Borrow was shy, eccentric, angular, rustic in accent and in locution, but with a charm for me, at least, that was irresistible. Hake was polished, easy, and urbane in everything, and, although not without prejudice and bias, ready to shine gracefully in any society. As far as Hake was concerned, the sole link between them was that of reminiscence of earlier days and adventures in Borrow’s beloved East Anglia. Among many proofs that I could adduce of this, I will give one. I am the possessor of the manuscript of Borrow’s ‘Gypsies in Spain,’ written partly in a Spanish note-book as he moved about Spain in his colporteur days. It was my wish that Hake would leave behind him some memorial of Borrow more worthy of himself and his friend than those brief reminiscences contained in ‘Memoirs of Eighty Years.’ I took to Hake this precious relic of one of the most wonderful men of the nineteenth

century in order to discuss with him differences between the MS. and the printed text. Hake was sitting in his invalid chair, writing verses. “What does it all matter?” he said. “I do not think you understand Lavengro,” said I. Hake replied, “And yet Lavengro had an advantage over me, for he understood nobody. Every individuality with which he was brought into contact had, as no one knows better than you, to be tinged with colours of his own before he could see it at all.”

This, of course, was true enough; and Hake’s asperities when speaking of Borrow in ‘Memoirs of Eighty Years’—asperities which have vexed a good many Borrovians—simply arose from the fact that it was impossible for two such men to understand each other. When I told him of Andrew Lang’s angry onslaught upon Borrow, in his notes to the “Waverley Novels,” on account of his attacks upon Scott, he said, “Well, and does he not deserve it?” When I told him of Miss Cobbe’s description of Borrow as a poseur, he said to me, “I told you the same scores of times. But I saw that Borrow had bewitched you during that first walk under the rainbow in Richmond Park. It was that rainbow, I think, that befooled you.” Borrow’s affection for Hake, however, was both strong and deep, as I saw after Hake had gone to Germany and in a way dropped out of Borrow’s ken. Yet Hake was as good a man

as ever Borrow was, and for certain others with whom he was brought in contact as full of a genuine affection as Borrow was himself.

JOHN LEICESTER WARREN, LORD DE TABLEY.
1835–1895.

I.

In the death of Lord de Tabley, the English world of letters has lost a true poet and a scholar of very varied accomplishments. His friends have lost much more. Since his last attack of influenza, those who knew him and loved him had been much concerned about him. The pallor of his complexion had greatly increased; so had his feebleness. As long ago as May last, when I called upon him at the Athenæum Club in order to join him at a luncheon he was giving at the Café Royal, I found that he had engaged a four-wheeled cab to take us over those few yards. The expression in his kind and wistful blue-grey eyes showed that he had noted the start of surprise I gave on seeing the cab waiting for us. “You know my love of a growler,” he said; “this is just to save us the bother of getting across the Piccadilly cataracts.” I thought to myself, “I wish it were only the bother of crossing the cataracts which accounts for the growler.”

Another sign that the physical part of him was in the grip of the demon of decay was that, instead of coming to the Pines to luncheon, as had been his wont, he preferred of late to come to afternoon tea, and return to Elm Park before dinner. And on the occasion when he last came in this way it seemed to us here that he had aged still more; yet his intellectual forces had lost nothing of their power. And as a companion he was as winsome as ever. That fine quality with which he was so richly endowed, the quality which used to be called “urbanity,” was as fresh when I saw him last as when I first knew him. That sweet sagacity, mellowed and softened by a peculiarly quiet humour, shone from his face at intervals as he talked of the pleasant old days when he was my colleague on The Athenæum, and when I used to call upon him so frequently on my way to Rossetti in Cheyne Walk to chat over “the walnuts and the wine” about poetry.

My own friendship with him began at my first meeting him, and this was long ago. Being at that time a less-known man of letters than I am now, supposing that to be possible, I was astonished one day when my friend Edmund Gosse told me that his friend Leicester Warren had expressed a wish to meet me on account of certain things of mine which he had read in The Examiner and The Athenæum. I accepted with alacrity Mr. Gosse’s invitation to one of those

charming salons of his on the banks of Westbournia’s Grand Canal which have become historic. I was surprised to find Warren, who was then scarcely above forty, looking so old, not to say so old-fashioned. At that time he did not wear the moustache and beard which afterwards lent a picturesqueness to his face. There was a kind of rural appearance about him which had for me a charm of its own; it suited so well with his gentle ways, I thought. This being the impression he made upon me, it may be imagined how delighted I was shortly afterwards to see him come to the door of Ivy Lodge, Putney, where I was then living alone. Nor was I less surprised than delighted to see him. On realizing at Gosse’s salon that my new acquaintance was a botanist, I had fraternized with him on this point, and had described to him an extremely rare and lovely little tree growing in the centre of my garden, which some unknown lover of trees had imported. I had given Warren a kind of general invitation to come some day and see it. So early a call as this I had not hoped to get. Perhaps I thought so reclusive a man as he even then appeared would never come at all.