“. . . sat with ghosts on a stormy shore
And spoke in a tongue men speak no more”?
Leland told Borrow in his first letter that he was a lover of his books, and had read them all five times, with the exception of “The Bible in Spain” and “Wild Wales,” which he had only read once. He had been seeking in vain for some mutual friend to introduce them, and now put himself forward modestly as the author of “a collection of ballads satirising Germany and the Germans, under the title of ‘Hans Breitmann.’” Borrow wrote giving an invitation. Leland acknowledged it in a charming letter, announcing that he had asked his publishers to send Borrow copies of “Breitmann” and “The Music Lesson of Confucius.” The former was offered as an oblation to the gypsy gods; it contained a ballad “written by myself in the German Romany jib . . . which I would gladly learn from yourself whether it be worth anything or not.” The second was a delicate compliment to Borrow, for in it was a poem “suggested by a passage in ‘The Romany Rye,’ referring to the melancholy Sven Vonved, the Northern Sphynx, who went about giving out riddles and gold rings.” Leland ran on about gypsies and the Romany tongue, tinkers and rat-catchers, horses and hunting, in his inimitable way, declaring, “My dear Mr. Borrow, for all this you are entirely responsible. More than twenty years ago your books had an incredible influence on me, and now you see the results.”
At the meeting which followed, Leland told Borrow that he was preparing a work on the English gypsies, and it is fairly clear that this fact induced Borrow to write his own last book, “The Romano Lavo-Lil,” or Word-Book of the Gypsies. There have been found even Borrovians to regret that this book was ever published. Most of the criticism lavished upon it is no doubt justified. It is quite as unscientific, quite as useless as a lexicon, as its assailants said. Its miscellaneous contents are not to be compared for vigour and interest with his earlier work. But the true lover of Borrow would not have it absent from the little shelf which holds his books, even if it were only for the tale of Ryley Bosvil, and the interview with Esther Blyth—a reminiscence of his visit to Kirk Yetholm to see the “Queen of the Nokkums” during the Border tour. “The Romano Lavo-Lil” did not appear, however, till 1874. In the meantime, he edited a third edition of “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye,” in one volume each, for Murray (1872), and recast his translation of the Gospel of Luke in the Calo.
An acquaintance he formed during the late years of his London life was that of Mr. William Mackay, who subsequently went to live at Oulton Broad. Mr. Mackay has related one or two anecdotes spiced with a very piquant frankness, for he is apparently no worshipper of Borrow, and has taken pains to dispute the claims advanced by those who are. He speaks of one occasion when they went together to a tavern on the edge of a great common, where Borrow called for “swipes.” This was the beerhouse title of the poorest kind of ale. Mr. Mackay says that Borrow affected it because it was the drink of his Romany friends. When he “had taken a pull at the pewter, he pointed out to me a yokel at the end of the apartment. The foolish bumpkin was slumbering. Borrow, in a stage whisper, gravely assured me that the man was a murderer, and confided to me, with all the emphasis of honest conviction, the scene and details of his crime. Subsequently I ascertained that the elaborate incidents and fine touches of local colour were but the coruscations of a too vivid imagination, and that the villain of the ale-house on the common was as innocent as the author of ‘The Romany Rye.’” It may not unreasonably seem to dispassionate persons that Borrow took a pull not only at the pewter, but at his friend’s leg as well.
But Mr. Mackay is able to throw an interesting light on one or two facets of his character—notably on his love of pugilism for its own sake. Outside Borrow’s own books, I do not know any sketch that gives a more living idea of his joy in combat than this. “It was a fine thing,” says Mr. Mackay, “to see the great man tackle a tramp. Then he scented the battle from afar, bearing down on the enemy with quivering nostril. If the nomad happened to be a gypsy, he was courteously addressed; but if he were a mere native tatterdemalion, inclined to be truculent, Borrow’s coat was off in a moment, and the challenge to decide there and then who was the better man flung forth. I have never seen such challenges accepted, for Borrow was robust and towering. But those who have seen him ‘put his dukes up’ affirm that he gave an excellent account of himself.”
There is also a glimpse in these notes [245] of Borrow’s attitude towards the great, though the story is not attested in any way and may be merely ben trovato. When a member of the Russian Embassy called on him in Hereford Square to request for his Imperial master a copy of “Targum,” Borrow “rudely told the official to let his master fetch it himself!”
The most pregnant friendship of the later days remains to be mentioned. Two souls of close affinity discovered each other in 1872. In that year Borrow encountered Mr. Theodore Watts. The fortunate fates threw these two men together: Mr. Watts-Dunton, as we know him, has done more for the true interpretation of Borrow than any other man. He brought to the study of the Borrow books and the elucidation of the Borrow character an intimate knowledge of the quaint things that Borrow loved. He brought an extensive and peculiar acquaintance with the tortuous paths in which Borrow roamed, whether they were literary, or philological, or merely geographical. Nobody has so deeply penetrated the Borrovian psychology; the pity of it is that his criticism and appreciation are scattered through the inaccessible files of journals and reviews, or appear as “introductions” to various editions of Borrow’s works, and have never been collected.
The story of their meeting on the common ground of friendship with Dr. Gordon Hake is, of course, familiar to all Borrovians. It had results so wide, however, that some account of it is due. For many years before the date mentioned, Mr. Watts-Dunton, with his amour of Natura benigna, his gypsyism, his cult of the open air, had naturally been strongly drawn towards such a personality as Borrow’s, and had learnt to love his strange books. He had seen the white-haired giant swimming in the sea off Yarmouth, but had never spoken to him till the day at Gordon Hake’s house at Roehampton, when Borrow’s approach, “striding across the common,” was announced. They got into touch with difficulty. Kindred spirits as they were, Borrow’s whimsies, his strangely mingled egoism and shyness, placed obstacles in the way of sympathy.
Mr. Watts-Dunton’s account of the meeting is lit by a mischievously flashing humour. It may be aptly compared with Boswell’s description of his introduction to Johnson in the back parlour of Davies’s shop, but it is far fuller of humorous intent. He knew something of Borrow’s idiosyncrasies—his impatience of any learning that was not in his own “line,” his touchiness about his own books, his objection to inquiries into his relations with the gypsies. A way of approach was gradually discovered in the pamphlet literature of the eighteenth century, in which both were highly cultured. Bampfylde Moore Carew did not yield much, for Borrow “evidently considered that every properly educated man ought to be familiar with the story of Bampfylde Moore Carew in its every detail.” Beer, bruising, gentility, languages were no more successful. “I tried other subjects in the same direction, but with small success, till in a lucky moment I bethought myself of Ambrose Gwinett. There is a very scarce eighteenth-century pamphlet narrating the story of Ambrose Gwinett, the man who, after having been hanged and gibbeted for murdering a traveller with whom he had shared a double-bedded room at a seaside inn, revived in the night, escaped from the gibbet-irons, went to sea as a common sailor, and afterwards met on a British man-of-war the very man he had been hanged for murdering. The truth was that Gwinett’s supposed victim, having been seized on the night in question with a violent bleeding at the nose, had risen and left the house for a few minutes’ walk in the sea breeze, when the pressgang captured him and carried him off to sea, where he had been in service ever since. I introduced the subject of Ambrose Gwinett, and Douglas Jerrold’s play upon it, and at once the ice between us thawed, and we became friends.”
We have to thank Ambrose Gwinett and the gypsies on Wimbledon Common for many charming additions to the literature of Borrow. Hard upon this conversation came the first of those walks in Richmond Park which Mr. Watts-Dunton has described with so much felicity. It included that call at the Bald-faced Stag in Kingston Vale, [248] in order that Borrow might show his companion Jerry Abershaw’s sword. It was the occasion of the rainbow whose “triumphal arch” filled the sky, when Borrow explained the gypsy mystery of the trus’hul, how, by making a cross of two sticks, the expert in occultism could wipe the rainbow out of the heavens. [249] Mr. Watts-Dunton quaintly discusses the question whether Borrow was “a true child of the open air,” and comes to the conclusion that the man who stood looking at the deer and the herons in Richmond Park, what time he carried under his arm a huge, bulging, green gamp, was not one of those who, “owing to some exceptional power or some exceptional infirmity,” can get closer to Nature than to brother, sister, wife, or friend. The inquisitiveness of the man of science prevents this familiarity; so does “sensivity to human contact,” as in the case of Emily Brontë; so does subjection to the love passion. It was neither science nor passion that prevented Borrow from matriculating in the University of the Open Air in the sense that Thoreau did. It was Ambition.