His first plan was more coherent and more comprehensive than the book in its published form; it was to be an actual autobiography in three volumes, the first to take him to the time of his father’s death, the second to describe his literary life in London and his adventures on the road, and to proceed to his travels abroad; the third to give his adventures in Russia and carry him through a journey in Barbary and Turkey, which yet remained to be undertaken. The first part of the scheme was faithfully carried out, though Borrow wrote very slowly. Throughout the early correspondence on the subject with Murray, he referred to the book as “My Life: A Drama.” It was not till October, 1843, that he mentioned the title “Lavengro: A Biography.” Next month he told Murray that he had reached his Irish experiences. “I am now in a blacksmith’s shop in the south of Ireland, taking lessons from the Vulcan in horse-charming and horse-shoe making.” In January, 1844, he described it in a letter to Dawson Turner, of Yarmouth, the collector of manuscripts, as “a kind of biography in the Robinson Crusoe style.” There was much more difficulty in stringing together the “Lavengro” episodes than in editing the letters from Spain. He was writing from memory of matters twenty or thirty years old, not visualising recent travels with the assistance of documents made on the spot. Further, he laboured under a sense of the necessity for doing something specially fine in order that his new book might not endanger the reputation he had obtained with his last. “People will expect so much,” he wrote to Murray. “I go on . . . scribbling away, though with a palpitating heart.” Ford, who visited him at Oulton (January, 1844), was enthusiastic about the book, but disapproved of Borrow’s scheme for dropping several years (“the veiled period”—1826 to 1833): “I shall be most anxious,” he wrote, “to hear you tell your own story and recent adventures; but first let us lift up a corner of the curtain over those seven years.” Borrow was enthusiastic, too, in the intervals of sunshine that lit up his melancholy life. “‘Lavengro’ progresses steadily, but I am in no hurry. It is my third book. Hitherto the public has said: ‘Good! Better!’ I want it to say to No. 3, ‘Best!’”
It was remarkable that he had been content to remain four years at Oulton, even though the monotony was varied by occasional visits to London and tours through East Anglia on his Arab horse. The wandering spirit which possessed him from the cradle to the grave had been suppressed with difficulty, and by the aid of circumstances which were inimical to schemes of travel and adventure. It was not for lack of effort on Borrow’s part that he did not spend those years in going up and down the world and to and fro in it. He had hardly begun “The Bible in Spain” before he was recommencing the kind of campaign which marked the early ’thirties—worrying Lord Clarendon to get him made a consul or to engage him in some work abroad for the Government. Lord Clarendon politely told him that it was “quite hopeless” to ask Palmerston for a consulship; and apparently Borrow was unable to make any definite suggestion for the useful employment of his philological learning in any travelling commission on behalf of the nation. These schemes dropped; he had dreams of settling in Berlin, and others, provoked by Hasfeldt, of studying the sagas in Copenhagen; they were succeeded by visions of travel in North Africa, in search of the wandering sect of the Dar-Bushi-Fal and the witch-hamlet, Char Seharra, to which there are mysterious references in the sixth chapter of “The Zincali.” But none of these enterprises came to a head, and he performed the uncongenial role of a stay-at-home till, having worked just over a year upon the manuscript of “Lavengro,” he suddenly determined to take a prolonged tour abroad. Starting on April 23rd, 1843, he proceeded by way of Paris to Strasburg and Vienna, travelled through Hungary, Transylvania, and Rumania to Bucharest, across the Danube, and from Rustchuk to Constantinople, where he was in September. Thence he went to Salonika, through Thessaly and Albania to Prevesa, afterwards visiting Corfu and Venice, returning by Rome, Marseilles, Paris, and Havre to London, which he reached in the middle of November. Dr. Knapp gives the itinerary. This is one of the few expeditions of which Borrow left no records save those worked into late editions of “The Zincali” and into the Hungarian’s narrative in “The Romany Rye.”
Having satiated his roving demon for a time, Borrow returned to Oulton and resumed work upon “Lavengro.” By this time he had completed the first volume, covering the period to his father’s death, which is the most authentically autobiographical part of the book. Henceforward his plans underwent a gradual change, and ultimately the original scheme went completely adrift. Borrow was tossed about in the eddies of his passions and prejudices as a cork in a whirlpool. “Lavengro” took charge of him. Progress seemed to be slower than ever; the work dragged more desperately as the departure from the first plan grew more marked.
He took some consolation in the visit of Ford, already mentioned. “I am here,” wrote Ford from Oulton Hall, “on a visit to El Gitano: two rum coves in a queer country.” And he gives, in a letter to Addington (January 26th, 1844), a delicious picture of the place and their pursuits:
“This is a regular Patmos, an ultima Thule, placed in an angle of the most unvisited, out-of-the-way portion of England. His house hangs over a lonely lake covered with wild fowl, and is girt with dark firs, through which the wind sighs sadly. However, we defy the elements, and chat over las cosas de Espana, and he tells me portions of his life, more strange even than his book. We scamper by day over the country in a sort of gig, which reminds me of Mr. Weare on his trip with Mr. Thurtell (Borrow’s old preceptor). ‘Sidi Habismilk’ is in the stable and a zamarra now before me, writing as I am in a sort of summer-house, called La Mezquita, in which El Gitano concocts his lucubrations, and paints his pictures, for his object is to colour up and poetise his adventures.”
After Ford had left, Borrow wrote to him a letter [126a] which provides an interesting glimpse at the process of composition of “Lavengro”:
“An Batuscha,—I have got your letter, which I should have answered sooner had I not been to Yarmouth—not, however, to the house of the Armenian. Thank you for the pheasants and the caviare which you were kind enough to send. Almost as soon as I got back from Norwich the weather became disagreeable—a strange jumble of frost, fog, and wet. I am glad that during your stay there it has been a little more favourable. My wife is better, and left her room, but poor Henrietta is in bed with the same complaint. I still keep up, but not exactly the thing. You can’t think how I miss you in our chats by the fireside. The wine, now I am alone, has lost its flavour, and the cigar makes me ill. I am very frequently by the Valley of the Shadow, and, had I not summers and jaunts to look forward to, I am afraid it would be all up with your friend, su Batuscha.
“I still go on with my life, but slowly, lazily. What I write is, however, good. I feel it is good: strange and wild as it is. I expect to be in London by the beginning of March, and hope there to write your review [126b] and receive a cheque from Murray to the tune of some hundreds. The colt is, however, not bought yet. My wife has set her face against it, and at present I do not like to press the matter. She is in delicate health, and believes she has dreamt it would either kill her or me. At present I may truly call myself el necio de la casa, pero veremos vir. She much regrets not having seen you.
“When I go to London upon whom would you advise me to call? Who is worth knowing? Now that the old man is dead, I am afraid that a certain street will not be quite so agreeable as it was. Did the gypsies tell you where they lived? If I knew I would go and visit them. I suppose somewhere about Tottenham Court.
“As I returned from Norwich I stopped at Thurton and tasted the wine. It was really good. When you are next past that way you must taste it yourself, and give me your opinion. I hope . . . having found your way to these parts you will frequently favour us with your company. God bless you. Ever yours,
“George Borrow.
“Muchismas espresiones de la parti de mi esposa y de la Henriqueta.”
Note.—The correspondence with Mr. Murray, to which reference is made in this chapter, and some of Ford’s letters should be consulted in Dr. Knapp. Ford’s letters to Addington are reproduced in Mr. Rowland Prothero’s collection (Murray, 1905).
CHAPTER VII
“LAVENGRO” AND HIS CRITICS
At this period Borrow suffered frequently from attacks of melancholia; little vexations upset him terribly. He was more than once assaulted by roughs while on his way home to Oulton from Lowestoft, and the remedy that occurred to him was that he should be made a magistrate so that he might take short measures with the ruffians who infested the woods. He applied in various quarters for this appointment. But the Whigs were in and Borrow was a Tory. Neither the influence of Lockhart nor the admiration which Gladstone entertained for “The Bible in Spain” sufficed to prevail against the eternal principle of “the spoils to the victors.”