George Borrow and His Circle / Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters of Borrow and His Friends

CHAPTER XXV LAVENGRO

The Bible in Spain bears on its title-page the date 1843, although my copy makes it clear in Borrow's handwriting that it was really ready for publication in the previous year.

Borrow's handwriting had changed its character somewhat when he inscribed to his wife a copy of his next book Lavengro in 1851.

In the intervening eight or nine years he had travelled much—suffered much. During all these years he had been thinking about, talking about, his next book, making no secret of the fact that it was to be an Autobiography. Even before The Bible in Spain was issued he had written to Mr. John Murray foreshadowing a book in which his father, William Taylor, and others were to put in an appearance. In the 'Advertisement' to The Romany Rye he tells us that 'the principal part of Lavengro was written in the year '43, that the whole of it was completed before the termination of the year '46, and that it was in the hands of the publisher in the year '48.' As the idea grew in his mind, his friend, Richard Ford, gave him much sound advice:

Never mind nimminy-pimminy people thinking subjects low. Things are low in manner of handling. Draw Nature in rags and poverty, yet draw her truly, and how picturesque! I hate your silver fork, kid glove, curly-haired school.[169]

And so in the following years, now to Ford, now to Murray, he traces his progress, while in 1844 he tells Dawson Turner that he is 'at present engaged in a kind of Biography in the Robinson Crusoe style.'[170] But in the same year he went to Buda-Pesth, Venice, and Constantinople. The first advertisement of the book appeared in The Quarterly Review in July 1848, when Lavengro, An Autobiography, was announced. Later in the same year Mr. Murray advertised the book as Life, A Drama; and Dr. Knapp, who had in his collection the original proof-sheets of Lavengro, reproduces the title-page of the book which then stood as Life, A Drama, and bore the date 1849. Borrow's procrastination in delivering the complete book worried John Murray exceedingly. Not unnaturally, for in 1848 he had offered the book at his annual sale dinner to the booksellers who had subscribed to it liberally. Eighteen months later Murray was still worrying Borrow for the return of the proof-sheets of the third and last volume. Not until January 1850 do we hear of it as Lavengro, An Autobiography, and under this title it was advertised in The Quarterly Review for that month as 'nearly ready for publication.' In April 1850 we find Woodfall, John Murray's printer, writing letter after letter urging celerity, to which Mrs. Borrow replies, excusing the delay on account of her husband's indifferent health. They have been together in lodgings at Yarmouth. 'He had many plunges into the briny Ocean, which seemed to do him good.'[171] Murray continued to exhort, but the final chapter did not reach him. 'My sale is fixed for December 12th,' he writes in November, 'and if I cannot show the book then I must throw it up.' This threat had little effect, for on 13th December we find Murray still coaxing his dilatory author, telling him with justice that there were passages in his book 'equal to Defoe.' The very printer, Mr. Woodfall, joined in the chase. 'The public is quite prepared to devour your book,' he wrote, which was unhappily not the case. Nor was Ford a happier prophet, although a true friend when he wrote—'I am sure it will be the book of the year when it is brought forth.'[172] The activity of Mrs. Borrow in this matter of the publication of Lavengro is interesting. 'My husband ... is, I assure you, doing all he can as regards the completion of the book,' she writes to Mr. Murray in December 1849, and in November of the following year Murray writes to her to say that he is engraving Phillips's portrait of Borrow for the book. 'I think a cheering letter from you will do Mr. Borrow good,' she writes later. Throughout the whole correspondence between publisher and printer we are impressed by Mrs. Borrow's keen interest in her husband's book, her anxiety that he should be humoured. Sadly did Borrow need to be humoured, for if he had cherished the illusion that his book would really be the 'Book of the Year' he was to suffer a cruel disillusion. Scarcely any one wanted it. All the critics abused it. In The AthenÆum it was bluntly pronounced a failure. 'The story of Lavengro will content no one,' said Sir William Stirling-Maxwell in Fraser's Magazine. The book 'will add but little to Mr. Borrow's reputation,' said Blackwood. The only real insight into the book's significance was provided by Thomas Gordon Hake in a letter to The New Monthly Review, in which journal the editor, Harrison Ainsworth, had already pronounced a not very favourable opinion. 'Lavengro's roots will strike deep into the soil of English letters,' wrote Dr. Hake, and he then pronounced a verdict now universally accepted. George Henry Lewes once happily remarked that he would make an appreciation of Boswell's Life of Johnson a test of friendship. Many of us would be almost equally inclined to make such a test of Borrow's Lavengro. Tennyson declared that an enthusiasm for Milton's Lycidas was a touchstone of taste in poetry. May we not say that an enthusiasm for Borrow's Lavengro is now a touchstone of taste in English prose literature?

But the reception of Lavengro by the critics, and also by the public,[173] may be said to have destroyed Borrow's moral fibre. Henceforth, it was a soured and disappointed man who went forth to meet the world. We hear much in the gossip of contemporaries of Borrow's eccentricities, it may be of his rudeness and gruffness, in the last years of his life. Only those who can realise the personality of a self-contained man, conscious, as all genius has ever been, of its achievement, and conscious also of the failure of the world to recognise, will understand—and will sympathise.

Borrow, as we have seen, took many years to write Lavengro. 'I am writing the work,' he told Dawson Turner, 'in precisely the same manner as The Bible in Spain, viz., on blank sheets of old account-books, backs of letters,' etc., and he recalls Mahomet writing the Koran on mutton bones as an analogy to his own 'slovenliness of manuscript.'[174] I have had plenty of opportunity of testing this slovenliness in the collection of manuscripts of portions of Lavengro that have come into my possession. These are written upon pieces of paper of all shapes and sizes, although at least a third of the book in Borrow's very neat handwriting is contained in a leather notebook, of which I give examples of the title-page and opening leaf in facsimile. The title-page demonstrates the earliest form of Borrow's conception. Not only did he then contemplate an undisguised autobiography, but even described himself, as he frequently did in his conversation, as 'a Norfolk man.' Before the book was finished, however, he repudiated the autobiographical note, and by the time he sat down to write The Romany Rye we find him fiercely denouncing his critics for coming to such a conclusion. 'The writer,' he declares, 'never said it was an autobiography; never authorised any person to say it was one.' Which was doubtless true, in a measure. Yet I find among my Borrow Papers the following letter from Whitwell Elwin, who, writing from Booton Rectory on 21st October 1852, and addressing him as 'My dear Mr. Borrow,' said:

THE ORIGINAL TITLE-PAGE OF LAVENGRO. From the Manuscript in the possession of the Author of 'George Borrow and his Circle.' THE ORIGINAL TITLE-PAGE OF LAVENGRO.
From the Manuscript in the possession of the Author of 'George Borrow and his Circle.'

I hoped to have been able to call upon you at Yarmouth, but a heavy cold first, and now occupation, have interfered with my intentions. I daresay you have seen the mention made of your Lavengro in the article on Haydon in the current number of The Quarterly Review, and I thought you might like to know that every syllable, both comment and extract, was inserted by the writer (a man little given to praise) of his own accord. Murray sent him your book, and that was all. No addition or modification was made by myself, and it is therefore the unbiassed judgment of a very critical reviewer. Whenever you appear again before the public I shall endeavour to do ample justice to your past and present merits, and there is one point in which you could aid those who understand you and your books in bringing over general readers to your side. I was myself acquainted with many of the persons you have sketched in your Lavengro, and I can testify to the extraordinary vividness and accuracy of the portraits. What I have seen, again, of yourself tells me that romantic adventures are your natural element, and I should a priori expect that much of your history would be stranger than fiction. But you must remember that the bulk of readers have no personal acquaintance with you, or the characters you describe. The consequence is that they fancy there is an immensity of romance mixed up with the facts, and they are irritated by the inability to distinguish between them. I am confident, from all I have heard, that this was the source of the comparatively cold reception of Lavengro. I should have partaken the feeling myself if I had not had the means of testing the fidelity of many portions of the book, from which I inferred the equal fidelity of the rest. I think you have the remedy in your own hands, viz., by giving the utmost possible matter-of-fact air to your sequel. I do not mean that you are to tame down the truth, but some ways of narrating a story make it seem more credible than others, and if you were so far to defer to the ignorance of the public they would enter into the full spirit of your rich and racy narrative. You naturally look at your life from your own point of view, and this in itself is the best; but when you publish a book you invite the reader to participate in the events of your career, and it is necessary then to look a little at things from his point of view. As he has not your knowledge you must stoop to him. I throw this out for your consideration. My sole wish is that the public should have a right estimate of you, and surely you ought to do what is in your power to help them to it. I know you will excuse the liberty I take in offering this crude suggestion. Take it for what it is worth, but anyhow....

FACSIMILE OF THE FIRST PAGE OF LAVENGRO. From the Manuscript in the possession of the Author of 'George Borrow and his Circle.' FACSIMILE OF THE FIRST PAGE OF LAVENGRO.
From the Manuscript in the possession of the Author of 'George Borrow and his Circle.'

To this letter, as we learn from Elwin's Life, 'instead of roaring like a lion,' as Elwin had expected, he returned quite a 'lamb-like note.'

Read by the light in which we all judge the book to-day, this estimate by Elwin was about as fatuous as most contemporary criticisms of a masterpiece. Which is only to say that it is rarely given to contemporary critics to judge accurately of the great work that comes to them amid a mass that is not great. That Elwin, although not a good editor of Pope, was a sound critic of the literature of a period anterior to his own is demonstrated by the admirable essays from his pen that have been reprinted with an excellent memoir of him by his son.[175] In this memoir we have a capital glimpse of our hero:

Among the notables whom he had met was Borrow, whose Lavengro and Romany Rye he afterwards reviewed in 1857 under the title of 'Roving Life in England,' Their interview was characteristic of both. Borrow was just then very sore with his snarling critics, and on some one mentioning that Elwin was a quartering reviewer, he said, 'Sir, I wish you a better employment.' Then hastily changing the subject he called out, 'What party are you in the Church—Tractarian, Moderate, or Evangelical? I am happy to say I am the old High.' 'I am happy to say I am not,' was Elwin's emphatic reply. Borrow boasted of his proficiency in the Norfolk dialect, which he endeavoured to speak as broadly as possible. 'I told him,' said Elwin, 'that he had not cultivated it with his usual success.' As the conversation proceeded it became less disputatious, and the two ended by becoming so cordial that they promised to visit each other. Borrow fulfilled his promise in the following October, when he went to Booton,[176] and was 'full of anecdote and reminiscence,' and delighted the rectory children by singing them songs in the gypsy tongue. Elwin during this visit urged him to try his hand at an article for the Review. 'Never,' he said; 'I have made a resolution never to have anything to do with such a blackguard trade.'

While writing of Whitwell Elwin and his association with Borrow, which was sometimes rather strained as we shall see when The Romany Rye comes to be published, it is interesting to turn to Elwin's final impression of Borrow, as conveyed in a letter which the recipient[177] has kindly placed at my disposal. It was written from Booton Rectory, and is dated 27th October 1893:

I used occasionally to meet Borrow at the house of Mr. Murray, his publisher, and he once stayed with me here for two or three days about 1855. He always seemed to me quite at ease 'among refined people,' and I should not have ascribed his dogmatic tone, when he adopted it, to his resentment at finding himself out of keeping with his society. A spirit of self-assertion was engrained in him, and it was supported by a combative temperament. As he was proud of his bodily prowess, and rather given to parade it, so he took the same view of an argument as of a battle with fists, and thought that manliness required him to be determined and unflinching. But this, in my experience of him, was not his ordinary manner, which was calm and companionable, without rudeness of any kind, unless some difference occurred to provoke his pugnacity. I have witnessed instances of his care to avoid wounding feelings needlessly. He never kept back his opinions which, on some points, were shallow and even absurd; and when his antagonist was as persistently positive as himself, he was apt to be over vehement in contradiction. I have heard Mr. Murray say that once in a dispute with Dr. Whewell at a dinner the language on both sides grew so fiery that Mrs. Whewell fainted.

He told me that his composition cost him a vast amount of labour, that his first draughts were diffuse and crude, and that he wrote his productions several times before he had condensed and polished them to his mind. There is nothing choicer in the English language than some of his narratives, descriptions, and sketches of character, but in his best books he did not always prune sufficiently, and in his last work, Wild Wales, he seemed to me to have lost the faculty altogether. Mr. Murray long refused to publish it unless it was curtailed, and Borrow, with his usual self-will and self-confidence, refused to retrench the trivialities. Either he got his own way in the end, or he revised his manuscript to little purpose.

Probably most of what there was to tell of Borrow has been related by himself. It is a disadvantage in Lavengro and Romany Rye that we cannot with certainty separate fact from fiction, for he avowed in talk that, like Goethe, he had assumed the right in the interests of his autobiographical narrative to embellish it in places; but the main outline, and larger part of the details, are the genuine record of what he had seen and done, and I can testify that some of his minor personages who were known to me in my boyhood are described with perfect accuracy.

Two letters by Mr. Elwin to Borrow, from my Borrow Papers, both dated 1853—two years after Lavengro was written,—may well have place here:

To George Borrow, Esq.

Booton, Norwich, Oct. 26, 1853.

My dear Mr. Borrow,—I shall be rejoiced to see you here, and I hope you will fasten a little luggage to the bow of your saddle, and spend as much time under my roof as you can spare. I am always at home. Mrs. Elwin is sure to be in the house or garden, and I, at the worst, not further off than the extreme boundary of my parish. Pray come, and that quickly. Your shortest road from Norwich is through Horsford, and from thence to the park wall of Haverland Hall, which you skirt. This will bring you out by a small wayside public house, well known in these parts, called 'The Rat-catchers.' At this point you turn sharp to the left, and keep the straight road till you come to a church with a new red brick house adjoining, which is your journey's end.

The conclusion of your note to me is so true in sentiment, and so admirable in expression, that I hope you will introduce it into your next work. I wish it had been said in the article on Haydon. Cannot you strew such criticisms through the sequel to Lavengro? They would give additional charm and value to the work. Believe me, very truly yours,

W. Elwin.

You are of course aware that if I had spoken of Lavengro in the Q.R. I should have said much more, but as I hoped for my turn hereafter, I preferred to let the passage go forth unadulterated.

To George Borrow, Esq.

Booton Rectory, Norwich, Nov. 5, 1853.

My dear Mr. Borrow,—-You bore your mishap with a philosophic patience, and started with an energy which gives the best earnest that you would arrive safe and sound at Norwich. I was happy to find yesterday morning, by the arrival of your kind present, a sure notification that you were well home. Many thanks for the tea, which we drink with great zest and diligence. My legs are not as long as yours, nor my breath either. You soon made me feel that I must either turn back or be left behind, so I chose the former. Mrs. Elwin and my children desire their kind regards. They one and all enjoyed your visit. Believe me, very truly yours,

W. Elwin.

I have said that I possess large portions of Lavengro in manuscript. Borrow's always helpful wife, however, copied out the whole manuscript for the publishers, and this 'clean copy' came to Dr. Knapp, who found even here a few pages of very valuable writing deleted, and these he has very rightly restored in Mr. Murray's edition of Lavengro. Why Borrow took so much pains to explain that his wife had copied Lavengro, as the following document implies, I cannot think. I find in his handwriting this scrap of paper signed by Mary Borrow, and witnessed by her daughter:

Janry. 30, 1869.

This is to certify that I transcribed The Bible in Spain, Lavengro, and some other works of my husband George Borrow, from the original manuscripts. A considerable portion of the transcript of Lavengro was lost at the printing-office where the work was printed.

Mary Borrow.
Witness: Henrietta M., daughter of Mary Borrow.

It only remains here to state the melancholy fact once again that Lavengro, great work of literature as it is now universally acknowledged to be, was not 'the book of the year.' The three thousand copies of the first issue took more than twenty years to sell, and it was not until 1872 that Mr. Murray resolved to issue a cheaper edition. The time was not ripe for the cult of the open road; the zest for 'the wind on the heath' that our age shares so keenly.

FOOTNOTES:

[169] Knapp's Life, vol. ii p. 9.

[170] Ibid. p. 11.

[171] Knapp's Life, vol. ii. p. 19.

[172] Ford was right, however, if authors wrote only for posterity, although 1851 was not a very important year among the great Victorian writers. It produced Carlyle's John Sterling, Ruskin's Stones of Venice, and Kingsley's Yeast.

[173] Mr. Murray published Lavengro in an edition of 3000 copies in 1851, a second edition (incorrectly called the third) was not asked for until 1872.

[174] Jenkins's Life, p. 387.

[175] Some XVIII. Century Men of Letters: Biographical Essays, by the Rev. Whitwell Elwin, sometime Editor of The Quarterly Review, With a Memoir by his son Warwick Elwin, 2 vols. John Murray, 1902.

[176] Whitwell Elwin was Rector of Booton, Norfolk—a family living—from 1849 to his death, aged 83, on 1st January 1900. He succeeded Lockhart as editor of The Quarterly Review in 1853, and resigned in 1860. He was born in 1816, and educated at Caius College, Cambridge. Thackeray called him 'a grandson of the late Rev. Dr. Primrose,' thereby recognising in Elwin many of the kindly qualities of Goldsmith's admirable creation.

[177] Mr. James Hooper, of Norwich, whose kindness in placing this and many other documents at my disposal I have already acknowledged. This letter was first published in The Sphere, December 19, 1903.

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