The visit to Tangier occupied some five or six weeks. Borrow returned to Seville at the end of September, and set to work compiling notes and making transcripts for his book on the Gypsies of Spain. The enterprise was assisted by diligent friends, such as Bailly, [99a] Usóz, [99b] and Gayangos. [99c] The fruits of their curious researches among dusty and neglected bookshelves may be seen in the long translations from archaic Spanish authors in “The Zincali.” It was a Spaniard who invented the epigram on the virtues of old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old books to read. But we may be excused for excluding from the category of books which have the bouquet of old crusted port the discourses of Dr. Sancho de Moncada and others to which Borrow has treated us so liberally.
He spared time from these labours and from the task of settling up with the Bible Society to pay considerable attention to Mrs. Clarke and “Hen”—the affectionate diminutive given to her daughter Henrietta. The widow had found Seville, as Borrow promised her it should be, “a most agreeable retreat,” where “the growls of her enemies could scarcely reach her.” The ladies enjoyed to the full the startling change from the life of the English fens to that of the sunny and many-hued Spanish city. They realised his prophecy that it would be a delicious existence where, “during the summer and autumn, the people reside in their courtyards, over which an awning is hung. A very delicious existence it is—a species of dream of sunshine and shade, of falling water and flowers.” And, incidentally, of course, a very fit setting for such love-making as came to be done: the weather is always fine when people are courting, as a modern sage has remarked. Not much more than a month after his return from Morocco, Borrow had proposed marriage to Mrs. Clarke, and had been accepted. The arrangement was to a certain extent a “convenient” one for both parties. With little prospect of further employment by the Bible Society, and only a precarious hold on any profitable literary work, Borrow had no glowing future before him. Mrs. Clarke felt the need of a man to manage affairs for her at Oulton. Still, there is ample evidence that this was a fortuitous concourse of circumstances, and that it had little to do with the marriage. The warm English friendship had become more intimate as the years passed, and there was nothing more natural than this sequel when they were thrown together in the “delightful existence” in which she hid from her “enemies” at Seville.
Having decided to cross the Rubicon, Borrow determined that the sooner it was done the better. There was to be no “sweet, reluctant, amorous delay.” He began at once to make preparations for the return to England in order that they might be married in their own country. One of the first steps to be taken to this end was to procure his passport from the Alcalde. Why this official disapproved of Borrow cannot be affirmed. As a son of the True Church he may have conceived a prejudice against the Protestant colporteur; he may have been infected by the “spy” mania; he may have been merely anxious to display his own importance. At any rate, he resolved to give the Ingles rubio as much trouble as possible to remove himself and his party out of Spain. He raised questions about the validity of Borrow’s papers, refused the passport, and would not be pacified by the offer of fees, “lawful or unlawful,” to quote Borrow, who sent to him apparently under the impression that authority, though a stubborn bear, might be led by the nose with gold, as the clown said to Autolycus. When Don Jorge himself went to the office to inquire into the matter, he was told to go away. Instead he continued to investigate the motives of the Alcalde, who thereupon threatened to carry him to prison. Borrow dared him to do so—and he did it. This was his third acquaintance with the inside of a Spanish gaol. He sent a reassuring note to Mrs. Clarke, and had a message taken to the British Consul. Colonel Napier had noticed earlier in the year that the police kept sharp eyes on Borrow, and attributed it to the suspicion that he was (of all things in the world!) a Russian spy. There was clearly something in the suggestion that he was under espionage, for while he was in prison his house was searched for papers. Nothing “compromising” being found, he was released the next night.
His indignation at this outrage reached white heat, and did not die down for months. His insistence upon redress detained Borrow in the country much longer than he had proposed to stop. Once having got his knife into Spanish officialdom, he twisted it round till he had gouged out his pound of flesh. And even then, after he had returned to England, and the knife was no longer available, Spanish officialdom received very severe treatment from that even more terrible weapon, his pen. From Seville he set working all the diplomatic machinery that an injured Briton could influence; he went to Madrid on the business; he wrote incessantly and exhaustively about it. His return to England and his marriage had to wait until he had settled accounts with the impertinent Alcalde de Barrio, who had laid sacrilegious hands upon a subject of her Britannic Majesty—and that subject George Borrow. While ambassadors and consuls and State secretaries were busily employed in official correspondence on his behalf, he proceeded with the work on the “Gypsies,” and did not get away from Spain till April, 1840.
The embarkation of the colporteur and his party upon the Royal Adelaide steamer at Cadiz was an impressive ceremony. Borrow was taking a long farewell of Spain, and he was not going home without souvenirs of his residence there. In the previous year he had purchased the Arab horse celebrated in his books as “Sidi Habismilk” (being interpreted, “My Lord Mustard”). The retinue at Cadiz included not only Mrs. Clarke and Henrietta, but also Sidi Habismilk and Hayim ben Attar, “the Jew of Fez,” Borrow’s servant. [103] They touched at Lisbon, where General Cordova came on board—not on business of State, but in search of a consignment of cigars that had been sent to him in the care of the captain. Borrow wrote an amusing sketch of the General and two Secretaries of Legation stowing Havana cigars in their pockets “with all the eagerness of contrabandista.” [104] The vessel arrived in the port of London on April 16th, and the party put up at the Spread Eagle, in Gracechurch Street. As soon as the licence could be obtained, the marriage of “George Henry Borrow, bachelor,” with “Mary Clarke, widow,” was celebrated at St. Peter’s Church, Cornhill, and witnessed by John Pilgrim, of Norwich (the bride’s solicitor) and by her daughter Henrietta. The wedding day was April 23rd.
There remained a very little business to do in London. He had an interview with the General Purposes Committee of the Bible Society, received a letter from Mr. Brandram, saying that there was no sphere open “to which your services in connection with our Society can be transferred,” and quickly terminated his relations with Earl Street. In spite of the little differences that had arisen, there was a generous reference to Borrow in the Report of the Society for 1840. He was said to have succeeded “by almost incredible pains, and at no small cost and hazard,” in his last mission to Spain, and to have assisted in circulating during five years nearly fourteen thousand copies of the Scriptures. Thus the Bible Society and Don Jorge said good-bye.
At the beginning of May, Mr. and Mrs. Borrow and Miss Clarke went down to Oulton. The Hall having been let to a farmer, they took up their residence in a little house on the margin of the Broad, known as Oulton Cottage.
CHAPTER VI
THE SUMMER HOUSE AT OULTON
When Borrow went to Oulton he was thirty-seven. The comforts of the domesticity to which he settled down were sweet, but its joys were of a very different quality from those golden matrimonial projects of which he had dreamed in Mumper’s Dingle. He was older, sadder, if not much wiser. He had modified the scale of his ambitions. He was bent upon the acquisition of such fame as he could attract through the avenue of literature, and not disdainful of what local celebrity might come his way. But though he was not of the temperament to apostrophise with Cowper—
“Domestic happiness! Thou only bliss
Of Paradise that has survived the Fall!”