Borrow’s principal study was himself, and in all his best books he is the chief subject and the chief object. Yet when he came to write confessedly and consecutively about himself he found it no easy task. Dr. Knapp gives an interesting account of the stages by which he approached and executed it. His first mature and original books, “The Zincali,” or “The Gypsies of Spain,” and “The Bible in Spain,” had a solid body of subject matter more or less interesting in itself, and anyone with a pen could have made it acceptable to the public which desires information. “The Bible of Spain” was the book of the year 1843, read by everybody in one or other of the six editions published in the first twelve months. These books were also full of himself. Even “The Zincali,” written for the most part in Spain, when he was a man of about thirty and had no reason for expecting the public to be interested in himself, especially in a Gypsy crowd—even that early book prophesied very different things. He said in the “preface” that he bore the Gypsies no ill-will, for he had known them “for upwards of twenty years, in various countries, and they never injured a hair of his head, or deprived him of a shred of his raiment.” The motive for this forbearance, he said, was that they thought him a Gypsy. In his “introduction” he satisfied some curiosity, but raised still more, when speaking of the English Gypsies and especially of their eminence “in those disgraceful and brutalising exhibitions called pugilistic combats.”

“When a boy of fourteen,” he says, “I was present at a prize fight; why should I hide the truth? It took place on a green meadow, beside a running stream, close by the old church of E---, and within a league of the ancient town of N---, the capital of one of the eastern counties. The terrible Thurtell was present, lord of the concourse; for wherever he moved he was master, and whenever he spoke, even when in chains, every other voice was silent. He stood on the mead, grim and pale as usual, with his bruisers around. He it was, indeed, who got up the fight, as he had previously done with respect to twenty others; it being his frequent boast that he had first introduced bruising and bloodshed amidst rural scenes, and transformed a quiet slumbering town into a den of Jews and metropolitan thieves. Some time before the commencement of the combat, three men, mounted on wild-looking horses, came dashing down the road in the direction of the meadow, in the midst of which they presently showed themselves, their horses clearing the deep ditches with wonderful alacrity. ‘That’s Gypsy Will and his gang,’ lisped a Hebrew pickpocket; ‘we shall have another fight.’ The word Gypsy was always sufficient to excite my curiosity, and I looked attentively at the new comers.

“I have seen Gypsies of various lands, Russian, Hungarian, and Turkish; and I have also seen the legitimate children of most countries of the world, but I never saw, upon the whole, three more remarkable individuals, as far as personal appearance was concerned, than the three English Gypsies who now presented themselves to my eyes on that spot. Two of them had dismounted, and were holding their horses by the reins. The tallest, and, at the first glance, the most interesting of the two, was almost a giant, for his height could not have been less than six feet three. It is impossible for the imagination to conceive any thing more perfectly beautiful than were the features of this man, and the most skilful sculptor of Greece might have taken them as his model for a hero and a god. The forehead was exceedingly lofty—a rare thing in a Gypsy; the nose less Roman than Grecian—fine yet delicate; the eyes large, overhung with long drooping lashes, giving them almost a melancholy expression; it was only when they were highly elevated that the Gypsy glance peered out, if that can be called glance which is a strange stare, like nothing else in this world. His complexion—a beautiful olive; and his teeth of a brilliancy uncommon even amongst these people, who have all fine teeth. He was dressed in a coarse waggoner’s slop, which, however, was unable to conceal altogether the proportions of his noble and Herculean figure. He might be about twenty-eight. His companion and his captain, Gypsy Will, was, I think, fifty when he was hanged, ten years subsequently (for I never afterwards lost sight of him), in the front of the jail of Bury St. Edmunds. I have still present before me his bushy black hair, his black face, and his big black eyes, full and thoughtful, but fixed and staring. His dress consisted of a loose blue jockey coat, jockey boots and breeches; in his hand a huge jockey whip, and on his head (it struck me at the time for its singularity) a broad-brimmed, high-peaked Andalusian hat, or at least one very much resembling those generally worn in that province. In stature he was shorter than his more youthful companion, yet he must have measured six feet at least, and was stronger built, if possible. What brawn!—what bone!—what legs!—what thighs! The third Gypsy, who remained on horseback, looked more like a phantom than any thing human. His complexion was the colour of pale dust, and of that same colour was all that pertained to him, hat and clothes. His boots were dusty of course, for it was midsummer, and his very horse was of a dusty dun. His features were whimsically ugly, most of his teeth were gone, and as to his age, he might be thirty or sixty. He was somewhat lame and halt, but an unequalled rider when once upon his steed, which he was naturally not very solicitous to quit. I subsequently discovered that he was considered the wizard of the gang.

John Thurtell. (From an old print.)

“I have been already prolix with respect to these Gypsies, but I will not leave them quite yet. The intended combatants at length arrived; it was necessary to clear the ring—always a troublesome and difficult task. Thurtell went up to the two Gypsies, with whom he seemed to be acquainted, and, with his surly smile, said two or three words, which I, who was standing by, did not understand. The Gypsies smiled in return, and giving the reins of their animals to their mounted companion, immediately set about the task which the king of the flash-men had, as I conjecture, imposed upon them; this they soon accomplished. Who could stand against such fellows and such whips? The fight was soon over—then there was a pause. Once more Thurtell came up to the Gypsies and said something—the Gypsies looked at each other and conversed; but their words had then no meaning for my ears. The tall Gypsy shook his head. ‘Very well,’ said the other, in English, ‘I will—that’s all.’

“Then pushing the people aside, he strode to the ropes, over which he bounded into the ring, flinging his Spanish hat high into the air.

“Gypsy Will.—‘The best man in England for twenty pounds!’

“Thurtell.—‘I am backer!’

“Twenty pounds is a tempting sum, and there were men that day upon the green meadow who would have shed the blood of their own fathers for the fifth of the price. But the Gypsy was not an unknown man, his prowess and strength were notorious, and no one cared to encounter him. Some of the Jews looked eager for a moment; but their sharp eyes quailed quickly before his savage glances, as he towered in the ring, his huge form dilating, and his black features convulsed with excitement. The Westminster bravos eyed the Gypsy askance; but the comparison, if they made any, seemed by no means favourable to themselves. ‘Gypsy! rum chap.—Ugly customer,—always in training.’ Such were the exclamations which I heard, some of which at that period of my life I did not understand.

“No man would fight the Gypsy.—Yes! a strong country fellow wished to win the stakes, and was about to fling up his hat in defiance, but he was prevented by his friends, with—‘Fool! he’ll kill you!’

“As the Gypsies were mounting their horses, I heard the dusty phantom exclaim—

“‘Brother, you are an arrant ring-maker and a horse-breaker; you’ll make a hempen ring to break your own neck of a horse one of these days.’

“They pressed their horses’ flanks, again leaped over the ditches, and speedily vanished, amidst the whirlwinds of dust which they raised upon the road.

“The words of the phantom Gypsy were ominous. Gypsy Will was eventually executed for a murder committed in his early youth, in company with two English labourers, one of whom confessed the fact on his death-bed. He was the head of the clan Young, which, with the clan Smith, still haunts two of the eastern counties.”

In spite of this, Borrow said in the same book that this would probably be the last occasion he would have to speak of the Gypsies or anything relating to them. In “The Bible in Spain,” written and revised several years later, he changed his mind. He wrote plenty about Gypsies and still more about himself. When he wished to show the height of the Spanish Prime Minister, Mendizabal, he called him “a huge athletic man, somewhat taller than myself, who measure six feet two without my shoes.” He informed the public that when he met an immense dog in strolling round the ruins above Monte Moro, he stooped till his chin nearly touched his knee and looked the animal full in the face, “and, as John Leyden says, in the noblest ballad which the Land of Heather has produced:—

‘The hound he yowled, and back he fled,
As struck with fairy charm.’”

When his servant Lopez was imprisoned at Villallos, Borrow had reason to fear that the man would be sacrificed to political opponents in that violent time, so, as he told the English minister at Madrid, he bore off Lopez, single-handed and entirely unarmed, through a crowd of at least one hundred peasants, and furthermore shouted: “Hurrah for Isabella the Second.” And as for mystery, “The Bible in Spain” abounds with invitations to admiration and curiosity. Let one example suffice. He had come back to Seville from a walk in the country when a man emerging from an archway looked in his face and started back, “exclaiming in the purest and most melodious French: ‘What do I see? If my eyes do not deceive me—it is himself. Yes, the very same as I saw him first at Bayonne; then long subsequently beneath the brick wall at Novgorod; then beside the Bosphorus; and last at—at—O my respectable and cherished friend, where was it that I had last the felicity of seeing your well-remembered and most remarkable physiognomy?’”

Borrows answers: “It was in the south of Ireland, if I mistake not. Was it not there that I introduced you to the sorcerer who tamed the savage horses by a single whisper into their ear? But tell me, what brings you to Spain and Andalusia, the last place where I should have expected to find you.”

Baron Taylor (Isidore Justin Severin, Baron Taylor, 1789-1879) now introduces him to a friend as “My most cherished and respectable friend, one who is better acquainted with Gypsy ways than the Chef de BohÉmiens À Triana, one who is an expert whisperer and horse-sorcerer, and who, to his honour I say it, can wield hammer and tongs, and handle a horse-shoe, with the best of the smiths amongst the Alpujarras of Granada.”

Borrow then lightly portrays his accomplished and extraordinary cosmopolitan friend, with the conclusion:

“He has visited most portions of the earth, and it is remarkable enough that we are continually encountering each other in strange places and under singular circumstances. Whenever he descries me, whether in the street or the desert, the brilliant hall or amongst Bedouin haimas, at Novgorod or Stamboul, he flings up his arms and exclaims, ‘O ciel! I have again the felicity of seeing my cherished and most respectable B---.’”

Borrow could not avoid making himself impressive and mysterious. He was impressive and mysterious without an effort; the individual or the public was impressed, and he was naturally tempted to be more impressive. Thus, in December of the year 1832 he had to go to London for his first meeting with the Bible Society, who had been recommended to give him work where he could use his knowledge of languages. As he was at Norwich, the distance was a hundred and twelve miles, and as he was poor he walked. He spent fivepence-halfpenny on a pint of ale, half-pint of milk, a roll of bread and two apples during the journey, which took him twenty-seven hours. He reached the Society’s office early in the morning and waited for the secretary. When the secretary arrived he hoped that Borrow had slept well on his journey. Borrow said that, as far as he knew, he had not slept, because he had walked. The secretary’s surprise can be imagined from this alone, or if not, from what followed. For Borrow went on talking, and told the man, among other things, that he was stolen by Gypsies when he was a boy—had passed several years with them, but had at last been recognised at a fair in Norfolk, and brought home to his family by an uncle. It was not to be expected that Borrow would conceal from the public “several years” of this kind. Nevertheless, in none of his books has he so much as hinted at a period of adoption with Gypsies when he was a boy. Nor has that massive sleuth-hound, Dr. Knapp, discovered any traces of such an adoption. If there is any foundation for the story except Borrow’s wish to please the secretary, it is the escapade of his fourteenth or fifteenth year—when he and three other boys from Norwich Grammar School played truant, intending to make caves to dwell in among the sandhills twenty miles away on the coast, but were recognised on the road, deceitfully detained by a benevolent gentleman and within a few days brought back, Borrow himself being horsed on the back of James Martineau, according to the picturesque legend, for such a thrashing that he had to lie in bed a fortnight and must bear the marks of it while he was flesh and blood. Borrow celebrated this escapade by a ballad in dialogue called “The Wandering Children and the Benevolent Gentleman. An Idyll of the Roads.” {13a} There may have been another escapade of the same kind, for Dr Knapp {13b} prints an account of how Borrow, at the age of fifteen, and two schoolfellows lived for three days in a cave at Acle when they ought to have been at school. But his companions were the same in both stories, and “three days in a cave” is a very modest increase for such a story in half-a-century. It was only fifteen years later that Borrow took revenge upon the truth and told the story of his exile with the Gypsies.

The Grammar School Norwich. Photo: Jarrold & Sons, Norwich

Probably every man has more or less clearly and more or less constantly before his mind’s eye an ideal self which the real seldom more than approaches. This ideal self may be morally or in other ways inferior, but it remains the standard by which the man judges his acts. Some men prove the existence of this ideal self by announcing now and then that they are misunderstood. Or they do things which they afterwards condemn as irrelevant or uncharacteristic and out of harmony. Borrow had an ideal self very clearly before him when he was writing, and it is probable that in writing he often described not what he was but what in a better, larger, freer, more Borrovian world he would have actually become. He admired the work of his Creator, but he would not affect to be satisfied with it in every detail, and stepping forward he snatched the brush and made a bolder line and braver colour. Also he ardently desired to do more than he ever did. When in Spain he wrote to his friend Hasfeldt at St. Petersburg, telling him that he wished to visit China by way of Russia or Constantinople and Armenia. When indignant with the Bible Society in 1838 he suggested retiring to “the Wilds of Tartary or the Zigani camps of Siberia.” He continued to suggest China even after his engagement to Mrs. Clarke.

Just as he played up to the Secretary in conversation, so he played up to the friends and the public who were allured by the stories left untold or half-told in “The Zincali” and “The Bible in Spain.” Chief among his encouragers was Richard Ford, author (in 1845) of the “Handbook for Travellers in Spain and Readers at Home,” a man of character and style, learned and a traveller. In 1841, before “The Bible in Spain” appeared, Ford told Borrow how he wished that he had told more about himself, and how he was going to hint in a review that Borrow ought to publish the whole of his adventures for the last twenty years. The publisher’s reader, who saw the manuscript of “The Bible in Spain” in 1842, suggested that Borrow should prefix a short account of his birth, parentage, education and life. But already Borrow had taken Ford’s hint and was thinking of an autobiography. By the end of 1842 he was suggesting a book on his early life, studies and adventures, Gypsies, boxers, philosophers; and he afterwards announced that “Lavengro” was planned and the characters sketched in 1842 and 1843. He saw himself as a public figure that had to be treated heroically. Read, for example, his preface to the second edition of “The Zincali,” dated March 1, 1843. There he tells of his astonishment at the success of “The Zincali,” and of John Murray bidding him not to think too much of the book but to try again and avoid “Gypsy poetry, dry laws, and compilations from dull Spanish authors.”

“Borromeo,” he makes Murray say to him, “Borromeo, don’t believe all you hear, nor think that you have accomplished anything so very extraordinary. . . .”

And so, he says, he sat down and began “The Bible in Spain.” He proceeds to make a picture of himself amidst a landscape by some raving Titanic painter’s hand:

“At first,” he says, “I proceeded slowly,—sickness was in the land and the face of nature was overcast,—heavy rain-clouds swam in the heavens,—the blast howled amid the pines which nearly surround my lonely dwelling, and the waters of the lake which lies before it, so quiet in general and tranquil, were fearfully agitated. ‘Bring lights hither, O Hayim Ben Attar, son of the miracle!’ And the Jew of Fez brought in the lights, for though it was midday I could scarcely see in the little room where I was writing. . . .

“A dreary summer and autumn passed by, and were succeeded by as gloomy a winter. I still proceeded with ‘The Bible in Spain.’ The winter passed and spring came with cold dry winds and occasional sunshine, whereupon I arose, shouted, and mounting my horse, even Sidi Habismilk, I scoured all the surrounding district, and thought but little of ‘The Bible in Spain.’

“So I rode about the country, over the heaths, and through the green lanes of my native land, occasionally visiting friends at a distance, and sometimes, for variety’s sake, I staid at home and amused myself by catching huge pike, which lie perdue in certain deep ponds skirted with lofty reeds, upon my land, and to which there is a communication from the lagoon by a deep and narrow watercourse.—I had almost forgotten ‘The Bible in Spain.’

“Then came the summer with much heat and sunshine, and then I would lie for hours in the sun and recall the sunny days I had spent in Andalusia, and my thoughts were continually reverting to Spain, and at last I remembered that ‘The Bible in Spain’ was still unfinished; whereupon I arose and said: This loitering profiteth nothing,—and I hastened to my summer-house by the side of the lake, and there I thought and wrote, and every day I repaired to the same place, and thought and wrote until I had finished ‘The Bible in Spain.’

“And at the proper season ‘The Bible in Spain’ was given to the world; and the world, both learned and unlearned, was delighted with ‘The Bible in Spain,’ and the highest authority said, ‘This is a much better book than the Gypsies;’ and the next great authority said, ‘Something betwixt Le Sage and Bunyan.’ ‘A far more entertaining work than Don Quixote,’ exclaimed a literary lady. ‘Another Gil Blas,’ said the cleverest writer in Europe. ‘Yes,’ exclaimed the cool sensible Spectator, ‘a Gil Blas in water colours.’

“A Gil Blas in water colours”—that, he says himself, pleased him better than all the rest. He liked to think that out of his adventures in distributing Bibles in Spain, out of letters describing his work to his employers, the Bible Society, he had made a narrative to be compared with the fictitious life and adventures of that gentle Spanish rogue, Gil Blas of Santillana. No wonder that he saw himself a public figure to be treated reverently, nay! heroically. And so when he comes to consider somebody’s suggestion that the Gypsies are of Jewish origin, he relates a “little adventure” of his own, bringing in Mr. Petulengro and the Jewish servant whom he had brought back with him after his last visit to Spain. He mounts the heroic figure upon an heroic horse:

“So it came to pass,” he says, “that one day I was scampering over a heath, at some distance from my present home: I was mounted upon the good horse Sidi Habismilk, and the Jew of Fez, swifter than the wind, ran by the side of the good horse Habismilk, when what should I see at a corner of the heath but the encampment of certain friends of mine; and the chief of that camp, even Mr. Petulengro, stood before the encampment, and his adopted daughter, Miss Pinfold, stood beside him.

“Myself.—‘Kosko divvus, {17a} Mr. Petulengro! I am glad to see you: how are you getting on?’

“Mr. Petulengro.—‘How am I getting on? as well as I can. What will you have for that nokengro?’ {17b}

“Thereupon I dismounted, and delivering the reins of the good horse to Miss Pinfold, I took the Jew of Fez, even Hayim Ben Attar, by the hand, and went up to Mr. Petulengro, exclaiming, ‘Sure ye are two brothers.’ Anon the Gypsy passed his hand over the Jew’s face, and stared him in the eyes: then turning to me, he said, ‘We are not dui palor; {17c} this man is no Roman; I believe him to be a Jew; he has the face of one; besides if he were a Rom, even from Jericho, he could rokra a few words in Rommany.’”

Still more important than this equestrian figure of Borrow on Sidi Habismilk is the note on “The English Dialect of the Rommany” hidden away at the end of the second edition of “The Zincali.”

“‘Tachipen if I jaw ’doi, I can lel a bit of tan to hatch: N’etist I shan’t puch kekomi wafu gorgies.’

“The above sentence, dear reader, I heard from the mouth of Mr. Petulengro, the last time that he did me the honour to visit me at my poor house, which was the day after Mol-divvus, {18a} 1842: he stayed with me during the greatest part of the morning, discoursing on the affairs of Egypt, the aspect of which, he assured me, was becoming daily worse and worse. ‘There is no living for the poor people, brother,’ said he, ‘the chokengres (police) pursue us from place to place, and the gorgios are become either so poor or miserly, that they grudge our cattle a bite of grass by the way side, and ourselves a yard of ground to light a fire upon. Unless times alter, brother, and of that I see no probability, unless you are made either poknees or mecralliskoe geiro (justice of the peace or prime minister), I am afraid the poor persons will have to give up wandering altogether, and then what will become of them?

“‘However, brother,’ he continued, in a more cheerful tone: ‘I am no hindity mush, {18b} as you well know. I suppose you have not forgot how, fifteen years ago, when you made horse-shoes in the little dingle by the side of the great north road, I lent you fifty cottors {18c} to purchase the wonderful trotting cob of the innkeeper with the green Newmarket coat, which three days after you sold for two hundred.

“‘Well, brother, if you had wanted the two hundred, instead of the fifty, I could have lent them to you, and would have done so, for I knew you would not be long pazorrhus to me. I am no hindity mush, brother, no Irishman; I laid out the other day twenty pounds, in buying ruponoe peamengries; {19a} and in the Chong-gav, {19b} have a house of my own with a yard behind it.

“‘And, forsooth, if I go thither, I can choose a place to light a fire upon, and shall have no necessity to ask leave of these here Gentiles.’

“Well, dear reader, this last is the translation of the Gypsy sentence which heads the chapter, and which is a very characteristic specimen of the general way of speaking of the English Gypsies.”

Here be mysteries. The author of “The Bible in Spain” is not only taken for a Gypsy, but once upon a time made horse-shoes in a dingle beside the great north road and trafficked in horses. When Borrow told John Murray of the Christmas meeting with Ambrose Smith, whom he now called “The Gypsy King,” he said he was dressed in “true regal fashion.” On the last day of that year he told Murray that he often meditated on his “life” and was arranging scenes. That reminder about the dingle and the wonderful trotting cob, and the Christmas wine, was stirring his brain. In two months time he had begun to write his “Life.” He got back from the Bible Society the letters written to them when he was their representative in Russia, and these he hoped to use as he had already used those written in Spain. Ford encouraged him, saying: “Truth is great and always pleases. Never mind nimminy-pimminy people thinking subjects low. Things are low in manner of handling.” In the midsummer of 1843 Borrow told Murray that he was getting on—“some parts are very wild and strange,” others are full of “useful information.” In another place he called the pictures in it Rembrandts interspersed with Claudes. At first the book was to have been “My Life, a Drama, by George Borrow”; at the end of the year it was “Lavengro, a Biography,” and also “My Life.” He was writing slowly “to please himself.” Later on he called it a biography “in the Robinson Crusoe style.” Nearly three years passed since that meeting with Mr. Petulengro, and still the book was not ready. Ford had been pressing him to lift a corner of the curtain which he had gradually let fall over the seven years of his life preceding his work for the Bible Society, but he made no promise. He was bent on putting in nothing but his best work, and avoiding haste. In July, 1848, Murray announced, among his “new works in preparation,” “Lavengro, an Autobiography, by George Borrow.” The first volume went to press in the autumn, and there was another announcement of “Lavengro, an Autobiography,” followed by one of “Life, a Drama.” Yet again in 1849 the book was announced as “Lavengro, an Autobiography,” though the first volume already bore the title, “Life, a Drama.” In 1850 publication was still delayed by Borrow’s ill health and his reluctance to finish and have done with the book. It was still announced as “Lavengro, an Autobiography.” But at the end of the year it was “Lavengro: the Scholar—the Gypsy—the Priest,” and with that title it appeared early in 1851. Borrow was then forty-six years old, and the third volume of his book left him still in the dingle beside the great north road, when he was, according to the conversation with Mr. Petulengro, a young man of twenty-one.

East Dereham Church, Norfolk. Photo: H. T. Cave, East Dereham