Apart from the instinctive rectitude of his nature, it was with Borrow a deep-rooted conviction that sin never goes, and never can go, unpunished. His doctrine, indeed, was something like the Buddhist doctrine of Karma—it was based on an instinctive apprehension of the sacredness of “law” in the most universal acceptation of that word. Sylvester Boswell’s definition of a free man, in that fine, self-respective certificate of his, as one who is “free from all cares or fears of law that may come against him,” is, indeed, the gospel of every true nature-worshipper. The moment Thoreau spurned the legal tax-gatherer the law locked the nature-worshipper in gaol. To enjoy nature the soul must be free—free not only from tax-gatherers, but from sin; for every wrongful act awakes, out of the mysterious bosom of Nature herself, its own peculiar serpent, having its own peculiar stare, but always hungry and bloody-fanged, which follows the delinquent’s feet whithersoever they go, gliding through the dewy grass on the brightest morning, dodging round the trees on the calmest eve, wriggling
across the brook where the wrongdoer would fain linger on the stepping-stones to soothe his soul with the sight of the happy minnows shooting between the water-weeds—following him everywhere, in short, till at last, in sheer desperation, he must needs stop and turn, and bare his breast to the fangs; when, having yielded up to the thing its fill of atoning blood, Nature breaks into her old smile again, and he goes on his way in peace.
All this Borrow understood better than any man I have ever met. Yet even into his doctrine of Providence Borrow imported such an element of whim that it was impossible to listen to him sometimes without a smile. For instance, having arrived at the conclusion that a certain lieutenant had been cruelly ill used by genteel magnates high in office, Borrow discovered that since that iniquity Providence had frowned on the British arms, and went on to trace the disastrous blunder of Balaklava to this cause. Again, having decided that Sir Walter Scott’s worship of gentility and Jacobitism had been the main cause of the revival of flunkeyism and Popery in England, Borrow saw in the dreadful monetary disasters which overclouded Scott’s last days the hand of God, whose plan was to deprive him of the worldly position Scott worshipped at the very moment when his literary fame (which he misprized) was dazzling the world.
And now as to the gipsy wanderings. As I have said, no man has been more entirely misunderstood than Borrow. That a man who certainly did (as F. H. Groome says) look like a “colossal clergyman” should have joined the gipsies, that he should have wandered over England and Europe, content often to have the grass for his bed and the sky for his hostry-roof, has astonished very much (and I believe scandalized very much) this age. My explanation of the matter is this: Among the myriads of children born into a world of brick and mortar there appears now and then one who is meant for better things—one who exhibits unmistakable signs that he inherits the blood of those remote children of the open air who, according to the old Sabæan notion, on the plains of Asia lived with Nature, loved Nature and were loved by her, and from whom all men are descended. George Borrow was one of those who show the olden strain. Now, for such a man, born in a country like England, where the modern fanaticism of house-worship has reached a condition which can only be called maniacal, what is there left but to try for a time the gipsy’s tent? On the Continent house-worship is strong enough in all conscience; but in France, in Spain, in Italy, even in Germany, people do think of something beyond the house. But here, where there are no romantic crimes, to get a genteel house, to keep (or “run”) a
genteel house, or to pretend to keep (or “run”) a genteel house, is the great first cause of almost every British delinquency, from envy and malignant slander up to forgery, robbery, and murder. And yet it is a fact, as Borrow discovered (when a mere lad in a solicitor’s office), that to men in health the house need not, and should not, be the all-absorbing consideration, but should be quite secondary to considerations of honesty and sweet air, pure water, clean linen, good manners, freedom to migrate at will, and, above all, freedom from “all cares or fears of law” that may come against a man in the shape of debts, duns, and tax-gatherers.
Against this folly of softening our bodies by “snugness” and degrading our souls by “flunkeyism,” Borrow’s early life was a protest. He saw that if it were really unwholesome for man to be shone upon by the sun, blown upon by the winds, and rained upon by the rain, like all the other animals, man would never have existed at all, for sun and wind and rain have produced him and everything that lives. He saw that for the cultivation of health, honesty, and good behaviour every man born in the temperate zone ought, unless King Circumstance says “No,” to spend in the open air eight or nine hours at least out of the twenty-four, and ought to court rather than to shun Nature’s sweet shower-bath the rain, unless, of course, his chest is weak.
The evanescence of literary fame is strikingly illustrated by recalling at this moment my first sight of Borrow. I could not have been much more than a boy, for I and a friend had gone down to Yarmouth in March to enjoy the luxury of bathing in a Yarmouth sea, and it is certainly a “good while”—to use Borrow’s phrase—since I considered that a luxury suitable to March. On the morning after our arrival, having walked some distance out of Yarmouth, we threw down our clothes and towels upon the sand some few yards from another heap of clothes, which indicated, to our surprise, that we were not, after all, the only people in Yarmouth who could bathe in a biting wind; and soon we perceived, ducking in an immense billow that came curving and curling towards the shore, such a pair of shoulders as I had not seen for a long time, crowned by a head white and glistening as burnished silver. (Borrow’s hair was white I believe, when he was quite a young man.) When the wave had broken upon the sand, there was the bather wallowing on the top of the water like a Polar bear disporting in an Arctic sun. In swimming Borrow clawed the water like a dog. I had plunged into the surf and got very close to the swimmer, whom I perceived to be a man of almost gigantic proportions, when suddenly an instinct told me that it was Lavengro himself, who lived thereabouts, and the feeling that it was he so entirely
stopped the action of my heart that I sank for a moment like a stone, soon to rise again, however, in glow of pleasure and excitement: so august a presence was Lavengro’s then!
I ought to say, however, that Borrow was at that time my hero. From my childhood I had taken the deepest interest in proscribed races such as the Cagots, but especially in the persecuted children of Roma. I had read accounts of whole families being executed in past times for no other crime than that of their being born gipsies, and tears, childish and yet bitter, had I shed over their woes. Now Borrow was the recognized champion of the gipsies—the friend companion, indeed, of the proscribed and persecuted races of the world. Nor was this all: I saw in him more of the true Nature instinct than in any other writer—or so, at least, I imagined. To walk out from a snug house at Rydal Mount for the purpose of making poetical sketches for publication seemed to me a very different thing from having no home but a tent in a dingle, or rather from Borrow’s fashion of making all Nature your home. Although I would have given worlds to go up and speak to him as he was tossing his clothes upon his back, I could not do it. Morning after morning did I see him undress, wallow in the sea, come out again, give me a somewhat sour look, dress, and then stride away inland at a tremendous pace, but never could I speak to
him; and many years passed before I saw him again. He was then half forgotten.