The disappointed author went off alone in August to seek solace in a second tour through the country which still held the warmest place in his affections. He walked through the greater part of South Wales to the very tip of the Pembrokeshire promontory, and then cut across to Hereford and Shropshire. At Uppington and Donnington he sought out the tracks of Gronwy Owen, and returned to London and Yarmouth once more full of his Celtic bards and prophets. Occasionally antiquarian researches were interrupted to give time for original vaticinations on public affairs. He was a fierce opinionist, who contrived as a rule to find his opinions on the side which was against the constituted authority, whatever it might be. The conduct of Indian policy during the Mutiny pleased him no better than the conduct of the Russian war. In a letter to Murray, after defending the tone of “The Romany Rye” on the ground that it denounced boldly the evils which were hurrying the country to destruction and had kindled God’s anger against it, “namely, the pride, insolence, cruelty, covetousness, and hypocrisy of its people, and, above all, that rage for gentility which must be indulged in at the expense of every good and honourable feeling,” he goes on to discuss affairs in the East. Some of his choicest anathemas are reserved for “the miserable newspapers,” which proclaimed a firm determination to put down the rebels in India, “but forget to tell us how India is to be held without the sepoys.” The international situation seemed to his hypochondriac mind to be full of irremediable gloom, and he turned again, sighing, from these melancholy reflections to his Welsh poets. His passionate desire was reawakened to reveal the wonders of Cymric literature to a stiff-necked generation of Englishmen. He had turned out once more his translation of the “Visions” of Elis Wyn, which had been too strong for the stomach of the little bookseller of Smithfield nearly thirty years before. He delivered it to Murray on his way back from Wales. Borrow suggested that it would be likely to sell if it could be adorned with three engravings by Cruikshank—“the dance of the fairies in the first part; another the old poet in Hades flinging a skull at the head of Elis Wyn in the second; and the last, the personification of Sin in the third part at the very conclusion.” But Murray was no more impressed with the saleable quality of the Sleeping Bard than the bookseller of Smithfield had been; Cruikshank continued to throw stones at the Bottle Imp instead of flinging skulls at Elis Wyn, and the manuscript went back to Yarmouth.
All literary enterprises were suddenly set aside in August, 1858, by a family tragedy. No less a phrase can describe Borrow’s loss when his mother died, for the bonds between them were exceedingly close. Her love had a poignant quality which was sharpened by the anxiety, well-concealed from him, with which his weaknesses filled her. His love for her was more than filial. It had kept him in East Anglia for many years; it had an important influence, which has been previously suggested, upon his attitude towards the Catholic Church; he could never forget that it was the revocation of the Edict of Nantes that drove his mother’s family out of France.
The death occurred rather suddenly. The severance had so extreme an effect upon him that he was inconsolable during many weeks. At last, to obtain distraction, he set off on a walking tour in the Highlands. He devoted much of his time to roaming all over the island of Mull, which he described as perhaps the wildest country in Europe. He noted that the place-names of Mull strongly resembled those of the Isle of Man, and wrote scraps of discourse on the Gaelic dialects. Leaving Mull, he penetrated, principally on foot, into the farthest north, crossing to Orkney and Shetland at the end of November. A quiet seven months at Yarmouth followed, and in June, 1859, he paid a visit to Ireland. Mrs. Borrow and Miss Clarke remained in Dublin while he plodded through the country. He walked to the wilds of Connemara, pursuing his customary line of inquiry into language and legend, and thence extended his tramp to the Giants’ Causeway. In Dublin he studied with zest the records of the associations which were exploring the ancient literature of the country, and gloated over the stories of Finn and Ossian. He became a member of the Ossianic Society soon after his arrival in the Irish capital. Unfortunately, Borrow left no record of the tour or of his studies in Dublin.
Ireland was, indeed, soon forgotten after his return home in November. At Yarmouth he came almost immediately under the magic spell of Wales again. The unpublished manuscript of “The Sleeping Bard” could not be allowed to slumber any longer, and he determined to issue the book at his own expense. Murray made a graceful compromise; though he would not undertake the publication, he allowed Borrow to use his valuable imprint, so that 250 copies were turned out by Denew the printer of Yarmouth, with the notification on the title-page that the book was published by John Murray. Apparently Borrow came to the conclusion that if Elis Wyn was to be reviewed adequately, he must do it himself. In the Quarterly Review for January, 1861, appeared an anonymous article on “The Welsh and their Literature.” All the sprites which inhabited Borrow’s portfolios knew that the main part of this article had been there for many years. It appeared in the Quarterly, polished up, and interleaved with references to the translation of the “Bardd Cwsg.” It was admired by those who were interested in the subject, and they were at any rate sufficiently numerous to buy up the whole edition of Elis Wyn in a month. The book was held in very favourable opinion by Welshmen. This was the last literary work of any sort he did in East Anglia, to which he was shortly to bid farewell for fourteen years.
Borrow and his wife departed from Yarmouth at the end of June, 1860, and took lodgings at No. 21, Montagu Street, Portman Square. The special reason for their residence in the East of England had vanished with the death of his mother, and they had been discussing for some time the project of taking a house in London. There he counted upon closer touch with the literary world. In a sense, he obtained it, for he was in constant companionship with a few choice friends; but for the purposes of a biographer the removal to town was disastrous. After the first year or two he made no conspicuous figure in literature, his correspondence almost ceased, and the records of his movements first become scanty and then vanish altogether. They are to be found in casual references among the reminiscences of the limited circle of his associates—Frances Power Cobbe, Charles Godfrey Leland, and Theodore Watts-Dunton. And, with the last name excepted, it is no very prepossessing picture that we get of him. Miss Clarke had been left at Oulton during the period of house-hunting. She joined them after they had taken No. 22, Hereford Square, Brompton, where they had Miss Cobbe for a near neighbour.
Having installed his household gods there, Borrow began to occupy himself with the most congenial employments he could discover. There was “Wild Wales.” The beloved book was on the stocks; it was being worked up with the affection he bestowed on no other subject. But he did not permit it to absorb him. There were many things to be done in London by a lover of common adventures and a student of social byways. There were rambles in the streets and in the environs of London, where odd characters were far more numerous than in East Anglia, or Wales, or Cornwall. There were gypsies—degenerate gypsies who lived in houses, still more degenerate gypsies who plied petty commerce in caravans, and the remnants of the real blood who camped in the outskirts of the metropolis, and were not unwilling to converse with “the London caloro” when he found his way among them. There was an occasional race; there was an occasional fight. A foot race at Brompton between “Deerfoot,” the Seneca Indian, and Jackson, “the American deer,” in October, 1861, was the subject of a lively description in his notebook.
Borrow tried some of his friends a good deal, even now that he was mellowing. But he had not lost the art of being jovial, and there are records of festivities at which he very successfully entertained those whom he might call his “pals.” Richmond was a favourite resort. One dinner party at the Star and Garter, when Borrow was host, comprised John Murray, his partner Cooke, and his brother-in-law, Dr. David Smith, of Edinburgh. It was a gargantuan feast for that day; it cost Borrow £6 3s., of which £4 1s. 6d. was for wine. His studies in the poetry of many lands went on concurrently with his entertainments and his work on Wales. The habit of translation was ingrained, and could not be conquered. He continued turning poems and legends into English from the Celtic tongues, from Danish, Turkish, and Russian. But no book came of all this industry. The public were still callously indifferent to Borrow’s poetical versions, as they had been in other years. They had put up with some of Bowring’s anthologies, but had now tired even of his Magyars and Serbs. The prevailing sentiment about this kind of literary ware was represented by a ludicrous parody which appeared in Fraser’s Magazine:
| Te Pikke Megge.
Hogy, wogy, Pogy! Xupumai trtzaaa bnikttm Pogy, wogy, hogy! Bsduro plgvbz cttnsttm Wogy, hogy, Pogy! Mlèsrz vbquògp fvikttm. | The Pious Maiden.
Holy little Polly! Love sought me, but I tricked him. Polly little holy! You thought of me, “I’ve nicked him.” Little holy Polly! I’m not to be your victim. |
Te Pikke Megge.
Hogy, wogy, Pogy!
Xupumai trtzaaa bnikttm
Pogy, wogy, hogy!
Bsduro plgvbz cttnsttm
Wogy, hogy, Pogy!
Mlèsrz vbquògp fvikttm.
The Pious Maiden.
Holy little Polly!
Love sought me, but I tricked him.
Polly little holy!
You thought of me, “I’ve nicked him.”
Little holy Polly!
I’m not to be your victim.