George Borrow and His Circle Part 5

[29] _The Life of David Haggart, alias John Wilson, alias John Morison, alias Barney McCone, alias John McColgan, alias Daniel O'Brien, alias The Switcher_, written by himself while under sentence of death.

Edinburgh: Printed for W. and C. Tait by James Ballantyne and Co., 1821.

In the British Museum Library there is a copy with an autograph note by Lord c.o.c.kburn on the fly-leaf, which runs as follows:

'This youngster was my client when he was tried and convicted. He was a great villain. His life is almost all lies, and its chief curiosity consists in the strange spirit of lying, the indulgence of which formed his chief pleasure to the very last. The ma.n.u.script poem and picture of himself (bound up at the end of the _Life_) were truly composed and written by him. Being an enormous miscreant the phrenologists got hold of him, and made the notorious facts of his character into evidence of the truth of their system. He affected some decent poetry just before he was hanged, and therefore the Saints took up his memory and wrote monodies on him. His piety and the composition of the lies in this book broke out at the same time. H. C.'

[30] Although Captain Borrow was never as ignorant as one or two of Borrow's biographers, who call the Irish language 'Erse.'

[31] _The Bible in Spain_, ch. xx.

[32] Dr. Johnson was the first as Borrow was the second to earn this distinction. Johnson, as reported by Boswell, says:

'_I have long wished that the Irish literature were cultivated. Ireland is known by tradition to have been once the seat of piety and learning, and surely it would be very acceptable to all those who are curious on the origin of nations or the affinities of languages to be further informed of the evolution of a people so ancient and once so ill.u.s.trious. I hope that you will continue to cultivate this kind of learning which has too long been neglected, and which, if it be suffered to remain in oblivion for another century, may perhaps never be retrieved._'

[33] _Lavengro._

CHAPTER V

GEORGE BORROW'S NORWICH--THE GURNEYS

Norwich may claim to be one of the most fascinating cities in the kingdom. To-day it is known to the wide world by its canaries and its mustard, although its most important industry is the boot trade, in which it employs some eight thousand persons. To the visitor it has many attractions. The lovely cathedral with its fine Norman arches, the Erpingham Gate so splendidly Gothic, the n.o.ble Castle Keep so imposingly placed with the cattle-market below--these are all as Borrow saw them nearly a century ago. So also is the church of St. Peter Mancroft, where Sir Thomas Browne lies buried. And to the picturesque Mousehold Heath you may still climb and recall one of the first struggles for liberty and progress that past ages have seen, the Norfolk rising under Robert Kett which has only not been glorified in song and in picture, because--

Treason doth never prosper--what's the reason?

Why if it prosper none dare call it treason.

And Kett's so-called rebellion was destined to failure, and its leader to cruel martyrdom. Mousehold Heath has been made the subject of paintings by Turner and Crome, and of fine word pictures by George Borrow. When Borrow and his parents lighted upon Norwich in 1814 and 1816 the city had inspiring literary a.s.sociations. Before the invention of railways it seemed not uncommon for a fine intellectual life to emanate from this or that cathedral city. Such an intellectual life was a.s.sociated with Lichfield when the Darwins and the Edgeworths gathered at the Bishop's Palace around Dr. Seward and his accomplished daughters.

Norwich has more than once been such a centre. The first occasion was in the period of which we write, when the Taylors and the Gurneys flourished in a region of ideas; the second was during the years from 1837 to 1849, when Edward Stanley held the bishopric. This later period does not come into our story, as by that time Borrow had all but left Norwich. But of the earlier period, the period of Borrow's more or less fitful residence in Norwich--1814 to 1833--we are tempted to write at some length. There were three separate literary and social forces in Norwich in the first decades of the nineteenth century--the Gurneys of Earlham, the Taylor-Austin group, and William Taylor, who was in no way related to Mrs. John Taylor and her daughter, Sarah Austin. The Gurneys were truly a remarkable family, destined to leave their impress upon Norwich and upon a wider world. At the time of his marriage in 1773 to Catherine Bell, John Gurney, wool-stapler of Norwich, took his young wife, whose face has been preserved in a canvas by Gainsborough, to live in the old Court House in Magdalen Street, which had been the home of two generations of the Gurney family. In 1786 John Gurney went with his continually growing family to live at Earlham Hall, some two or three miles out of Norwich on the Earlham Road. Here that family of eleven children--one boy had died in infancy--grew up. Not one but has an interesting history, which is recorded by Mr. Augustus Hare and other writers.[34] Elizabeth, the fourth daughter, married Joseph Fry, and as Elizabeth Fry attained to a world-wide fame as a prison reformer. Hannah married Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton of Slave Trade Abolition; Richenda, the Rev. Francis Cunningham, who sent George Borrow upon his career; while Louisa married Samuel h.o.a.re of Hampstead. Of her Joseph John Gurney said at her death in 1836 that she was 'superior in point of talent to any other of my father's eleven children.' It is with the eleventh child, however, that we have mainly to do, for this son, Joseph John Gurney, alone appears in Borrow's pages. The picture of these eleven Quaker children growing up to their various destinies under the roof of Earlham Hall is an attractive one. Men and women of all creeds accepted the catholic Quaker's hospitality. Mrs. Opie and a long list of worthies of the past come before us, and when Mr. Gurney, in 1802, took his six unmarried daughters to the Lakes Old Crome accompanied them as drawing-master. There is, however, one picture in the story of unforgettable charm, the episode of the courts.h.i.+p of Elizabeth Gurney by Joseph Fry, and this I must quote from Mr. Augustus Hare's pleasant book:

Mr. Fry had no intention of exposing himself to the possibility of a refusal. He bought a very handsome gold watch and chain, and laid it down upon a white seat--the white seat which still exists--in the garden at Earlham. 'If Betsy takes up that watch,' he said, 'it is a sign that she accepts me: if she does not take it up by a particular hour, it will show that I must leave Earlham.'

The six sisters concealed themselves in six laurel-bushes in different parts of the grounds to watch. One can imagine their intense curiosity and anxiety. At last the tall, graceful Betsy, her flaxen hair now hidden under a Quaker cap, shyly emerged upon the gravel walk. She seemed scarcely conscious of her surroundings, as if, 'on the wings of prayer, she was being wafted into the unseen.' But she reached the garden seat, and there, in the suns.h.i.+ne, lay the glittering new watch. The sight of it recalled her to earth. She could not, could not, take it, and fled swiftly back to the house. But the six sisters remained in their laurel-bushes. They felt sure she would revoke, and they did not watch in vain. An hour elapsed, in which her father urged her, and in which conscience seemed to drag her forwards. Once again did the anxious sisters see Betsy emerge from the house, with more faltering steps this time, but still inwardly praying, and slowly, tremblingly, they saw her take up the watch, and the deed was done. She never afterwards regretted it, though it was a bitter pang to her when she collected her eighty-six children in the garden at Earlham and bade them farewell, and though she wrote in her journal as a bride, 'I cried heartily on leaving Norwich; the very stones in the street were dear to me.'

In 1803--the year of Borrow's birth--John Gurney became a partner in the great London Bank of Overend and Gurney, and his son, Joseph John, in that same year went up to Oxford. In 1809 Joseph returned to take his place in the bank, and to preside over the family of unmarried sisters at Earlham, father and mother being dead, and many members of the family distributed. Incidentally, we are told by Mr. Hare that the Gurneys of Earlham at this time drove out with four black horses, and that when Bishop Bathurst, Stanley's predecessor, required horses for State occasions to drive him to the cathedral, he borrowed these, and the more modest episcopal horses took the Quaker family to their meeting-house.

It does not come within the scope of this book, discursive as I choose to make it, to trace the fortunes of these eleven remarkable Gurney children, or even of Borrow's momentary acquaintance, Joseph John Gurney. His residence at Earlham, and his life of philanthropy, are a romance in a way, although one wonders whether if the name of Gurney had not been a.s.sociated with so much of virtue and goodness the crash that came long after Joseph John Gurney's death would have been quite so full of affliction for a vast mult.i.tude. Joseph John Gurney died in 1847, in his fifty-ninth year; his sister, Mrs. Fry, had died two years earlier.

The younger brother and twelfth child--Joseph John being the eleventh--Daniel Gurney, the last of the twelve children, lived till 1880, aged eighty-nine. He had outlived by many years the catastrophe to the great banking firm with which the name of Gurney is a.s.sociated. This great firm of Overend and Gurney, of which yet another brother, Samuel, was the moving spirit, was organised nine years after his death--in 1865--into a joint-stock company, which failed to the amount of eleven millions in 1866. At the time of the failure, which affected all England, much as did the Liberator smash a generation later, the only Gurney in the directorate was Daniel Gurney, to whom his sister, Lady Buxton, allowed a pension of 2000 a year. This is a long story to tell by way of introduction to one episode in _Lavengro_. Dr. Knapp places this episode in the year 1817, when Borrow was but fourteen years of age and Gurney was twenty-nine. I need not apologise at this point for a very lengthy quotation from a familiar book:

At some distance from the city, behind a range of hilly ground which rises towards the south-west, is a small river, the waters of which, after many meanderings, eventually enter the princ.i.p.al river of the district, and a.s.sist to swell the tide which it rolls down to the ocean. It is a sweet rivulet, and pleasant it is to trace its course from its spring-head, high up in the remote regions of Eastern Anglia, till it arrives in the valley behind yon rising ground; and pleasant is that valley, truly a good spot, but most lovely where yonder bridge crosses the little stream. Beneath its arch the waters rush garrulously into a blue pool, and are there stilled for a time, for the pool is deep, and they appear to have sunk to sleep.

Farther on, however, you hear their voice again, where they ripple gaily over yon gravelly shallow. On the left the hill slopes gently down to the margin of the stream. On the right is a green level, a smiling meadow, gra.s.s of the richest decks the side of the slope; mighty trees also adorn it, giant elms, the nearest of which, when the sun is nigh its meridian, fling a broad shadow upon the face of the pool; through yon vista you catch a glimpse of the ancient brick of an old English hall. It has a stately look, that old building, indistinctly seen, as it is, among those umbrageous trees; you might almost suppose it an earl's home; and such it was, or rather upon its site stood an earl's home, in days of old, for there some old Kemp, some Sigurd, or Thorkild, roaming in quest of a hearthstead, settled down in the grey old time, when Thor and Freya were yet G.o.ds, and Odin was a portentous name. Yon old hall is still called the Earl's Home, though the hearth of Sigurd is now no more, and the bones of the old Kemp, and of Sigrith his dame, have been mouldering for a thousand years in some neighbouring knoll; perhaps yonder, where those tall Norwegian pines shoot up so boldly into the air. It is said that the old earl's galley was once moored where is now that blue pool, for the waters of that valley were not always sweet; yon valley was once an arm of the sea, a salt lagoon, to which the war-barks of 'Sigurd, in search of a home,' found their way.

I was in the habit of spending many an hour on the banks of that rivulet with my rod in my hand, and, when tired with angling, would stretch myself on the gra.s.s, and gaze upon the waters as they glided past, and not unfrequently, divesting myself of my dress, I would plunge into the deep pool which I have already mentioned, for I had long since learned to swim.

And it came to pa.s.s, that on one hot summer's day, after bathing in the pool, I pa.s.sed along the meadow till I came to a shallow part, and, wading over to the opposite side, I adjusted my dress, and commenced fis.h.i.+ng in another pool, beside which was a small clump of hazels.

And there I sat upon the bank, at the bottom of the hill which slopes down from 'the Earl's Home'; my float was on the waters, and my back was towards the old hall. I drew up many fish, small and great, which I took from off the hook mechanically, and flung upon the bank, for I was almost unconscious of what I was about, for my mind was not with my fish. I was thinking of my earlier years--of the Scottish crags and the heaths of Ireland--and sometimes my mind would dwell on my studies--on the sonorous stanzas of Dante, rising and falling like the waves of the sea--or would strive to remember a couplet or two of poor Monsieur Boileau.

'Canst thou answer to thy conscience for pulling all those fish out of the water and leaving them to gasp in the sun?' said a voice, clear and sonorous as a bell.

I started, and looked round. Close behind me stood the tall figure of a man, dressed in raiment of quaint and singular fas.h.i.+on, but of goodly materials. He was in the prime and vigour of manhood; his features handsome and n.o.ble, but full of calmness and benevolence; at least I thought so, though they were somewhat shaded by a hat of finest beaver, with broad drooping eaves.

'Surely that is a very cruel diversion in which thou indulgest, my young friend?' he continued.

'I am sorry for it, if it be, sir,' said I, rising; 'but I do not think it cruel to fish.'

'What are thy reasons for thinking so?'

'Fis.h.i.+ng is mentioned frequently in Scripture. Simon Peter was a fisherman.'

'True; and Andrew his brother. But thou forgettest; they did not follow fis.h.i.+ng as a diversion, as I fear thou doest.--Thou readest the Scriptures?'

'Sometimes.'

'Sometimes?--not daily?--that is to be regretted. What profession dost thou make?--I mean to what religious denomination dost thou belong, my young friend?'

'Church.'

'It is a very good profession--there is much of Scripture contained in its liturgy. Dost thou read aught beside the Scriptures?'

'Sometimes.'

'What dost thou read besides?'

'Greek, and Dante.'

'Indeed! then thou hast the advantage over myself; I can only read the former. Well, I am rejoiced to find that thou hast other pursuits beside thy fis.h.i.+ng. Dost thou know Hebrew?'

'No.'

'Thou shouldest study it. Why dost thou not undertake the study?'

'I have no books.'

'I will lend thee books, if thou wish to undertake the study. I live yonder at the hall, as perhaps thou knowest. I have a library there, in which are many curious books, both in Greek and Hebrew, which I will show to thee, whenever thou mayest find it convenient to come and see me. Farewell! I am glad to find that thou hast pursuits more satisfactory than thy cruel fis.h.i.+ng.'

And the man of peace departed, and left me on the bank of the stream. Whether from the effect of his words or from want of inclination to the sport, I know not, but from that day I became less and less a pract.i.tioner of that 'cruel fis.h.i.+ng.' I rarely flung line and angle into the water, but I not unfrequently wandered by the banks of the pleasant rivulet. It seems singular to me, on reflection, that I never availed myself of his kind invitation. I say singular, for the extraordinary, under whatever form, had long had no slight interest for me: and I had discernment enough to perceive that yon was no common man. Yet I went not near him, certainly not from bashfulness, or timidity, feelings to which I had long been an entire stranger. Am I to regret this? perhaps, for I might have learned both wisdom and righteousness from those calm, quiet lips, and my after-course might have been widely different. As it was, I fell in with other queer companions, from whom I received widely different impressions than those I might have derived from him. When many years had rolled on, long after I had attained manhood, and had seen and suffered much, and when our first interview had long been effaced from the mind of the man of peace, I visited him in his venerable hall, and partook of the hospitality of his hearth. And there I saw his gentle partner and his fair children, and on the morrow he showed me the books of which he had spoken years before by the side of the stream. In the low quiet chamber, whose one window, shaded by a gigantic elm, looks down the slope towards the pleasant stream, he took from the shelf his learned books, Zohar and Mishna, Toldoth Jesu and Abarbenel.

'I am fond of these studies,' said he, 'which, perhaps, is not to be wondered at, seeing that our people have been compared to the Jews. In one respect I confess we are similar to them: we are fond of getting money. I do not like this last author, this Abarbenel, the worse for having been a money-changer. I am a banker myself, as thou knowest.'

And would there were many like him, amidst the money-changers of princes! The hall of many an earl lacks the bounty, the palace of many a prelate the piety and learning, which adorn the quiet Quaker's home!

It is doubtful if Borrow met Joseph John Gurney more than on the one further occasion to which he refers above. At the commencement of his engagement with the Bible Society he writes to its secretary, Mr. Jowett (March 18, 1833), to say that he must procure from Mr. Cunningham 'a letter of introduction from him to John Gurney,' and this second and last interview must have taken place at Earlham before his departure for Russia.

But if Borrow was to come very little under the influence of Joseph John Gurney, his destiny was to be considerably moulded by the action of Gurney's brother-in-law, Cunningham, who first put him in touch with the Bible Society. Joseph John Gurney and his sisters were the very life of the Bible Society in those years.

FOOTNOTES: