George Borrow, the Man and His Work

by R. A. J. Walling

“The Bible in Spain” is a piece of Borrow. That provides its principal charm. It is not peppered with “dots and asterisks” in the same way as “Lavengro,” and does not depend for any great part of its effect on ellipsis. But it is still delightfully irresponsible and inconsequential, full of quaint snatches of character, of rough sketches of picturesque figures, of bits of adventure which lead nowhere, yet carry the reader on from incident to incident with a fascination as irresistible as the elusive attractions of Tristram Shandy. There are solid values as well. There are the rugged, unpremeditated eloquence of its descriptions, the vivid colouring of its persons in the piece, and, the never-flagging gallop of its action. One would be hard pressed to name a book of its kind in which stir and progression are more constant.

On every page peep realistic portraits at which the reader has just time to glance before he is hurried on. Who can ever forget the goatherd on the mountain between Monte Moro and Elvas, who recalled to Borrow’s mind Brute Carle in the ballad of Swayne Vonved?

“A wild swine on his shoulders he kept,
And upon his bosom a black bear slept;
And about his fingers, with hair o’erhung,
The squirrel sported and weasel clung,—”

that weird figure of a man, with the otter slung around his neck, who could not read, but, when he was asked whether he knew aught of God or Christ, “turned his countenance towards the sun, which was beginning to sink in the west, nodded to it, and then again looked fixedly upon me. I believe that I understood the mute reply, which probably was that it was God who made that glorious light which illumes and gladdens all creation; and gratified with that belief I left him. . . .” Who does not treasure the cameo of the drunken driver of Evora, who, having wrecked his carriage and killed his mule, exclaimed, “Paciencia! . . . It was God’s will that she should die. What more can be said?” Or the portrait of the Manchegan prophetess that aroused the wrath of Mr. Brandram; or of the pig-merchant who sang the “Marseillaise” and brandished his snick-and-snee in the inn at Badajoz? Or, in a different medium, the picture of Mendizabal, the Jewish Prime Minister, who told Borrow it was not Bibles they wanted in Spain, but guns and gunpowder with which to put down the rebels? Or, on a different scale, the visions of the Jews of Lisbon and the “children of Egypt” who tried to tempt him to a horse deal at Duenas?

Borrow was in Spain during some of the most exciting years of its modern history. He tells us that he had no politics except those of the gypsies—promising success to both sides, and ultimately joining the one which won. That was perhaps a very proper attitude for a foreigner and a person who had to rely on official favour in order to get his work of Bible distribution done. Notwithstanding this, he does not conceal his contempt for the Carlist cause. His posadero at Cordova was “an egregious Carlist,” and though he expressly told his friend, the correspondent of the Morning Chronicle in Madrid, that he was not a Liberal, his sympathies certainly lay away from the ultramontism of the insurgents. Borrow’s Spanish politics, of course, are of little importance; his sketches of political events, on the other hand, are not only interesting but valuable. His record of the circumstances which led up to the death of General Quesada is the account of an eye-witness, and is adopted by Major Martin Hume in his “Story of Spain,” though doubt is thrown upon the sensational tale of the Revolution of La Granja, where the Queen is made to succumb to the desires of the Constitutionalists by the threat of shooting her paramour, Muñoz, before her eyes. One of the most characteristic bits of Borrow’s work is his portrait of Baltasar, the “National,” and one of his unsurpassable touches of description is given to the celebration, in the Café of the Calle d’Alcala, of Quesada’s assassination, the huge bowl of coffee mixed for the blood-drunken soldiery, and el panuelo, the blue kerchief whose ghastly contents were used to stir the mixture. Those contents were the severed hand and fingers of Quesada, the mutilated bones celebrated in the refrain which resounded through the hall:

“Que es lo que abaja
Por aquel cerro?
Ta ra ra ra ra!
Son los huesos de Quesada,
Que los trae un perro. . . .”

Baltasar’s invitation to “Don Jorge” to drink of the cup on this “pleasant day for Spain” relieves with a touch of humour a scene which would otherwise be as revolting as the archaic ceremony of the vulpinised wine after a fox-hunt. The variety and rapid movement of the scene are remarkable, but not more so than those of fifty other scenes in the book; and the waggish little assassin Baltasar is no quainter than fifty other characters, from Borrow’s own Greek servant, Antonio, to Judah Lib, the Jew of Galatia, or Benedict Moll, the Swiss.

It is the essence of Spain that Borrow gives us in his inimitable, erratic way, its hot love and burning hate, its high chivalry and its profound roguery, the ineffable beauty of its women and the ugly rags of its mendicants, the solemn dignity of its people and their saline wit, contrasted with his own sententiousness and his peculiar, mordant humour. The vitality of the book, the continuing effect of its best scenes, and the never-failing interest of its adventures, are wonderful.

Yet there is hardly a Borrovian who does not prefer “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye,” regarding them as one book, to anything else that Borrow ever did. It is incomparably the finest and most fragrant efflorescence of his genius. The fascination exercised by “Lavengro” over a considerable part of the human race is difficult to explain: its secret is as elusive as a great deal else in Borrow. But its existence cannot be questioned. It has hypnotised men of vastly different temperaments, causing this one to devote his life to the delightful, if unprofitable, pursuit of the mysteries concealed behind Borrow’s “dots and asterisks” and the filling up of his ellipses, and that one to become a student of Romany and a “gypsiologist” who would otherwise have remained indifferent to the history and character of the chals and chis.

Many discussions have been held upon the nature of this secret. It still avoids capture; it cannot be precipitated into words. Some explanation of its effects may be offered, but even that can be but tentative. The book appeals to primal instincts. It quivers with life. It stirs the deepest emotions of those who have the sub-conscious love of Nature—the instinct for Nature which manifests itself not in petty eulogies of the fine things of the world, but in silent, ecstatic content with Earth. Gypsies have it strongly developed; indeed, it explains gypsyism. The book abounds in the unconventional strong man, in his joy of conflict, in his curiosity about human villainy, and his admiration of all heroic qualities. It is in the succession of Defoe, and in a less degree of Fielding, and again in a less degree of Smollett, and it awakes nearly all the sensations produced by them in turn, with the saving grace we have noted—that it is never in the least salacious or even obscene.