From 1860 to 1874 Borrow lived at Brompton, and perhaps because he wrote few letters these years seem to have been more cheerful, except at the time of his wife’s death. He is seen at “The Star and Garter” in 1861 entertaining Murray and two others at dinner, in a heavy and expensive style. He is still an uncomfortable, unattractive figure in a drawing-room, especially with accurate and intelligent ladies, like Miss Frances Power Cobbe, who would not humour his inaccurate dictatorship. Miss Cobbe was his neighbour in Hereford Square. She says that if he was not a Gypsy by blood he ought to have been one; she “never liked him, thinking him more or less of a hypocrite,” but nevertheless invited him to her house and tried to console him in his bereavement by a gentle tact which was not tact in Borrow’s case:

“Poor old Borrow is in a sad state. I hope he is starting in a day or two for Scotland. I sent C--- with a note begging him to come and eat the Welsh mutton you sent me to-day, and he sent back word, ‘Yes.’ Then, an hour afterwards, he arrived, and in a most agitated manner said he had come to say ‘he would rather not. He would not trouble anyone with his sorrows.’ I made him sit down, and talked to him as gently as possible, saying: ‘It won’t be a trouble, Mr. Borrow, it will be a pleasure to me.’ But it was all of no use. He was so cross, so rude, I had the greatest difficulty in talking to him. I asked him would he look at the photos of the Siamese, and he said: ‘Don’t show them to me!’ So, in despair, as he sat silent, I told him I had been at a pleasant dinner-party the night before, and had met Mr. L---, who told me of certain curious books of mediÆval history. ‘Did he know them?’ ‘No, and he dared say Mr. L--- did not, either! Who was Mr. L---?’ I described that obscure individual (one of the foremost writers of the day), and added that he was immensely liked by everybody. Whereupon Borrow repeated at least twelve times, ‘Immensely liked! As if a man could be immensely liked!’ quite insultingly. To make a diversion (I was very patient with him as he was in trouble) I said I had just come home from the Lyell’s and had heard . . . But there was no time to say what I had heard! Mr. Borrow asked: ‘Is that old Lyle I met here once, the man who stands at the door (of some den or other) and bets?’ I explained who Sir Charles was (of course he knew very well), but he went on and on, till I said gravely: ‘I don’t think you meet those sort of people here, Mr. Borrow—we don’t associate with Blacklegs, exactly.’”

A cantankerous man, and as little fitted for Miss Cobbe as Miss Cobbe for him.

Francis Power Cobbe. (Reproduced by kind permission of Messrs. Miller, Taylor and Holmes.)

There is not one pleasant story of Borrow in a drawing-room. His great and stately stature, his bright “very black” or “soft brown” eyes, thick white hair, and smooth oval face, his “loud rich voice” that could be menacing with nervousness when he was roused, his “bold heroic air,” {313} ever encased in black raiment to complete the likeness to a “colossal clergyman,” never seemed to go with any kind of furniture, wall-paper, or indoor company where there were strangers who might pester him. His physical vigour endured, though when nearing sixty he is said to have lamented that he was childless, saying mournfully: “I shall soon not be able to knock a man down, and I have no son to do it for me.” {314a} No record remains of his knocking any man down. But, at seventy, he could have walked off with E. J. Trelawny, Shelley’s friend, under his arm, and was not averse to putting up his “dukes” to a tramp if necessary. {314b} At Ascot in 1872 he intervened when two or three hundred soldiers from Windsor were going to wreck a Gypsy camp for some affront. Amid the cursing and screaming and brandishing of belts and tent-rods appeared “an arbiter, a white-haired brown-eyed calm Colossus, speaking Romany fluently, and drinking deep draughts of ale—in a quarter of an hour Tommy Atkins and Anselo Stanley were sworn friends over a loving quart.” {314c} But this is told by Hindes Groome, who said in one place that he met Borrow once, and in another three times. At seventy, he would breakfast at eight in Hereford Square, walk to Roehampton and pick up Mr. Watts-Dunton or Mr. Hake, roam about Wimbledon Common and Richmond Park, bathe in the Pen Ponds even if it were March and there were ice on the water, then run about to dry, and after fasting for twelve hours would eat a dinner at Roehampton “that would have done Sir Walter Scott’s eyes good to see.” {314d} He loved Richmond Park, and “seemed to know every tree.” {314e} He loved also “The Bald-faced Stag,” in Roehampton Valley, and over his pot of ale would talk about Jerry Abershaw, the highwayman, and his deeds performed in the neighbourhood. {314f} If he liked old Burton and ’37 port he was willing to drink the worst swipes if necessary. {314g}

At another “Bald-faced Hind,” above Fairlop, he used to see the Gypsies, for it was their trysting place. He went in search of them in Wandsworth and Battersea and whereever they were to be found, from Notting Hill to Epsom Downs, though they were corrupted by loss of liberty and, in his opinion, were destined soon to disappear, “merged in the dregs of the English population.” With them, as with others, his vocabulary was “rich in picturesque words of the high road and dingle.” Once he consented to join a friend in trying Matthew Arnold’s “Scholar Gypsy” on Gypsy taste. The Gypsy girl was pleased with the seventeenth-century story on which the poem is based, and with some “lovely bits of description,” but she was in the main at first bewildered, and at last unsympathetic and ran away. The beauty of the girl was too much for Borrow’s power of expression—it was “really quite—quite—.” The girl’s companion, a young woman with a child, was smoking a pipe, and Borrow took it out of her mouth and asked her not to smoke till he came again, because the child was sickly and his friend put it down to the tobacco. “It ought to be a criminal offence for a woman to smoke at all,” said Borrow; “fancy kissing a woman’s mouth that smelt of stale tobacco—pheugh!” {315} Whether this proves Borrow’s susceptibility to female charm I cannot say, but it seems to me rather to prove a sort of connoisseurship, which is not the same thing.

Just after he was seventy, in 1874, the year of Jasper Petulengro’s death, Borrow left London for Oulton. He was no longer the walker and winter bather of a year or two before, but was frequently at lodgings in Norwich, and seen and noted as he walked in the streets or sat in the “Norfolk.” At Oulton he was much alone and was to be heard “by startled rowers on the lake” chanting verses after his fashion. His remarkable appearance, his solitariness in the neglected house and tangled garden, his conversation with Gypsies whom he allowed to camp on his land, created something of a legend. Children called after him “Gypsy!” or “Witch!” {316} Towards the end he was joined at Oulton by his stepdaughter and her husband, Dr. MacOubrey. In 1879 he was too feeble to walk a few hundred yards, and furious with a man who asked his age. In 1880 he made his will. On July 26, 1881, when he was left entirely alone for the day, he died, after having expected death for some time. He was taken to West Brompton to be buried in that cemetery beside his wife.