George Borrow, the Man and His Work

by R. A. J. Walling

Borrow reached London on the 18th September, and went down to Norfolk, feeling anxious again about his future, and hoping that the Bible Society would be able to find some further employment for him. He was not disappointed. The Society had not yet given up hope that they might find a way to send him to China, but in the meantime they resolved to commission him to Portugal. On November 2nd they passed a resolution that he should be asked to go to Lisbon and Oporto to inquire about “means and channels for promoting the circulation of the Holy Scriptures in Portugal.” [91] Here is the origin of two of his books, of which one was “The Bible in Spain.” On November 6th he sailed from London, touching at Falmouth on the 8th, and was at Lisbon on the 13th. He was to confer with one Wilby about the work; but, Wilby being away, Borrow consoled himself with the company of Captain Heyland, of the 35th Foot, whose acquaintance he had made on the voyage. With him he made several trips, upon one of which he met the bohémienne landlady of Cintra. During this first expedition to the Peninsula, he set up relations with the gypsies of Spain, which provided the germ of the first of his books that attracted anything like general attention. At Badajoz he encountered a gypsy tribe, by whom he was detained ten days. In that time he had translated the Gospel of Saint Luke into the Câlo, or Spanish gypsy language, and the version was subsequently printed by the Bible Society. One of the Romany chals, Antonio Lopez, accompanied him most of the way to Madrid, delaying three days at Merida in a gypsy house. Antonio finally went off with a gitana. Borrow bought a donkey from the girl, and rode on the animal’s back as far as Talavera, where he sold it to a Toledo Jew whom he met on the road. The rest of the journey to Madrid he did by the diligence, like a common Christian.

By the time of his arrival there, he had formed a definite project of printing the New Testament in Spanish and in Spain, without comment or note of any sort. The law would prohibit the circulation of such a book if it were printed outside and brought into the country. It was decided to use the current Catholic version, in order not to excite any more prejudices than could be helped, and to sell cheaply, and thus to spread the book among people who had never seen it before. This was a time in Spain of constant political excitement, chronic Ministerial change, and periodical revolution; and Borrow had much trouble in getting official recognition for the enterprise, without which he might as well have left it alone. But the way was smoothed for him by Sir George Villiers, the British Minister, and at the end of twelve months he returned to England with an active campaign mapped out in his mind, for which he soon obtained the approval of the Society. In a letter to his mother about this, he remarked that his “ordination” would be put off till his return. This is the first and the last that we hear of any proposal to enter the Church.

On his way out to Spain the second time, he happened across Santa Coloma, the Carlist, who is frequently met with hereafter in his Spanish adventures. “The Bible in Spain” relates very closely the events of the next two years—his wanderings and escapes, his enterprise in Madrid, where he set up a bookselling shop, his imprisonment for insulting the Government and the Catholic Church—an offence of which he was quite innocent, for such was not his method at the time. The trouble was brought on him by an evangelical firebrand, named Lieutenant Graydon, who led Borrow into one of his scrapes with the Peninsular powers by claiming to be associated with him in the work of the Bible Society. Borrow’s imprisonment resulted in a declaration by him in the Spanish Press, directed against Graydon. He said that neither himself nor the Bible Society was actuated by any enmity against either the Government or the Catholic clergy of Spain, and concluded by avowing himself the sole agent of the Society in the Peninsula. Out of this grew an estrangement between Borrow and the Society. It happened that Graydon was one of the pets of Mr. Brandram, joint secretary of the Society, and was actually regarded as one of their agents, though he received no pay, being the holder of a Government pension. He was an enthusiastic evangelist, who seems to have lacked nothing save discretion, but manifested this defect by fierce attacks upon the Catholic faith in its stronghold, instead of contenting himself with prosecuting the primary work of the Society, which was the distribution of the unadulterated Scriptures. In the event, Graydon was withdrawn from Spain, but it was expressly stated that this step was taken only in the interests of his own safety, and that the Society would pass no judgment on the merits of the dispute between him and Borrow until Graydon had returned to England and had an opportunity of vindicating himself. Borrow at the same time was ordered to cease issuing his advertisement. It is difficult to judge a man like Graydon. His good faith in all he did can hardly be doubted, but there is no question that the result of his ill-timed action was to put an end to the work of the Society and the circulation of the Bible in Spain for many years.

The relations between Earl Street and Borrow grew more strained, and very soon he had practically a command to come to London. He packed up and returned, but such was the force of his character that he fascinated Earl Street into sending him to Spain a third time. He was only home a month or two, and got back to the Peninsula on the last day of 1838. But the mission was not of much further use, for there had been another change of Ministry in the meanwhile, and Borrow and the Society were again out of official favour.

He proceeded to Seville, settling there for a purpose, as we shall presently see. In the sunlit southern city he was encountered by an English traveller, who has left a most entertaining account of him. This was Lieutenant-Colonel Elers Napier, in whose “Excursions along the Shores of the Mediterranean” appears the remarkable figure of a Man of Mystery, who is easily identified as Don Jorge—though apparently Napier never learned who he was. Borrow, six feet three, with piercing black eyes, snowy head, and swarthy, hairless face, made a profound impression on his new friend—and we may be sure that he omitted nothing that would deepen it. He showed off all his best points and maintained a rigid silence upon the question of his identity, so that in Napier’s recollections he assumes almost supernatural proportions, and is described throughout as “The Unknown.” He revealed all his miscellaneous acquaintance with languages, Occidental and Oriental. He conversed with the Colonel in Spanish, in Latin, in French (“the purest Parisian accent”), in Italian. He spoke English perfectly, but did not appear to be an Englishman. He was even as conversant with Hindu as the Anglo-Indian himself; he seemed, Napier says, to know everything and everybody, but was apparently known to nobody himself. His almost magic power over the gypsies, his familiarity with their patois and their customs, the way in which they almost worshipped him when he took Napier by night for a visit to one of their weird encampments, added to the marvel.

But the real significance of the visit to Seville is not to be sought in the archives of the Bible Society or in the jottings of Colonel Napier. Borrow’s friendship with Mrs. Clarke, of Oulton, arose in the fashion already mentioned. His long absences from England did not impair it, and in 1838 it developed in peculiar circumstances, which were the subject from time to time of scandal utterly unfounded, and of gossip more or less impertinent and irrelevant. Whether Borrow, during the years from 1832 to 1838 nurtured dreams of any relation closer than friendship it is hardly possible to determine. He was not “a marrying man,” and probably the sober little romance that ended in their wedding was a thing of sudden growth. That theory is encouraged by a passage in his correspondence as late as 1838, when he told his friend Usóz that it was better to suffer the halter than the yoke, and expressed his conviction that bachelordom was the better kingdom for him. But at the end of the same year, during his stay in England, he visited his friends at Oulton, and found a state of affairs that doubtless altered his judgment.

The business of Mrs. Clarke, who was the principal heiress of the Oulton Hall estate, was in a highly complicated condition. She had none but professional advisers, save Borrow, and leant with obvious relief upon his friendship to guide her through a puzzling maze of family disputes. It would be wearisome to attempt to follow the controversies about the disposition of the property. They finally involved Chancery proceedings, and Dr. Knapp asserts that Mrs. Clarke’s solicitors advised her that it would be well for her to disappear for a time. The reason for this counsel is obscure, but the fact that it was followed is important. Mrs. Clarke consulted Borrow about it, with the result that her evanishment took the form of a journey to Spain, accompanied by her daughter Henrietta. The fact created an amazing quantity of idle speculation and not too generous suggestion. The plan was arranged in March, 1839. Borrow was then in Madrid, and immediately posted off to Seville to prepare a house for the reception of the two ladies, having given them some useful hints, drawn from his long experience of Spain, as to the household gods they ought to bring with them. They arrived in June, and were installed at No. 7, Plazuela de la Pila Seca, which Borrow had modestly furnished and was himself occupying.

The little wind of scandal that played about this arrangement will not disturb the equanimity of those who know their Borrow. The ménage was unquestionably a little difficult to explain to the Spaniards to whom explanation was necessary, and to this difficulty Dr. Knapp attributes Borrow’s expedition to Tangier at the end of August. This was the trip with which “The Bible in Spain” suddenly closed down in the approved Borrovian style. The scandal was of short duration and small effect. But in after years other suggestions were made, including the highly improbable and offensive one that Mrs. Clarke was at this time pursuing Borrow with the object of matrimony, and “travelled over half Europe in search of him.” Another friendly theory advanced was that Borrow’s proceedings were governed by mercenary motives, and that he married Mrs. Clarke because she had an income of three or four hundred a year.

Meanwhile, the quarrel with the Bible Society was dragging its slow length along. The correspondence is confused and in general uninteresting, except that it shows how Borrow’s attitude towards Earl Street had altered since the time when he climbed down before the protests of the good secretary in the first days of their association. He was on his feet now.

He felt surer of his ground than when he was at his wits’ end for employment and subsistence. Consequently his native impatience of restraint came out. The Bible Society never gauged their man. In one despatch to Earl Street, Borrow had said of a certain enterprise that “his usual good fortune accompanied them.” “This,” replied Mr. Brandram, “is a mode of speaking to which we are not well accustomed; it savours, some of our friends would say, a little of the profane. . . . Pious expressions may be thrust into letters ad nauseam, and it is not for that I plead; but is there not a via media?” The breach grew wider and severance was ordained; it was consummated very shortly after Borrow’s return to England at the beginning of the next year.