On the following morning I took a walk across the common unaccompanied. I revisited the little swipe-shop. The man who had served us was behind the bar. He was the landlord. Did he recollect serving myself and another gentleman in the taproom on the previous afternoon? Of course he remembered. There was a third person in the taproom at the time? Of course there was. Did he know anything of that third person? Of course he did. Why, that was old William Mobbs, of Putney, carter to Mr. — (mentioning a market-gardener in the vicinity).
“Anything against him?” I inquired.
“Anything agin William Mobbs!” exclaimed mine host indignantly. “William is the most virtuosest man within a ragious of twenty mile! I b’leeve he’s the qui’test, law-abidin’est old bloke in the ’ole world.”
And in this way was Borrow’s murderer rehabilitated for me by one who knew him.
This visit of Borrow’s to Dr. Hake came to an abrupt close in a somewhat melodramatic way. Two families of gipsies set up an encampment on the common. Hosts who entertained Borrow in the country had to take their chance of an incident of that kind happening, for the gipsies seemed to scent their protector out. He spoke their language, he wrote their songs. By some of them he was known as their “King.” The presence of the nomadic tribe was immediately made known to Borrow by one of their dirty but intelligent scouts. The “King” thereupon made a call of ceremony upon his distinguished subjects. When he returned to Coombe End, he informed Dr. Hake that his friends the gipsies were in a difficulty about their water-supply, and that he had taken upon himself to give them permission to fill their buckets at the good doctor’s well. The good doctor consented with concealed misgiving. His fears were justified. The gipsies came on to his little estate, and not only took his water, but took away anything portable that happened to be lying around.
In his most courteous manner Dr. Hake told his illustrious guest what had happened. Borrow literally raged. The man who insulted his Romany friends insulted him. His friends were incapable of any act of ingratitude to a man whose hospitality he was accepting. But the worthy Hake insisted that, as a matter of mere fact, certain fowls, linen, and garden tools, had disappeared from the place at a time which synchronized with the Romany incursion. It was enough. The incensed “Lavengro” ordered his portmanteau to be packed and taken to the station. He flung out of the house, ignoring the kindly au revoir of his gentle host. After many moons he came to his senses again, and was reconciled to one of the most amiable, hospitable, and accomplished men of his time.
On two or three occasions after my introduction I met Borrow in town. He had apartments near the Museum. He was invariably civil. But this I attribute to the fact that I was able to talk pugilistic lore with him, and to introduce him to Nat Langham’s, a centre of “the fancy,” of the existence of which it surprised me to find so great an admirer of the P.R. completely ignorant. When I proposed this excursion we were in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, and Borrow had been met by me as he was walking along the side-path with a copy of the Old Testament in Hebrew held close to his failing eyes. He thrust the book into his pocket and accompanied me. I shrewdly suspect that this was the only occasion on which a Bible found its way into Nat Langham’s famous crib.
Some time after Borrow’s death I was regularly engaged in writing for the newspapers, and it came in my way to make some inquiries concerning the circumstances under which he passed away. They were grim enough. In a lonely old farmhouse, situated by the whispering reeds of a Suffolk broad, he breathed his last. He was quite alone at the time when he was in extremis. And when at last the massive form was found lying there, cold and stark and dead, it was gathered up and pressed into a deal box. hastily put together by the village carpenter, and despatched by rail from the nearest railway-station—a sad and tragical ending, surely, for an imperious genius who had been in his day the lion of a London season, and whose writings have established a cult comparable only to that which has arisen over Fitzgerald and the libidinous old Persian philosopher, whom he made to live again in his wonderful paraphrase.
Of Dante Gabriel Rossetti I had but a passing glimpse. The poet-painter called on George Hake (a son of Borrow’s friend) when I happened to be stopping with him at Oxford. But the impression left is vivid enough. Six or seven years had passed since the bitter domestic bereavement had taken place which saddened his life and induced the habit that shortened his days. In appearance he presented neither the delicate, almost ascetic, figure of the early portraits nor the wan aspect of the later likenesses. One might have almost called him robust. He had the general aspect of a prosperous country squire. We all three chatted on current topics, and in Rossetti’s contributions to the talk he was now incisive and epigrammatic, and again fanciful and quaint. He was not for a moment pessimistic or bitter. The Rossetti presented to the public is, I know, a very different sort of individual. I can only repeat that I describe the man as I saw him during the closing years of the sixties.
Mr. Hall Caine presents a Rossetti of a very different sort. In a work of autobiography that popular writer devotes the greater portion of his book to a narrative of his relations with the poet. Mr. Caine became acquainted with the poet when his powers were decaying and his work practically finished; when he was habitually drugged and incapable of normal emotions; when he was deserted by his friends, and grateful for the companionship of almost anybody.