Borrow’s patriotism was of a peculiar kind. He had the type of mind which was generally “agin the Government,” and few of the operations of British statesmanship, either at home or abroad, gave him any satisfaction. Yet there never was a man who took more pride in the fact that he was an Englishman. The sight of The Rock moved him to paroxysms of patriotism. When he begins a paragraph, “O, England!” the experienced reader knows what to expect, and all Radicals and other subversive persons may “stand clear,” as they say at sea. But even they will forgive him because the quality of his martial music is so high.
“O England! long, long may it be before ere the sun of thy glory sink beneath the wave of darkness! Though gloomy and portentous clouds are now gathering rapidly round thee, still, still may it please the Almighty to disperse them, and to grant thee a futurity longer in duration and still brighter in renown than thy past! Or, if thy doom be at hand, may that doom be a noble one and worthy of her who has been styled the Old Queen of the Waters. May thou sink, if thou dost sink, amid blood and flame, with a mighty noise, causing more than one nation to participate in thy downfall! Of all fates, may it please the Lord to preserve thee from a disgraceful and a slow decay; becoming, ere extinct, a scorn and a mockery for those selfsame foes who now, though they envy and abhor thee, still fear thee, nay, even against their will, honour and respect thee.”
Nor will the reader be shocked or surprised to learn that these somewhat unpacific and heathen sentiments formed “part of a broken prayer for my native land, which, after my usual thanksgiving, I breathed to the Almighty ere retiring to rest that Sunday night at Gibraltar.” Like many other Englishmen, he seemed to find more to admire in the institutions and the character of his country when he was at a distance than when he was at home.
The principal authority for the Manx incidents is Dr. Knapp, who gives fully the journals of the tour from which some extracts have been made.
CHAPTER XII
LONDON AGAIN
On the return to Yarmouth, the trials of a crotchety temper were resumed. Murray’s reception of “The Romany Rye” so inflamed Borrow’s anger that in April, 1856, he recalled the precious manuscript in the curtest of curt notes. Murray, nothing loth to rid himself of this wild book, with its tigerish animadversions upon the literary world at large, packed it up and sent it to Yarmouth, where it remained for another year. Its author, in high dudgeon, kept his mind as far as possible off his grievances by tramping about East Anglia and endeavouring to reawaken the sensations of his youth upon the English roads. He rejoices in the sight of a coach, which even then seemed a strange anachronism, so thoroughly had the railway revolutionised the conditions of travel. He is carried back thirty years to the days of Thurtell by a meeting with an old man who remembered the mill between Painter and Oliver, and could call up visions of the concourse of pilfering rascals assembled on that occasion, so that the adjoining field was found next day to be strewn with empty pocket-books! He sees a horse fall down and refuse to rise in a street of King’s Lynn, and at once becomes the horse-doctor, advising the administration of reviving ale according to one story, and according to another administering it himself.
Among the visits he paid during these excursions was one to Miss Anna Gurney at North Repps; he took a speedy departure when she began to propound to him questions in Arabic grammar, and consoled himself with a dinner at “Tucker’s.” But this was the kind of life and experience which, sending his memory back to his early exploits by grassy lane and windy heath, was bound to turn his thoughts again to the manuscript stowed away at Yarmouth in which so many of those adventures were depicted. In the following February he withdrew it from its hiding-place, read it over afresh with great relish, and decided that it must be published. Such good stuff should be withheld from the public no longer, Murray or no Murray.
Thus an ultimatum was despatched to Albemarle Street. The eminent publisher was informed that, if he did not bring out “The Romany Rye,” some less eminent publisher would be applied to. The firm, always excellent friends to Borrow, resolved to humour him, but in the letter in which the bargain was clinched Mr. Murray could not resist a sly dig; he said the work would be published “to oblige him.” Whereat Borrow told him that he believed his intentions were good, but that “people with the best of intentions occasionally do a great deal of harm.” “The Romany Rye” appeared in May.
If the reception of “Lavengro” disappointed its author, no less can be said of the reception of its sequel. The majority of the critics did not like it any better than Borrow liked them. Even his friend Whitwell Elwin, who reviewed it for the Quarterly, reproved him vigorously for the violence and vulgarity of the Appendix, and threw Bentley at him in this wise: “No author was ever written down except by himself.” But Elwin was fair, and more prescient than most of his contemporaries. He admitted that “Lavengro” had not had its due, and said that it contained “passages which, in their way, are not surpassed by anything in English literature.” He spoke with warmth of the truth and vividness of the descriptions of both scenes and persons, the purity, force, and simplicity of the language, which “should confer immortality upon many of its pages.” Elwin did not write without knowledge when he said that “various parts of the history are known to be a faithful narrative of Mr. Borrow’s career, while we ourselves can testify as to many other parts of his volumes, that nothing can excel the fidelity with which he has described both men and things. Far from his showing any tendency to exaggeration, such of his characters as we chance to have known—and they are not a few—are rather within the truth than beyond it. . . . There can be no doubt that the larger part, and possibly the whole, of the work is a narrative of actual occurrences.”
The review which most correctly anticipated the verdict of a later generation, a generation that knew not Borrow but was emancipated from some of the prejudices of the ’fifties, was that of the Saturday Review. The writer saw the charm of these books—their raciness, their naturalistic humour, their spirit of romance. He penetrated the secret of Borrow’s style when he spoke of his “almost affectedly simple language.” He realised the permanent power of a writer who could make such wonderfully strong impressions without actual categorical description of scenery or persons. Otherwise, the treatment of the book was cool and neglectful, or hostile—in either case highly unsatisfactory to Borrow. Perhaps we, who can read “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye” together, and view them in a different atmosphere, are hardly able to make sufficient allowance for the conduct of critics who had this sequel to a half-forgotten book pitched on their tables after an interval of six years, and found that its most vigorous passages consisted of terrific denunciations of their harmless selves.