Old Familiar Faces Part 2

III.

Students of Borrow will be as much surprised as pleased to find what a large collection of doc.u.ments Dr. Knapp has been able to use in compiling this long-expected biography. {50} Indeed, the collection might have been larger and richer still. For instance, in the original ma.n.u.script of 'Zincali' (in the possession of the present writer) there are some variations from the printed text; but, what is of very much more importance, the whole-or nearly the whole-of Borrow's letters to the Bible Society, which Dr. Knapp believed to be lost, have been discovered in the crypt of the Bible House in which the records of the Society are stored. But even without these materials two ma.s.sive volumes crammed with doc.u.ments throwing light upon the life and career of a man like George Borrow must needs be interesting to the student of English literature. For among all the remarkable characters that during the middle of the present century figured in the world of letters, the most eccentric, the most whimsical, and in every way the most extraordinary was surely the man whom Dr. Knapp calls, appropriately enough, his "hero."

It is no exaggeration to say that there was not a single point in which Borrow resembled any other writing man of his time; indeed, we cannot, at the moment, recall any really important writer of any period whose eccentricity of character can be compared with his. At the basis of the artistic temperament is generally that "sweet reasonableness" the lack of which we excuse in Borrow and in almost no one else. As to literary whim, it must not be supposed that this quality is necessarily and always the outcome of temperament. There are some authors of whom it may be said that the moment they take pen in hand they pa.s.s into their "literary mood," a mood that in their cases does not seem to be born of temperament, but to spring from some fantastic movement of the intellect.

Sterne, for instance, the greatest of all masters of whim (not excluding Rabelais), pa.s.sed when in the act of writing into a literary mood which, as "Yorick," he tried to live up to in his private life-tried in vain.

With regard to Charles Lamb, his temperament, no doubt, was whimsical enough, and yet how many rich and rare pa.s.sages in his writings are informed by a whim of a purely intellectual kind-a whim which could only have sprung from that delicious literary mood of his, engendered by much study of quaint old writers, into which he pa.s.sed when at his desk! But whatsoever is whimsical, whatsoever is eccentric and angular, in Borrow's writings is the natural, the inevitable growth of a nature more whimsical, more eccentric, more angular still.

That such a man should have had an extraordinary life-experience was to be expected. And an extraordinary life-experience Borrow's was, to be sure! This alone would lend an especial interest to Borrow's biography-the fact, we mean, of his life having been extraordinary. For in these days no lives, as a rule, are less adventurous, none, as a rule, less tinged with romance, than the lives of those who attain eminence in the world of letters. No doubt they nowadays move about from place to place a good deal; not a few of them may even be called travellers, or at least globe-trotters; but, alas! in globe-trotting who shall hope to meet with adventures of a more romantic kind than those connected with a railway collision or a storm at sea? And this was so in days that preceded ours. It was so with Scott, it was so with d.i.c.kens, it was so with even Dumas, who, chained to his desk for months and months at a stretch, could only be seen by his friends during the intervals of work.

Nay, even with regard to the writing men of the far past, the more time a man gave to literary production the less time he had to drink the rich wine of life, to see the world, to study nature and nature's enigma man.

Perhaps one reason why we have almost no record of what the greatest of all writing men was doing in the world is that while his friends were elbowing the tide of life in the streets of London, or fighting in the Low Countries, or carousing at the Mermaid Tavern, or at the Apollo Saloon, he was filling every moment with work-work which enabled him, before he reached his fifty-second year, to build up that literary monument of his, that edifice which made the monuments of the others, his contemporaries, seem like the handiwork of pigmies. But as regards Borrow, student though he was, it is not as an author that we think of him; it is as the adventurer, it is as the great Romany Rye, who discovered the most interesting people in Europe, and as a brother vagabond lived with them-lived with them "on the accont of health, sweetness of the air, and for enjoying the pleasure of Nature's life," to quote the "testimonial" of the prose-poet Sylvester Boswell.

Even by his personal appearance Borrow was marked off from his fellow-men. As a gipsy girl once remarked, "n.o.body as ever see'd the white-headed Romany Rye ever forgot him." Standing considerably above six feet in height, he was built as perfectly as a Greek statue, and his practice of athletic exercises gave his every movement the easy elasticity of an athlete under training. As to his countenance, "n.o.ble"

is the only word that can be used to describe it. The silvery whiteness of the thick crop of hair seemed to add in a remarkable way to the beauty of the hairless face, but also it gave a strangeness to it, and this strangeness was intensified by a certain incongruity between the features (perfect Roman-Greek in type) and the Scandinavian complexion, luminous and sometimes rosy as an English girl's. An increased intensity was lent by the fair skin to the dark l.u.s.tre of the eyes. What struck the observer, therefore, was not the beauty but the strangeness of the man's appearance. It was not this feature or that which struck the eye, it was the expression of the face as a whole. If it were possible to describe this expression in a word or two, it might, perhaps, be called a shy self-consciousness.

How did it come about, then, that a man shy, self-conscious, and sensitive to the last degree, became the Ulysses of the writing fraternity, wandering among strangers all over Europe, and consorting on intimate terms with that race who, more than all others, are repelled by shy self-consciousness-the gipsies? This, perhaps, is how the puzzle may be explained. When Borrow was talking to people in his own cla.s.s of life there was always in his bearing a kind of shy, defiant egotism. What Carlyle calls the "armed neutrality" of social intercourse oppressed him.

He felt himself to be in the enemy's camp. In his eyes there was always a kind of watchfulness, as if he were taking stock of his interlocutor and weighing him against himself. He seemed to be observing what effect his words were having, and this att.i.tude repelled people at first. But the moment he approached a gipsy on the heath, or a poor Jew in Houndsditch, or a homeless wanderer by the wayside, he became another man. He threw off the burden of restraint. The feeling of the "armed neutrality" was left behind, and he seemed to be at last enjoying the only social intercourse that could give him pleasure. This it was that enabled him to make friends so entirely with the gipsies.

Notwithstanding what is called "Romany guile" (which is the growth of ages of oppression), the basis of the Romany character is a joyous frankness. Once let the isolating wall which shuts off the Romany from the "Gorgio" be broken through, and the communicativeness of the Romany temperament begins to show itself. The gipsies are extremely close observers; they were very quick to notice how different was Borrow's bearing towards themselves from his bearing towards people of his own race, and Borrow used to say that "old Mrs. Herne and Leonora were the only gipsies who suspected and disliked him."

Thus it came about that the gipsies and the wanderers generally were almost the only people in any country who saw the winsome side of Borrow.

A truly winsome side he had. Yes, notwithstanding all that has been said about him to the contrary, Borrow was a most interesting and charming companion. We all have our angularities; we all have unpleasant facets of character when occasion offers for showing them. But there are some unfortunate people whose angularities are for ever chafing and irritating their friends. Borrow was one of these. It is very rarely indeed that one meets a friend or an acquaintance of Borrow's who speaks of him with the kindness he deserved. When a friend or an acquaintance relates an anecdote of him the asperity with which he does so is really remarkable and quite painful. It was-it must have been-far from Dr. Gordon Hake's wish to speak unkindly of his old friend who remained to the last deeply attached to him. And yet few things have done more to prejudice the public against Borrow than the Doctor's tale of Lavengro's outrage at Rougham Rookery, the residence of the banker Bevan, one of the kindest and most benevolent men in Suffolk.

This story, often told by Hake, appeared at last in print in his memoirs.

Invited to dinner by Mr. Bevan, Borrow accepted the invitation and, according to the anecdote, thus behaved: During dinner Mrs. Bevan, thinking to please him, said, "Oh, Mr. Borrow, I have read your books with so much pleasure!" On which Borrow exclaimed, "Pray what books do you mean, ma'am-do you mean my account books?" Then, rising from the table, he walked up and down among the servants during the whole dinner, and afterwards wandered about the rooms and pa.s.sages till the carriage could be ordered for his return home. A monstrous proceeding truly, and not to be condoned by any circ.u.mstances. Yet some part of its violence may, perhaps, thus be explained. Borrow's loyalty to a friend was proverbial-until he and the friend quarrelled. A man who dared say an ungenerous word against a friend of Borrow's ran the risk of being knocked down. Borrow on this occasion had been driven half mad with rage-unreasoning, ignorant rage-against the Bury banking-house, because it had "struck the docket" against a friend of Borrow's, the heir to a considerable estate, who had got into difficulties. What Borrow yearned to do was, as he told the present writer, to cane the banker. He had, as far as his own reputation went, far better have done this and taken the consequences than have insulted the banker's wife-one of the most gentle, amiable, and una.s.suming ladies in Suffolk. Dr. Knapp speaks very sharply of Miss Cobb's remarks upon Borrow, and certainly these remarks are made with a great deal too much acidity. But if the Borrovian is to lose temper with every one who girds at Borrow he will lead a not very comfortable life.

Dr. Knapp has no doubt whatever that 'Lavengro' is in the main an autobiography. We have none. The only question is how much _Dichtung_ is mingled with the _Wahrheit_. Had it not been for the amazingly clumsy pieces of fiction which he threw into the narrative-such incidents as that of his meeting on the road the sailor son of the old apple-woman of London Bridge, and the exaggerated description of the man sent to sleep by reading Wordsworth-few readers would have doubted the autobiographical nature of 'Lavengro' and 'The Romany Rye.' Such incidents as these shed an air of unreality over the whole.

All writers upon Borrow fall into the mistake of considering him to have been an East Anglian. They might as well call Charlotte Bronte a Yorks.h.i.+rewoman as call Borrow an East Anglian. He was, of course, no more an East Anglian than an Irishman born in London is an Englishman.

He had at bottom no East Anglian characteristics. He inherited nothing from Norfolk save his accent and his love of "leg of mutton and turnips."

Yet he is a striking ill.u.s.tration of the way in which the locality that has given birth to a man influences him throughout his life. The fact of Borrow's having been born in East Anglia was the result of accident. His father, a Cornishman of a good middle-cla.s.s family, had been obliged, owing to a youthful escapade, to leave his native place and enlist as a common soldier. Afterwards he became a recruiting officer, and moved about from one part of Great Britain and Ireland to another. It so chanced that while staying at East Dereham, in Norfolk, he met and fell in love with a lady of French extraction. Not one drop of East Anglian blood was in the veins of Borrow's father, and very little in the veins of his mother. Borrow's ancestry was pure Cornish on one side, and on the other mainly French. But such was the sublime egotism of Borrow-perhaps we should have said such is the sublime egotism of human nature-that the fact of his having been born in East Anglia made him look upon that part of the world as the very hub of the universe.

There is, it must be confessed, something to us very agreeable in Dr.

Knapp's single-minded hero-wors.h.i.+p. A scholar and a philologist himself, he seems to have devoted a large portion of his life to the study of Borrow-following in Lavengro's footsteps from one country to another with unflagging enthusiasm. Now and again, undoubtedly, this hero-wors.h.i.+p runs to excess: the faults of style and of method in Borrow's writings are condoned or are pa.s.sed by un.o.bserved by Dr. Knapp, while the most unanswerable strictures upon them by others are resented. For instance, at the end of the following extract from the report of the gentleman who read 'Zincali' for Mr. Murray, he appends a note of exclamation, as though he considers the admirable advice given to be eccentric or bad:-

"The Dialogues are amongst the best parts of the book; but in several of them the tone of the speakers, of those especially who are in humble life, is too correct and elevated, and therefore out of character. This takes away from their effect. I think it would be very advisable that Mr. Borrow should go over them with reference to this point, simplifying a few of the terms of expression and introducing a few contractions-_don'ts_, _can'ts_, &c. This would improve them greatly."

Now the truth is that Mr. Murray's reader, whoever he was, {60} pointed out the one great blemish in _all_ Borrow's dramatic pictures of gipsy life, wheresoever the scene may be laid. Take his pictures of English gipsies. The reader has only to compare the dialogue between gipsies given in that photographic study of Romany life 'In Gipsy Tents' with the dialogues in 'Lavengro' to see how the illusion in Borrow's narrative is disturbed by the uncolloquial vocabulary of the speakers. After all allowance is made for the Romany's love of high-sounding words, it considerably weakens our belief in Mr. and Mrs. Petulengro, Ursula, and the rest, to find them using complex sentences and bookish words which, even among English people, are rarely heard in conversation.

Dr. Knapp says emphatically that Borrow never created a character, and that the originals are easily recognizable to one who thoroughly knows the times and Borrow's writings. This is true, no doubt, as regards people with whom he was brought into contact at Norwich, and, indeed, generally before the period of his gipsy wanderings. It must not be supposed, however, that such characters as the man who "touched" to avert the evil chance and the man who taught himself Chinese are in any sense portraits. They have so many of Borrow's own peculiarities that they might rather be called portraits of himself. There was nothing that Borrow strove against with more energy than the curious impulse, which he seems to have shared with Dr. Johnson, to touch the objects along his path in order to save himself from the evil chance. He never conquered the superst.i.tion. In walking through Richmond Park he would step out of his way constantly to touch a tree, and he was offended if the friend he was with seemed to observe it. Many of the peculiarities of the man who taught himself Chinese were also Borrow's own.

"But what about Isopel Berners?" the reader will ask. "How much of truth and how much of fiction went to the presentation of this most interesting character?" Seeing that Dr. Knapp has at his command such an immense amount of material in ma.n.u.script, the reader will feel some disappointment at discovering that the book tells us nothing new about her. The character he names Isopel Berners was just the sort of girl in every way to attract Borrow, and if he had had the feeblest spark of the love-pa.s.sion in his const.i.tution one could almost imagine his falling in love with her. Yet even the portrait of Isopel is marred by Borrow's impulse towards exaggeration. He must needs describe her as being taller than himself, and as he certainly stood six feet three Isopel would have been far better suited to sit by the side of Borrow's friend the "Norfolk giant," Hales, in the little London public-house where he latterly resided, than to become famous as a fighting woman who could conquer the Flaming Tinman. Few indeed have been the women who could stand up for long before a trained boxer, and these must needs be not too tall, and moreover they must have their b.r.e.a.s.t.s padded after the manner of a well-known gipsy girl who excelled in this once fas.h.i.+onable accomplishment. Even then a woman's instinct impels her to guard her chest more carefully than she guards her face, and this leads to disaster. Altogether Borrow, by his wilful exaggeration, makes the reader a little sceptical about Isopel, who was really an East Anglian road-girl of the finest type, known to the Boswells, and remembered not many years ago. All that Dr. Knapp has derived from the doc.u.ments in his possession concerning her is the following extraordinary pa.s.sage from the original ma.n.u.script, which Borrow struck out of 'Lavengro.' He says:-

"As to the remarkable character introduced into 'Lavengro' and 'Romany Rye' under the name of Isopel Berners, I have no light from the MSS. of George Borrow, save the following fragment, which perhaps I ought to have suppressed. I am sorry if it dispel any illusions:-

"(_Loquitur Petulengro_) 'My mind at present rather inclines towards two wives. I have heard that King Pharaoh had two, if not more.

Now, I think myself as good a man as he; and if he had more wives than one, why should not I, whose name is Petulengro?'

"'But what would Mrs. Petulengro say?'

"'Why, to tell you the truth, brother, it was she who first put the thought into my mind. She has always, you know, had strange notions in her head, gorgiko notions, I suppose we may call them, about gentility and the like, and reading and writing. Now, though she can neither read nor write herself, she thinks that she is lost among our people and that they are no society for her. So says she to me one day, "Pharaoh," says she, "I wish you would take another wife, that I might have a little pleasant company. As for these here, I am their betters." "I have no objection," said I; "who shall it be? Shall it be a Cooper or a Stanley?" "A Cooper or a Stanley!" said she, with a toss of her head, "I might as well keep my present company as theirs; none of your rubbish; let it be a _gorgie_, one that I can speak an idea with"-that was her word, I think. Now I am thinking that this here Bess of yours would be just the kind of person both for my wife and myself. My wife wants something gorgiko, something genteel. Now Bess is of blood gorgious; if you doubt it, look in her face, all full of _p.a.w.no ratter_, white blood, brother; and as for gentility, n.o.body can make exceptions to Bess's gentility, seeing she was born in the workhouse of Melford the Short, where she learned to read and write. She is no Irish woman, brother, but English pure, and her father was a farmer.

"'So much as far as my wife is concerned. As for myself, I tell you what, brother, I want a strapper; one who can give and take. The Flying Tinker is abroad, vowing vengeance against us all. I know what the Flying Tinker is, so does Tawno. The Flying Tinker came to our camp. "d.a.m.n you all," says he, "I'll fight the best of you for nothing."-"Done!" says Tawno, "I'll be ready for you in a minute."

So Tawno went into his tent and came out naked. "Here's at you,"

says Tawno. Brother, Tawno fought for two hours with the Flying Tinker, for two whole hours, and it's hard to say which had the best of it or the worst. I tell you what, brother, I think Tawno had the worst of it. Night came on. Tawno went into his tent to dress himself and the Flying Tinker went his way.

"'Now suppose, brother, the Flying Tinker comes upon us when Tawno is away. Who is to fight the Flying Tinker when he says: "D---n you, I will fight the best of you"? Brother, I will fight the Flying Tinker for five pounds; but I couldn't for less. The Flying Tinker is a big man, and though he hasn't my science, he weighs five stone heavier.

It wouldn't do for me to fight a man like that for nothing. But there's Bess, who can afford to fight the Flying Tinker at any time for what he's got, and that's three ha'pence. She can beat him, brother; I bet five pounds that Bess can beat the Flying Tinker.

Now, if I marry Bess, I'm quite easy on his score. He comes to our camp and says his say. "I won't dirty my hands with you," says I, "at least not under five pounds; but here's Bess who'll fight you for nothing." I tell you what, brother, when he knows that Bess is Mrs.

Pharaoh, he'll fight shy of our camp; he won't come near it, brother.

He knows Bess don't like him, and what's more, that she can lick him.

He'll let us alone; at least I think so. If he does come, I'll smoke my pipe whilst Bess is beating the Flying Tinker. Brother, I'm dry, and will now take a cup of ale.'"

Why did Borrow reject this pa.s.sage? Was it owing to his dread of respectability's frowns?-or was it not rather because he felt that here his exaggeration, his departure from the true in quest of the striking, did not recommend itself to his cooler judgment? For those who know anything of the gipsies would say at once that it would have been impossible for Mrs. Petulengro to make this suggestion; and that, even if she had made it, Mr. Petulengro would not have dared to broach it to any English road-girl, least of all to a girl like Isopel Berners. The pa.s.sage, however, is the most interesting doc.u.ment that Dr. Knapp has published.

What may be called the Isopel Berners chapter of Borrow's life was soon to be followed by the "veiled period"-that is to say, the period between the point where ends 'The Romany Rye' and the point where the Bible Society engages Borrow.

Dr. Knapp's mind seems a good deal exercised concerning this period.

Borrow having chosen to draw the veil over that period, no one has any right to raise it-or, rather, perhaps no one would have had any right to do so had not Borrow himself thrown such a needless mystery around it.

In considering any matter in connexion with Borrow it is always necessary to take into account the secretiveness of his disposition, and also his pa.s.sion for posing. He had a child's fondness for the wonderful. It is through his own love of mystification that students like Dr. Knapp must needs pry into these matters-must needs ask why Borrow drew the veil over seven years-must needs ask whether during the "veiled period" he led a life of squalid misery, compared with which his sojourn with Isopel Berners in Mumpers' Dingle was luxury, or whether he was really travelling, as he pretended to have been, over the world.

By yielding to his instinct as a born showman he excites a curiosity which would otherwise be unjustifiable. Even if Dr. Knapp had been able to approach Borrow's stepdaughter-which he seems not to have been able to do-it is pretty certain that she could have told him nothing of that mysterious seven years. For about this subject the people to whom Borrow seems to have been most reticent were his wife and her daughter. Indeed, it was not until after his wife's death that he would allude to this period even to his most intimate friends. One of the very few people to whom he did latterly talk with anything like frankness about this period in his life-Dr. Gordon Hake-is dead; and perhaps there is not more than about one other person now living who had anything of his confidence.

With regard to this veiled period, people who read the idyllic pictures in 'Lavengro' and 'The Romany Rye' of the life of a gipsy gentleman working as a hedge-smith in the dingle or by the roadside seem to forget that Borrow was then working not for amus.e.m.e.nt, but for bread, and they forget how scant the bread must have been that could be bought for the odd sixpence or the few coppers that he was able to earn. To those, however, who do not forget this it needs no revelation from doc.u.ments, and none from any surviving friend, to come to the conclusion that as Borrow was mainly living in England during these seven years (continuing for a considerable time his life of a wanderer, and afterwards living as an obscure literary struggler in Norwich), his life was during this period one of privation, disappointment, and gloom. It was for him to decide what he would give to the public and what he would withhold.

The concluding chapter of Dr. Knapp's book is not only pathetic-it is painful. In the summer of 1874 Borrow left London, bade adieu to Mr.

Murray and a few friends, and returned to Oulton-to die. On the 26th of July, 1881, he was found dead in his home at Oulton, in his seventy-ninth year.

II. DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI, 18281882.

I.

At Birchington-on-Sea one of the most rarely gifted men of our time has just died [April 9th, 1882] after a lingering illness. During the time that his 'Ballads and Sonnets' was pa.s.sing through the press last autumn his health began to give way, and he left London for c.u.mberland. A stay of a few weeks in the Vale of St. John, however, did nothing to improve his health, and he returned much shattered. After a time a numbness in the left arm excited fear of paralysis, and he became dangerously ill.

It is probable, indeed, that nothing but the skill and unwearied attention of Mr. John Marshall saved his life then, as it had done upon several previous occasions. Such of his friends as were then in London-W. B. Scott, Burne Jones, Leyland, F. s.h.i.+elds, Mr. Dunn, and others-feeling the greatest alarm, showed him every affectionate attention, and spared no effort to preserve a life so precious and so beloved. Mr. Seddon having placed at his disposal West Cliff Bungalow, Birchington-on-Sea, he went thither, accompanied by his mother and sister and Mr. Hall Caine, about nine weeks since, but received no benefit from the change, and, gradually sinking from a complication of disorders, he died on Sunday last at 10 P.M.

[Picture: Dante Gabriel Rosette. From a crayon-drawing by himself reproduced by the kind permission of Mrs. W. M. Rossetti]

Were I even competent to enter upon the discussion of Rossetti's gifts as a poet and as a painter, it would not be possible to do so here and at this moment. That the quality of romantic imagination informs with more vitality his work than it can be said to inform the work of any of his contemporaries was recognized at first by the few, and is now (judging from the great popularity of his last volume of poetry) being recognized by the many. And the same, I think, may be said of his painting. Those who had the privilege of a personal acquaintance with him knew how "of imagination all compact" he was. Imagination, indeed, was at once his blessing and his bane. To see too vividly-to love too intensely-to suffer and enjoy too acutely-is the doom, no doubt, of all those "lost wanderers from Arden" who, according to the Rosicrucian story, sing the world's songs; and to Rossetti this applies more, perhaps, than to most poets. And when we consider that the one quality in all poetry which really gives it an endurance outlasting the generation of its birth is neither music nor colour, nor even intellectual substance, but the clearness of the seeing; the living breath of imagination-the very qualities, in short, for which such poems as 'Sister Helen' and 'Rose Mary' are so conspicuous-we are driven to the conclusion that Rossetti's poetry has a long and enduring future before it.

A life more devoted to literature and art than his it is impossible to imagine. Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti was born at 38, Charlotte Street, Portland Place, London, on the 12th of May, 1828. He was the first son and second child of Gabriele Rossetti, the patriotic poet, who, born at Vasto in the Abruzzi, settled in Naples, and took an active part in extorting from the Neapolitan king Ferdinand I. the const.i.tution granted in 1820, which const.i.tution being traitorously cancelled by the king in 1821, Rossetti had to escape for his life to Malta with various other persecuted const.i.tutionalists. From Malta Gabriele Rossetti went to England about 1823, where he married in 1826 Frances Polidori, daughter of Alfieri's secretary and sister of Byron's Dr. Polidori. He became Professor of Italian in King's College, London, became also prominent as a commentator on Dante, and died in April, 1854. His children, four in number-Maria Francesca, Dante Gabriel, William Michael, and Christina Georgina-all turned to literature or to art, or to both, and all became famous. There can, indeed, be no doubt that the Rossetti family will hold a position quite unique in the literary and artistic annals of our time.

Young Rossetti was first sent to the private school of the Rev. Mr. Paul in Foley Street, Portland Place, where he remained, however, for only three quarters of a year, from the autumn of 1835 to the summer of 1836.

He next went to King's College School in the autumn of 1836, where he remained till the summer of 1843, having reached the fourth cla.s.s, then conducted by the Rev. Mr. Framley.