George Borrow and His Circle Part 16

REVEREND SIR,--Supposing that you will not be displeased to hear how I am proceeding, I have taken the liberty to send a few lines by a friend[106] who is leaving Russia for England.

Since my arrival in Petersburg I have been occupied eight hours every day in transcribing a Manchu ma.n.u.script of the Old Testament belonging to Baron Schilling, and I am happy to be able to say that I have just completed the last of it, the Rev.

Mr. Swan, the Scottish missionary, having before my arrival copied the previous part. Mr. Swan departs to his mission in Siberia in about two months, during most part of which time I shall be engaged in collating our transcripts with the original. It is a great blessing that the Bible Society has now prepared the whole of the Sacred Scriptures in Manchu, which will doubtless, when printed, prove of incalculable benefit to tens of millions who have hitherto been ignorant of the will of G.o.d, putting their trust in idols of wood and stone instead of in a crucified Saviour. I am sorry to say that this country in respect to religion is in a state almost as lamentable as the darkest regions of the East, and the blame of this rests entirely upon the Greek hierarchy, who discountenance all attempts to the spiritual improvement of the people, who, poor things, are exceedingly willing to receive instruction, and, notwithstanding the scantiness of their means in general for the most part, eagerly buy the tracts which a few pious English Christians cause to be printed and hawked in the neighbourhood.

But no one is better aware, Sir, than yourself that without the Scriptures men can never be brought to a true sense of their fallen and miserable state, and of the proper means to be employed to free themselves from the thraldom of Satan. The last few copies which remained of the New Testament in Russian were purchased and distributed a few days ago, and it is lamentable to be compelled to state that at the present there appears no probability of another edition being permitted in the modern language. It is true that there are near twenty thousand copies of the Sclavonic bible in the shop which is entrusted with the sale of the books of the late Russian Bible Society, but the Sclavonian translation is upwards of a thousand years old, having been made in the eighth century, and differs from the dialect spoken at present in Russia as much as the old Saxon does from the modern English. Therefore it cannot be of the slightest utility to any but the learned, that is, to about ten individuals in one thousand. I hope and trust that the Almighty will see fit to open some door for the illumination of this country, for it is not to be wondered if vice and crime be very prevalent here when the people are ignorant of the commandments of G.o.d. Is it to be wondered that the people follow their every day pursuits on the Sabbath when they know not the unlawfulness of so doing? Is it to be wondered that they steal when only in dread of the laws of the country, and are not deterred by the voice of conscience which only exists in a few. This accounts for their profanation of their Sabbath, their p.r.o.neness to theft, etc. It is only surprising that so much goodness is to be found in their nature as is the case, for they are mild, polite, and obliging, and in most of their faces is an expression of great kindness and benignity. I find that the slight knowledge which I possess of the Russian tongue is of the utmost service to me here, for the common opinion in England that only French and German are spoken by persons of any respectability in Petersburg is a great and injurious error. The n.o.bility, it is true, for the most part speak French when necessity obliges them, that is, when in company with foreigners who are ignorant of Russian, but the affairs of most people who arrive in Petersburg do not lie among the n.o.bility, therefore a knowledge of the language of the country, unless you a.s.sociate solely with your own countrymen, is indispensable. The servants speak no language but their native tongue, and also nine out of ten of the middle cla.s.ses of Russians. I might as well address Mr. Lipoftsof, who is to be my coadjutor in the edition of the New Testament (in Manchu) in Hebrew as in either French or German, for though he can read the first a little he cannot speak a word of it or understand when spoken. I will now conclude by wis.h.i.+ng you all possible happiness. I have the honour to be, etc.,

GEORGE BORROW.

When the work was done at so great a cost of money,[107] and of energy and enthusiasm on the part of George Borrow, it was found that the books were useless. Most of these New Testaments were afterwards sent out to China, and copies distributed by the missionaries there as opportunities offered. It was found, however, that the Manchus in China were able to read Chinese, preferring it to their own language, which indeed had become almost confined to official use.[108] In the year 1859 editions of _St. Matthew_ and _St. Mark_ were published in Manchu and Chinese side by side, the Manchu text being a reprint of that edited by Borrow, and these books are still in use in Chinese Turkestan. But Borrow had here to suffer one of the many disappointments of his life. If not actually a gypsy he had all a gypsy's love of wandering. No impartial reader of the innumerable letters of this period can possibly claim that there was in Borrow any of the proselytising zeal or evangelical fervour which wins for the names of Henry Martyn and of David Livingstone so much honour and sympathy even among the least zealous. At the best Borrow's zeal for religion was of the order of Dr. Keate, the famous headmaster of Eton--'Blessed are the pure in heart ... if you are not pure in heart, by G.o.d, I'll flog you!' Borrow had got his New Testaments printed, and he wanted to distribute them because he wished to see still more of the world, and had no lack of courage to carry out any well defined scheme of the organisation which was employing him. Borrow had thrown out constant hints in his letters home. People had suggested to him, he said, that he was printing Testaments for which he would never find readers. If you wish for readers, they had said to him, 'you must seek them among the natives of Pekin and the fierce hordes of desert Tartary.' And it was this last most courageous thing that Borrow proposed. Let him, he said to Mr. Jowett, fix his headquarters at Kiachta upon the northern frontier of China. The Society should have an agent there:

I am a person of few words, and will therefore state without circ.u.mlocution that I am willing to become that agent. I speak Russ, Manchu, and the Tartar or broken Turkish of the Russian steppes, and have also some knowledge of Chinese, which I might easily improve at Kiachta, half of the inhabitants of which town are Chinamen. I am therefore not altogether unqualified for such an adventure.[109]

The Bible Committee considered this and other plans through the intervening months, and it seems clear that at the end they would have sanctioned some form of missionary work for Borrow in the Chinese Empire; but on 1st June 1835 he wrote to say that the Russian Government, solicitous of maintaining good relations with China, would not grant him a pa.s.sport across Siberia except on the condition that he carried not one single Manchu Bible thither.[110] And so Borrow's dreams were left unfulfilled. He was never to see China or the farther East, although, because he was a dreamer and like his hero, Defoe, a bit of a liar, he often said he had. In September 1835 he was back in England awaiting in his mother's home in Norwich further commissions from his friends of the Bible Society.

Work on the Manchu New Testament did not entirely absorb Borrow's activities in St. Petersburg. He seems to have made a proposition to another organisation, as the following letter indicates. The proposal does not appear to have borne any fruit:

PRAYER BOOK AND HOMILY SOCIETY, NO. 4 EXETER HALL, LONDON, _January 16th, 1835._

SIR,--Your letters dated July and November 17, 1834, and addressed to the Rev. F. Cunningham, have been laid before the Committee of the Prayer Book and Homily Society, who have agreed to print the translation of the first three Homilies into the Russian language at St. Petersburg, under the direction of Mr. and Mrs. Biller, so soon as they shall have caused the translation to undergo a thorough revision, and shall have certified the same to this Society. I write by this post to Mrs. Biller on the subject. In respect to the second Homily in Manchu, if we rightly understand your statement, an edition of five hundred copies may be sent forth, the whole expense of which, including paper and printing, will amount to about 12. If we are correct in this the Committee are willing to bear the expense of five hundred copies, by way of trial, their wish being this, viz.: that printed copies should be put into the hands of the most competent persons, who shall be invited to offer such remarks on the translation as shall seem desirable; especially that Dr. Morrison of Canton should be requested to submit copies to the inspection of Manchu scholars as he shall think fit. When the translation has been thoroughly revised the Committee will consider the propriety of printing a larger edition. They think that the plan of submitting copies in letters of gold to the inspection of the highest personages in China should probably be deferred till the translation has been thus revised. We hope that this resolution will be satisfactory to you; but the Committee, not wis.h.i.+ng to prescribe a narrower limit than such as is strictly necessary, have directed me to say, that should the expense of an edition of five hundred copies of the Homily in Manchu exceed 12, they will still be willing to meet it, but not beyond the sum of 15.

Should you print this edition be pleased to furnish us with twenty-five copies, and send twenty-five copies at the least to Rev. Dr. Morrison, at Canton, if you have the means of doing so; if not, we should wish to receive fifty copies, that _we_ may send twenty-five to Canton. In this case you will be at liberty to draw a bill upon us for the money, within the limits specified above, in such manner as is most convenient. Possibly Mr. and Mrs. Biller may be able to a.s.sist you in this matter.

Believe me, dear Sir, yours most sincerely,

C. R. PRITCHETT.

Mr. G. Borrow.

I am not aware whether I am addressing a clergyman or a layman, and therefore shall direct as above. Will you be so kind as to send the MS. of the Russian Homilies to Mrs. Biller?

During Borrow's last month or two in St. Petersburg he printed two thin octavo volumes of translations--some of them verses which, undeterred by the disheartening reception of earlier efforts, he had continued to make from each language in succession that he had the happiness to acquire, although most of the poems are from his old portfolios. These little books were named _Targum_ and _The Talisman_. Dr. Knapp calls the latter an appendix to the former. They are absolutely separate volumes of verse, and I reproduce their t.i.tle-pages from the only copies that Borrow seems to have reserved for himself out of the hundred printed of each. The publishers, it will be seen, are the German firm that printed the Manchu New Testament, Schultz and Beneze. Borrow's preface to _Targum_ is dated 'St. Petersburg, June 1, 1835.' Here in _Targum_ we find the trial poem which in compet.i.tion with a rival candidate had won him the privilege of going to Russia for the Bible Society--_The Mountain Chase_. Here also among new verses are some from the Arabic, the Persian, and the Turkish. If it be true, as his friend Hasfeld said, that here was a poet who was able to render another without robbing the garland of a single leaf--that would but prove that the poetry which Borrow rendered was not of the first order. Nor, taking another standard--the capacity to render the ballad with a force that captures 'the common people,'--can we agree with William Bodham Donne, who was delighted with _Targum_ and said that 'the language and rhythm are vastly superior to Macaulay's _Lays of Ancient Rome_.' In _The Talisman_ we have four little poems from the Russian of Pushkin followed by another poem, _The Mermaid_, by the same author. Three other poems in Russian and Polish complete the booklet. Borrow left behind him in St.

Petersburg with his friend, Hasfeld, a presentation copy for Pushkin, who, when he received it, expressed regret that he had not met his translator while Borrow was in St. Petersburg.

[Ill.u.s.tration: t.i.tle Page from "Targum"]

[Ill.u.s.tration: t.i.tle Page from "The Talisman"]

FOOTNOTES:

[103] Darlow, _Letters to the Bible Society_, p. 32.

[104] _Ibid._ p. 47.

[105] Darlow, _Letters to the Bible Society_, pp. 60, 61.

[106] Mr. Glen.

[107] The Manchu version--_i.e._ the transcript of Pierot's MS. of the Old Testament and 1000 copies of Lipoftsof's translation of the New--cost the Society in all 2600. Canton: _History of the Bible Society_, vol. ii. p. 239.

[108] Darlow; _Letters to the Bible Society_, p. 96.

[109] Darlow: _Letters to the Bible Society_, p. 65.

[110] _Ibid._, p. 81.

CHAPTER XVIII

THREE VISITS TO SPAIN

From his journey to Russia Borrow had acquired valuable experience, but nothing in the way of fame, although his mother had been able to record in a letter to St. Petersburg that she had heard at a Bible Society gathering in Norwich his name 'sounded through the hall' by Mr. Joseph John Gurney and Mr. Cunningham, to her great delight. 'All this is very pleasing to me,' she said, 'G.o.d bless you!' Even more pleasing to Borrow must have been a letter from Mary Clarke, his future wife, who was able to tell him that she heard Francis Cunningham refer to him as 'one of the most extraordinary and interesting individuals of the present day.'

But these tributes were not all-satisfying to an ambitious man, and this Borrow undoubtedly was. His Russian journey was followed by five weeks of idleness in Norwich varied by the one excitement of attending a Bible meeting at Oulton with the Reverend Francis Cunningham in the chair, when 'Mr. George Borrow from Russia'[111] made one of the usual conventional missionary speeches, Mary Clarke's brother, Breame Skepper, being also among the orators. Borrow begged for more work from the Society. He urged the desirability of carrying out its own idea of an investigation in Portugal and perhaps also in Spain, and hinted that he could write a small volume concerning what he saw and heard which might cover the expense of the expedition.[112] So much persistency conquered.

Borrow sailed from London on 6th November 1835, and reached Lisbon on 12th November, this his first official visit to the Peninsula lasting exactly eleven months. The next four years and six months were to be spent mainly in Spain.[113] Broadly the time divides itself in the following fas.h.i.+on:

1st Tour (_via_ Lisbon), Nov. 1835 to Oct. 1836.

Lisbon.

Mafia.

Evora.

Badajoz.

Madrid.

2nd Tour (_via_ Cadiz), Nov. 1836 to Sept. 1838.

Cadiz.

Lisbon.

Seville.

Madrid.

Salamanca.

Coruna.

Oviedo.

Toledo.

3rd Tour (_via_ Cadiz), Dec. 1838 to March 1840.

Cadiz.

Seville.

Madrid.

Gibraltar.

Tangier.

What a world of adventure do the mere names of these places call up.

Borrow entered the Peninsula at an exciting period of its history.

Traces of the Great War in which Napoleon's legions faced those of Wellington still abounded. Here and there a bridge had disappeared, and some of Borrow's strange experiences on ferry-boats were indirectly due to the results of Napoleon's ambition.[114] Everywhere there was still war in the land. Portugal indeed had just pa.s.sed through a revolution.

The partisans of the infant Queen Maria II. had been fighting with her uncle Dom Miguel for eight years, and it was only a few short months before Borrow landed at Lisbon that Maria had become undisputed queen.

Spain, to which Borrow speedily betook himself, was even in a worse state. She was in the throes of a six years' war. Queen Isabel II., a child of three, reigned over a chaotic country with her mother Dona Christina as regent; her uncle Don Carlos was a formidable claimant to the throne and had the support of the absolutist and clerical parties.