I remain, dear Sir, ever yours,
GEORGE BORROW,
December 31, 1842.
MY DEAR SIR,
I have great pleasure in acknowledging your very kind letter of the 28th, and am happy to hear that matters are going on so prosperously. It is quite useless to write books unless they sell, and the public has of late become so fastidious that it is no easy matter to please it. With respect to the critique in the Times, I fully agree with you that it was harsh and unjust, and the passages selected by no means calculated to afford a fair idea of the contents of the work. A book, however, like "The Bible in Spain" can scarcely be published without exciting considerable hostility, and I have been so long used to receiving hard knocks that they make no impression upon me. After all, the abuse of the Times is better than its silence; it would scarcely have attacked the work unless it had deemed it of some importance, and so the public will think. All I can say is, that I did my best, never writing but when the fit took me, and never delivering anything to my amanuensis but what I was perfectly satisfied with. You ask me my opinion of the review in the Quarterly. Very good, very clever, very neatly done. Only one fault to find—too laudatory. I am by no means the person which the reviewer had the kindness to represent me. I hope you are getting on well as to health; strange weather this, very unwholesome, I believe, both for man and beast: several people dead, and great mortality amongst the cattle. Am tolerably well myself, but get but little rest—disagreeable dreams—digestion not quite so good as I could wish; been on the water system—won't do; have left it off, and am now taking lessons in singing. I hope to be in London towards the end of next month, and reckon much upon the pleasure of seeing you. On Monday I shall mount my horse and ride into Norwich to pay a visit to a few old friends. Yesterday the son of our excellent Dawson Turner rode over to see me; they are all well, it seems. Our friend Joseph Gurney, however, seems to be in a strange way—diabetes, I hear. I frequently meditate upon "The Life," and am arranging the scenes in my mind. With best remembrances to Mrs. M. and all your excellent family,
Truly and respectfully yours,
GEORGE BORROW.
Mr. Richard Ford's forthcoming work—"The Handbook for Spain"—about which Mr. Borrow had been making so many enquiries, was the result of many years' hard riding and constant investigation throughout Spain, one of the least known of all European countries at that time. Mr. Ford called upon Mr. Murray, after "The Bible in Spain" had been published, and a copy of the work was presented to him. He was about to start on his journey to Heavitree, near Exeter. A few days after his arrival Mr. Murray received the following letter from him:
Mr. Richard Ford to John Murray.
"I read Borrow with great delight all the way down per rail, and it shortened the rapid flight of that velocipede. You may depend upon it that the book will sell, which, after all, is the rub. It is the antipodes of Lord Carnarvon, and yet how they tally in what they have in common, and that is much—the people, the scenery of Galicia, and the suspicions and absurdities of Spanish Jacks-in-office, who yield not in ignorance or insolence to any kind of red-tapists, hatched in the hot-beds of jobbery and utilitarian mares-nests … Borrow spares none of them. I see he hits right and left, and floors his man wherever he meets him. I am pleased with his honest sincerity of purpose and his graphic abrupt style. It is like an old Spanish ballad, leaping in res medias, going from incident to incident, bang, bang, bang, hops, steps, and jumps like a cracker, and leaving off like one, when you wish he would give you another touch or coup de grâce … He really sometimes puts me in mind of Gil Blas; but he has not the sneer of the Frenchman, nor does he gild the bad. He has a touch of Bunyan, and, like that enthusiastic tinker, hammers away, à la Gitano, whenever he thinks he can thwack the Devil or his man-of-all-work on earth—the Pope. Therein he resembles my friend and everybody's friend—Punch—who, amidst all his adventures, never spares the black one. However, I am not going to review him now; for I know that Mr. Lockhart has expressed a wish that I should do it for the Quarterly Review. Now, a wish from my liege master is a command. I had half engaged myself elsewhere, thinking that he did not quite appreciate such a trump as I know Borrow to be. He is as full of meat as an egg, and a fresh laid one—not one of your Inglis breed, long addled by over-bookmaking. Borrow will lay you golden eggs, and hatch them after the ways of Egypt; put salt on his tail and secure him in your coop, and beware how any poacher coaxes him with 'raisins' or reasons out of the Albemarle preserves. When you see Mr. Lockhart tell him that I will do the paper. I owe my entire allowance to the Q. R. flag … Perhaps my understanding the full force of this 'gratia' makes me over partial to this wild Missionary; but I have ridden over the same tracks without the tracts, seen the same people, and know that he is true, and I believe that he believes all that he writes to be true."