At the end of these travels Borrow had turned twenty-two. His brother John painted his portrait, but it has disappeared, and Borrow himself, as if fearing lest no adequate picture of him should remain, took pains to leave the material for one. It is a peculiarity of his books that people whom he meets and converses with often remark on his appearance. He must himself have been tolerably familiar with it and used to comment on it. He told his father that a lady thought him like Alfieri’s Saul; at a later date Haydon, the painter, said he would “make a capital Pharaoh.” Years before, when he was a boy, Petulengro recognised him after a long absence, because there was something in his face to prevent people from forgetting him. Mrs. Herne, his Gypsy enemy, praised him for his “singular and outrageous ugliness.” He was lean, long-limbed and tall, having reached his full height of six-feet-two probably before the end of his teens; he had plenty of room to fill before becoming a big man, and yet he was already powerful and clearly destined to be a big man. His hair had for some time been rapidly becoming grey, and was soon to be altogether white: it had once been black, and his strongly-marked eyebrows were still dark brown. His face was oval and inclining to olive in complexion; his nose rounded, but not too large; his mouth good and well-moulded; his eyes dark brown and noticeable indescribably, either through their light or through the curve of the eyelids across them. “You have a flash about that eye of yours,” says the old apple woman, and it is she that notices the “blob of foam” on his lips, while he is musing aloud, exclaiming “Necessity!” and cracking his finger-joints. He had an Irish look, or so thought his London acquaintance, Ardry. He looked “rather wild” at times and he had a way of clenching his fist when he was determined not to be put upon, as the bullying coachman found who had said: “One-and-ninepence, sir, or the things which you have brought with you will be taken away from you.” Yet he had small hands for his size and “long white fingers,” which “would just serve for the business,” said the thimble-rigger. Though ready to hit people when he is angry, “a more civil and pleasant-spoken person than yourself,” says Ursula, “can’t be found.” His own opinion was “that he was not altogether deficient in courage and in propriety of behaviour. . . . That his appearance was not particularly against him, his face not being like that of a convicted pickpocket, nor his gait resembling that of a fox that has lost his tail.” It is as a “poor thin lad” that he commends himself to us, through the mouth of the old apple woman, at his setting out from London, but as he gets on he shows himself “an excellent pedestrian.”

Already in London he has made one or two favourable impressions, as when he convinces the superb waiter that he is “accustomed to claret.” But it is upon the roads that he wishes to shine. When the Man in Black asks how he knows him, he answers that “Gypsies have various ways of obtaining information.” Later on, he makes the Man in Black address him as “Zingaro.” He impresses the commercial traveller as “a confounded sensible young fellow, and not at all opinionated,” and Lord Whitefeather as a highwayman in disguise, and the Gypsies as one who never spoke a bad word and never did a bad thing. This is his most impressive moment, when the jockey discovers that he is the Romany Rye and tells him there is scarcely a part of England where he has not heard the name of the Romany Rye mentioned by the Gypsies. Here he makes another praise him. Now let him mount the fine horse he has bought with £50 borrowed from a Gypsy, and is about to sell for £150 at Horncastle Fair.

“After a slight breakfast I mounted the horse, which, decked out in his borrowed finery, really looked better by a large sum of money than on any former occasion. Making my way out of the yard of the inn, I was instantly in the principal street of the town, up and down which an immense number of horses were being exhibited, some led, and others with riders. ‘A wonderful small quantity of good horses in the fair this time!’ I heard a stout jockey-looking individual say, who was staring up the street with his side towards me. ‘Halloo, young fellow!’ said he, a few moments after I had passed, ‘whose horse is that? Stop! I want to look at him!’ Though confident that he was addressing himself to me, I took no notice, remembering the advice of the ostler, and proceeded up the street. My horse possessed a good walking step; but walking, as the reader knows, was not his best pace, which was the long trot, at which I could not well exercise him in the street, on account of the crowd of men and animals; however, as he walked along, I could easily perceive that he attracted no slight attention amongst those who, by their jockey dress and general appearance, I imagined to be connoisseurs; I heard various calls to stop, to none of which I paid the slightest attention. In a few minutes I found myself out of the town, when, turning round for the purpose of returning, I found I had been followed by several of the connoisseur-looking individuals, whom I had observed in the fair. ‘Now would be the time for a display,’ thought I; and looking around me I observed two five-barred gates, one on each side of the road, and fronting each other. Turning my horse’s head to one, I pressed my heels to his sides, loosened the reins, and gave an encouraging cry, whereupon the animal cleared the gate in a twinkling. Before he had advanced ten yards in the field to which the gate opened, I had turned him round, and again giving him cry and rein, I caused him to leap back again into the road, and still allowing him head, I made him leap the other gate; and forthwith turning him round, I caused him to leap once more into the road, where he stood proudly tossing his head, as much as to say, ‘What more?’ ‘A fine horse! a capital horse!’ said several of the connoisseurs. ‘What do you ask for him?’ ‘Too much for any of you to pay,’ said I. ‘A horse like this is intended for other kind of customers than any of you.’ ‘How do you know that?’ said one; the very same person whom I had heard complaining in the street of the paucity of good horses in the fair. ‘Come, let us know what you ask for him?’ ‘A hundred and fifty pounds!’ said I; ‘neither more nor less.’ ‘Do you call that a great price?’ said the man. ‘Why, I thought you would have asked double that amount! You do yourself injustice, young man.’ ‘Perhaps I do,’ said I, ‘but that’s my affair; I do not choose to take more.’ ‘I wish you would let me get into the saddle,’ said the man; ‘the horse knows you, and therefore shows to more advantage; but I should like to see how he would move under me, who am a stranger. Will you let me get into the saddle, young man?’ ‘No,’ said I, ‘I will not let you get into the saddle.’ ‘Why not?’ said the man. ‘Lest you should be a Yorkshireman,’ said I, ‘and should run away with the horse.’ ‘Yorkshire?’ said the man; ‘I am from Suffolk; silly Suffolk—so you need not be afraid of my running away with the horse.’ ‘Oh! if that’s the case,’ said I, ‘I should be afraid that the horse would run away with you; so I will by no means let you mount.’ ‘Will you let me look in his mouth?’ said the man. ‘If you please,’ said I; ‘but I tell you, he’s apt to bite.’ ‘He can scarcely be a worse bite than his master,’ said the man, looking into the horse’s mouth; ‘he’s four off. I say, young man, will you warrant this horse?’ ‘No,’ said I; ‘I never warrant horses; the horses that I ride can always warrant themselves.’ ‘I wish you would let me speak a word to you,’ said he. ‘Just come aside. It’s a nice horse,’ said he, in a half whisper, after I had ridden a few paces aside with him. ‘It’s a nice horse,’ said he, placing his hand upon the pommel of the saddle and looking up in my face, ‘and I think I can find you a customer. If you would take a hundred, I think my lord would purchase it, for he has sent me about the fair to look him up a horse, by which he could hope to make an honest penny.’ ‘Well,’ said I, ‘and could he not make an honest penny, and yet give me the price I ask?’ ‘Why,’ said the go-between, ‘a hundred and fifty pounds is as much as the animal is worth, or nearly so; and my lord, do you see . . .’ ‘I see no reason at all,’ said I, ‘why I should sell the animal for less than he is worth, in order that his lordship may be benefited by him; so that if his lordship wants to make an honest penny, he must find some person who would consider the disadvantage of selling him a horse for less than it is worth, as counterbalanced by the honour of dealing with a lord, which I should never do; but I can’t be wasting my time here. I am going back to the . . ., where if you, or any person, are desirous of purchasing the horse, you must come within the next half-hour, or I shall probably not feel disposed to sell him at all.’ ‘Another word, young man,’ said the jockey; but without staying to hear what he had to say, I put the horse to his best trot, and re-entering the town, and threading my way as well as I could through the press, I returned to the yard of the inn, where, dismounting, I stood still, holding the horse by the bridle.”

As no one else troubled to paint Borrow either at Horncastle or any other place, and as he took advantage of the fact to such purpose, I must leave this portrait as it is, only I shall remind the reader that it is not a photograph but a portrait of the painter. A little time ago this painter was a consumptive-looking literary hack, and is still a philologist, with eyes a bit dim from too much reading, and subject to frantic melancholy;—a liker of solitude and of men and women who do not disturb it, but a man accustomed to men and very well able to deal with them.