” Thereafter, the Borrovian spirit was subdued (in correspondence) to the proper standard of orthodoxy.
At the end of June, 1833, he set sail for St. Petersburg, by way of Hamburg, and was highly delighted with the Russian capital. He made his way into the acquaintanceship of a number of literary people, in whose society he found congenial entertainment. Among them he speedily established for himself quite a reputation. It was here that he began his long friendship with Hasfeldt, which produced a prolific correspondence. Hasfeldt was a Dane attached to the Russian Government, and a linguist of attainments, who added to his income by the teaching of European languages. He conceived a remarkable fondness for “tall George,” as he called him; the affection was returned as fully as Borrow could return a friendship, and that was in much higher measure than many estimates of him suggest. He met Russian scholars, and found many opportunities for extending his philological studies in the direction of the Oriental languages.
His work on the Chinese version was hard and long. He had to use German printers, who did not always feel for the task the enthusiasm which Borrow expected everybody to throw into anything in which he himself was concerned. They had to be bribed with vodka, and other things, in order that progress might be secured. The Bible Society presumably swallowed the vodka in their delight at the energy Borrow displayed, and they passed a resolution to pay him any expenses to which he might be put in the execution of the commission. He had to furbish up an old fount of type in the Chinese character, that had been lying rusting in a cellar for many years, and to get everything in order himself, because, of course, it was impossible to obtain compositors who knew anything of the Manchu. He even turned printer. So keen was the zest with which he entered into the work that he submitted a proposal to the Society to undertake the distribution of the books when they were printed, going overland to China, and looking in upon the Tartars on the way! Without doubt he would have done it but for the fact that the Russian Government refused to grant him a passport for the purpose. It is characteristic of Borrow that years afterwards he said, and doubtless thought, that he had been overland to China.
The work of printing done, he paid a hurried visit to Moscow, gathering impressions for the description of the Kremlin to be found in “The Bible in Spain,” and on September 9th, 1835, he left St. Petersburg for England, having spent the previous night in a solemn leave-taking of Hasfeldt. While in St. Petersburg hard at work, and feeling run down, he had “the Horrors” several times, but affected to have found a cure for it in the shape of strong port wine. It was during his stay in Russia that the news arrived of the death of his brother John in Mexico. He had discovered other activities to occupy him besides the translation of the Testament into Chinese. He turned homilies of the Church of England into Russian and Manchu, and did translations of some of the sacred Buddhist books from Manchu into English. He conceived at the moment no high opinion of the Buddhist philosophy. “You will be surprised,” he writes to the Rev. F. Cunningham, “that Satan by such inconsistent trash should have been able to ensnare the souls of millions!” If that had been read in the Martineau household there might have been another “burst of laughter.” It was while he was in St. Petersburg, too, that he published his “Targum,” a collection of poetic translations from thirty different languages and dialects. When Pushkin, the poet, after Borrow’s departure, received a presentation copy of this book, he expressed his great regret that he had not met the author.