For an introduction to him at last I was indebted to Dr. Gordon Hake, the poet, who had known Borrow for many years, and whose friendship Borrow cherished above most things—as was usual, indeed, with the friends of Dr. Hake. This was done with some difficulty, for, in calling at Roehampton for a walk through Richmond Park and about the Common, Borrow’s first question was always, “Are you alone?” and no persuasion could induce him to stay unless it could be satisfactorily shown that he would not be “pestered by strangers.” On a certain morning, however, he called, and suddenly coming upon me, there was no retreating, and we were introduced. He tried to be as civil as possible, but evidently he was much annoyed. Yet there was something in the very tone of his voice that drew my heart to him, for to me he was the Lavengro of my boyhood still. My own shyness had been long before fingered off by the rough handling of the world, but his retained all the bloom of youth, and a terrible barrier it was, yet I attacked it manfully. I knew that Borrow had read but little except in his own out-of-the-way directions; but then unfortunately, like all specialists, he considered that in these his own special directions lay all the knowledge that was of any value. Accordingly, what appeared to Borrow
as the most striking characteristic of the present age was its ignorance.
Unfortunately, too, I knew that for strangers to talk of his own published books or of gipsies appeared to him to be “prying,” though there I should have been quite at home. I knew, however, that in the obscure English pamphlet literature of the last century, recording the sayings and doings of eccentric people and strange adventurers, Borrow was very learned, and I too chanced to be far from ignorant in that direction. I touched on Bamfylde Moore Carew, but without effect. Borrow evidently considered that every properly educated man was familiar with the story of Bamfylde Moore Carew in its every detail. Then I touched upon beer, the British bruiser, “gentility-nonsense,” the “trumpery great”; then upon etymology, traced hoity-toityism to toit, a roof,—but only to have my shallow philology dismissed with a withering smile. 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 attacked on the night in question by a violent bleeding at the nose, had risen and left the house for a few minutes’ walk in the sea-breeze, when the press-gang captured him and bore him off to sea, where he had been in service ever since. The story is true, and the pamphlet, Borrow afterwards told me (I know not on what authority), was written by Goldsmith from Gwinett’s dictation for a platter of cowheel.
To the bewilderment of Dr. Hake, I introduced the subject of Ambrose Gwinett in the same manner as I might have introduced the story of “Achilles’ wrath,” and appealed to Dr. Hake (who, of course, had never heard of the book or the man) as to whether a certain incident in the pamphlet had gained or lost by the dramatist who, at one of the minor theatres, had many years ago dramatized the story. Borrow was caught at last. “What?” said he, “you know that pamphlet about Ambrose Gwinett?” “Know it?” said I, in a hurt tone, as though he had asked me if I knew ‘Macbeth’; “of course I know Ambrose Gwinett, Mr. Borrow, don’t you?” “And you know the play?” said he. “Of course I do, Mr. Borrow?” I said, in a tone that was now a little angry at such an insinuation of crass ignorance. “Why,” said he, “it’s years and
years since it was acted; I never was much of a theatre man, but I did go to see that.” “Well, I should rather think you did, Mr. Borrow,” said I. “But,” said he, staring hard at me, “you—you were not born!” “And I was not born,” said I, “when the ‘Agamemnon’ was produced, and yet one reads the ‘Agamemnon,’ Mr. Borrow. I have read the drama of ‘Ambrose Gwinett.’ I have it bound in morocco with some more of Douglas Jerrold’s early transpontine plays, and some Æschylean dramas by Mr. Fitzball. I will lend it to you, Mr. Borrow, if you like.” He was completely conquered. “Hake!” he cried, in a loud voice, regardless of my presence. “Hake! your friend knows everything.” Then he murmured to himself, “Wonderful man! Knows Ambrose Gwinett!”
It is such delightful reminiscences as these that will cause me to have as long as I live a very warm place in my heart for the memory of George Borrow.
From that time I used to see Borrow often at Roehampton, sometimes at Putney, and sometimes, but not often, in London. I could have seen much more of him than I did had not the whirlpool of London, into which I plunged for a time, borne me away from this most original of men; and this is what I so greatly lament now: for of Borrow it may be said, as it was said of a greater man still, that
“after Nature made him she forthwith broke the mould.” The last time I ever saw him was shortly before he left London to live in the country. It was, I remember well, on Waterloo Bridge, where I had stopped to gaze at a sunset of singular and striking splendour, whose gorgeous clouds and ruddy mists were reeling and boiling over the West-End. Borrow came up and stood leaning over the parapet, entranced by the sight, as well he might be. Like most people born in flat districts, he had a passion for sunsets. Turner could not have painted that one, I think, and certainly my pen could not describe it; for the London smoke was flushed by the sinking sun and had lost its dunness, and, reddening every moment as it rose above the roofs, steeples, and towers, it went curling round the sinking sun in a rosy vapour, leaving, however, just a segment of a golden rim, which gleamed as dazzlingly as in the thinnest and clearest air—a peculiar effect which struck Borrow deeply. I never saw such a sunset before or since, not even on Waterloo Bridge; and from its association with “the last of Borrow” I shall never forget it.