Then, on a fair day on Blackheath, he met Mr. Petulengro again who said he looked ill and offered him the loan of £50, which he would not accept, nor his invitation to join the band. Dr. Knapp confidently gives the date of May 12 to this incident because that is the day of the annual fair. Then seeing an advertisement: “A Novel or Tale is much wanted,” outside a bookseller’s shop, Borrow wrote “The Life and Adventures of Joseph Sell, the Great Traveller.” Did he? Dr. Knapp thinks he did, but that the story had another name, and is to be sought for in such collections of 1825 and 1826 as “Watt’s Literary Souvenir.” As Borrow speaks of the materials of it having come from his own brain, and as Dr. Knapp says he could not invent, why not conclude that it was autobiographical?

There is no evidence except that the account sounds true, and might very well be true. Dr. Knapp thinks that he wrote this book, and that he did many other things which he said he did, because wherever there is any evidence it corroborates Borrow’s statements except in small matters of names and dates. In the earlier version of “Lavengro,” represented by a manuscript and a proof, “Ardry” is “Arden,” “Jasper” is “Ambrose,” and the question “What is his name?” is answered by “Thurtell,” instead of a blank. Now there was an Ambrose Smith whom Borrow knew, and Thurtell was such a man as he describes in search of a place for the fight. Therefore, Dr. Knapp would be inclined to say that Borrow did know a young man named Arden. And, furthermore, as Isopel is called Elizabeth in that earlier version, Isopel did exist, but her name was Elizabeth: she was, says Mr. Watts-Dunton, “really an East Anglian road girl” (not a Gypsy) “of the finest type, known to the Boswells and remembered not many years ago.” And speaking of Isopel—there is a story still to be heard at Long Melford of a girl “who lived on the green and ran away with the Gypsy,” in about the year 1825. With this may possibly be connected another story: of a young painter of dogs and horses who was living at Melford in 1805 and seduced either one or two sisters of the warden of the hospital or almshouse, and had two illegitimate children, one at any rate a girl. The Great House was one used, but not built, for a workhouse: it stood near the vicarage at Melford, but has now disappeared, and apparently its records with it.

Borrow did not invent, says Knapp, which is absurd. Some of his reappearances, recognitions and coincidences must be inventions. The postillion’s tale must be largely invention. But it is not fair or necessary to retort as Hindes Groome did: “Is the Man in Black then also a reality, and the Reverend Mr. Platitude? In other words, did Tractarianism exist in 1825, eight years before it was engendered by Keble’s sermon?” For Borrow was unscrupulous or careless about time and place. But it is fair and necessary to say, as Hindes Groome did, that some of the unverities in “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye” are “probably due to forgetfulness,” the rest to “love of posing, but much more to an honest desire to produce an amusing and interesting book.” {93a} Borrow was a great admirer of the “Memoirs” {93b} of Vidocq,” principal agent of the French police till 1827—now proprietor of the paper manufactory at St. Maude,” and formerly showman, soldier, galley slave, and highwayman. Of this book the editor says:

“It is not our province or intention to enter into a discussion of the veracity of Vidocq’s “Memoirs”: be they true or false, were they purely fiction from the first chapter to the last, they would, from fertility of invention, knowledge of human nature, and easy style, rank only second to the novels of Le Sage.”

It was certainly with books such as this in his mind that Borrow composed his autobiography, but it goes so much deeper that it is at every point a revelation, usually of actual events and emotions, always of thought and taste. In these “Memoirs” of Vidocq there is a man named Christian, or Caron, with a reputation for removing charms cast on animals, and he takes Vidocq to his Gypsy friends at Malines:

“Having traversed the city, we stopped in the Faubourg de Louvain, before a wretched looking house with blackened walls, furrowed with wide crevices, and many bundles of straw as substitutes for window glasses. It was midnight, and I had time to make my observations by the moonlight, for more than half an hour elapsed before the door was opened by one of the most hideous old hags I ever saw in my life. We were then introduced to a long room where thirty persons of both sexes were indiscriminately smoking and drinking, mingling in strange and licentious positions. Under their blue loose frocks, ornamented with red embroidery, the men wore blue velvet waistcoats with silver buttons, like the Andalusian muleteers; the clothing of the women was all of one bright colour; there were some ferocious countenances amongst them, but yet they were all feasting. The monotonous sound of a drum, mingled with the howling of two dogs tied under the table, accompanied the strange songs, which I mistook for a funeral psalm. The smoke of tobacco and wood which filled this den, scarcely allowed me to perceive in the midst of the room a woman, who, adorned with a scarlet turban, was performing a wild dance with the most wanton postures.”

Dr. Knapp, on insufficient evidence, attributes the translation to Borrow. But certainly Borrow might have incorporated this passage in his own work almost word for word without justifying a charge either of plagiarism or untruth. Other men had written fiction as if it were autobiography; he was writing autobiography as if it were fiction; he used his own life as a subject for fiction. Ford crudely said that Borrow “coloured up and poetised” his adventures.