Lavengro

G >> George Borrow >> Lavengro


Borrow's eloquence is splendid, manly, and desperately courageous. What
an apostrophe is that to old Crome at the end of the twenty-first
chapter! _Lavengro_ is full of riches. As for his courage, who else
could begin a passage 'O England,' and emerge triumphantly a page and a
half lower down as Borrow does in _The Bible in Spain_?

O England! long, long may it be ere the sun of thy glory sink beneath
the wave of darkness! Though gloomy and portentous clouds are now
gathering rapidly round thee, still, still may it please the Almighty
to disperse them, and to grant thee a futurity longer in duration and
still brighter in renown than thy past! Or if thy doom be at hand,
may that doom be a noble one, and worthy of her who has been styled
the Old Queen of the water! May thou sink, if thou dost sink, amidst
blood and flame, with a mighty noise, causing more than one nation to
participate in thy downfall! Of all fates, may it please the Lord to
preserve thee from a disgraceful and a slow decay; becoming ere
extinct a scorn and a mockery for those self-same foes who now, though
they envy and abhor thee, still fear thee, nay, even against their
will, honour and respect thee!

Arouse thee, whilst yet there is time, and prepare thee for the combat
of life and death! Cast from thee the foul scurf which now encrusts
thy robust limbs, which deadens their force, and makes them heavy and
powerless! Cast from thee thy false philosophers, who would fain
decry what, next to the love of God, has hitherto been deemed most
sacred, the love of the mother land! Cast from thee thy false
patriots, who, under the pretext of redressing the wrongs of the poor
and weak, seek to promote internal discord, so that thou mayest become
only terrible to thyself! And remove from thee the false prophets who
have seen vanity and divined lies; who have daubed thy wall with
untempered mortar, that it may fall; who have strengthened the hands
of the wicked, and made the hearts of the righteous sad. O, do this,
and fear not the result, for either shall thy end be a majestic and an
enviable one, or God shall perpetuate thy reign upon the waters, thou
old Queen!

George Borrow,--and this is the last of his virtues with which I shall
weary you,--had a true English heart. He could make friends with anybody
and be at home anywhere, but though he had a mighty thirst he had never,
in the words of the elder Pitt, 'drunk of the potion described in poetic
fictions which makes men forget their country.'

I have the permission of the Rev. A. W. Upcher to reprint the following
letter addressed by him some time ago to the Athenaeum .--

One summer day during the Crimean War we had a call from George
Borrow, who had not enjoyed a visit to Anna Gurney so much as he had
expected. In a walking tour round Norfolk he had given her a short
notice of his intended call, and she was ready to receive him. When,
according to his account, he had been but a very short time in her
presence, she wheeled her chair round and reached her hand to one of
her bookshelves and took down an Arabic grammar, and put it into his
hand, asking for explanation of some difficult point, which he tried
to decipher; but meanwhile she talked to him continuously; when, said
he, 'I could not study the Arabic grammar and listen to her at the
same time, so I threw down the book and ran out of the room.' He
seems not to have stopped running till he reached Old Tucker's Inn at
Cromer, where he renewed his strength, or calmed his temper, with five
excellent sausages, and then came on to Sheringham. He told us there
were three personages in the world whom he always had a desire to see;
two of these had slipped through his fingers, so he was determined to
see the third. 'Pray, Mr. Borrow, who were they?' He held up three
fingers of his left hand and pointed them off with the forefinger of
the right: the first, Daniel O'Connell; the second, Lamplighter (the
sire of Phosphorus, Lord Berners's winner of the Derby); the third,
Anna Gurney. The first two were dead and he had not seen them; now he
had come to see Anna Gurney, and this was the end of his visit. I
took him up to the Hall, he talking of many persons and occasionally
doubling his fist, and giving a sort of warning like that of his
Isopel Berners (in _Lavengro_) to give the Flaming Tinman 'Long
Melford' with his right hand. As soon as we reached the Hall a battle-
piece by Wouvermans was the first thing that caught his eye and
greatly interested him. He told me of a descendant of Wouvermans--an
officer in the Austrian army--whom he knew. Then entering the drawing-
room and looking out of the bay-window through the oak wood on the
deep blue sea beyond, he seemed for some time quite entranced by the
lovely, peaceful view, till at last I felt I must arouse him, and
said, 'A charming view, Mr. Borrow!' With a deep sigh he slowly
answered, 'Yes!--please God the Russians don't come here.'




PREFACE


In the following pages I have endeavoured to describe a dream, partly of
study, partly of adventure, in which will be found copious notices of
books, and many descriptions of life and manners, some in a very unusual
form.

The scenes of action lie in the British Islands;--pray be not displeased,
gentle reader, if perchance thou hast imagined that I was about to
conduct thee to distant lands, and didst promise thyself much instruction
and entertainment from what I might tell thee of them. I do assure thee
that thou hast no reason to be displeased, inasmuch as there are no
countries in the world less known by the British than these selfsame
British Islands, or where more strange things are every day occurring,
whether in road or street, house or dingle.

The time embraces nearly the first quarter of the present century: this
information again may, perhaps, be anything but agreeable to thee; it is
a long time to revert to, but fret not thyself, many matters which at
present much occupy the public mind originated in some degree towards the
latter end of that period, and some of them will be treated of.

The principal actors in this dream, or drama, are, as you will have
gathered from the title-page, a Scholar, a Gypsy, and a Priest. Should
you imagine that these three form one, permit me to assure you that you
are very much mistaken. Should there be something of the Gypsy manifest
in the Scholar, there is certainly nothing of the Priest. With respect
to the Gypsy--decidedly the most entertaining character of the
three--there is certainly nothing of the Scholar or the Priest in him;
and as for the Priest, though there may be something in him both of
scholarship and gypsyism, neither the Scholar nor the Gypsy would feel at
all flattered by being confounded with him.

Many characters which may be called subordinate will be found, and it is
probable that some of these characters will afford much more interest to
the reader than those styled the principal. The favourites with the
writer are a brave old soldier and his helpmate, an ancient gentlewoman
who sold apples, and a strange kind of wandering man and his wife.

Amongst the many things attempted in this book is the encouragement of
charity, and free and genial manners, and the exposure of humbug, of
which there are various kinds, but of which the most perfidious, the most
debasing, and the most cruel, is the humbug of the Priest.

Yet let no one think that irreligion is advocated in this book. With
respect to religious tenets I wish to observe that I am a member of the
Church of England, into whose communion I was baptized, and to which my
forefathers belonged. Its being the religion in which I was baptized,
and of my forefathers, would be a strong inducement to me to cling to it;
for I do not happen to be one of those choice spirits 'who turn from
their banner when the battle bears strongly against it, and go over to
the enemy,' and who receive at first a hug and a 'viva,' and in the
sequel contempt and spittle in the face; but my chief reason for
belonging to it is, because, of all churches calling themselves Christian
ones, I believe there is none so good, so well founded upon Scripture, or
whose ministers are, upon the whole, so exemplary in their lives and
conversation, so well read in the book from which they preach, or so
versed in general learning, so useful in their immediate neighbourhoods,
or so unwilling to persecute people of other denominations for matters of
doctrine.

In the communion of this Church, and with the religious consolation of
its ministers, I wish and hope to live and die, and in its and their
defence will at all times be ready, if required, to speak, though humbly,
and to fight, though feebly, against enemies, whether carnal or
spiritual.

And is there no priestcraft in the Church of England? There is
certainly, or rather there was, a modicum of priestcraft in the Church of
England, but I have generally found that those who are most vehement
against the Church of England are chiefly dissatisfied with her because
there is only a modicum of that article in her--were she stuffed to the
very cupola with it, like a certain other Church, they would have much
less to say against the Church of England.

By the other Church, I mean Rome. Its system was once prevalent in
England, and, during the period that it prevailed there, was more
prolific of debasement and crime than all other causes united. The
people and the government at last becoming enlightened by means of the
Scripture spurned it from the island with disgust and horror, the land
instantly after its disappearance becoming a fair field, in which arts,
sciences, and all the amiable virtues flourished, instead of being a
pestilent marsh where swine-like ignorance wallowed, and artful
hypocrites, like so many Wills-o'-the-wisp, played antic gambols about,
around, and above debased humanity.

But Popery still wished to play her old part, to regain her lost
dominion, to reconvert the smiling land into the pestilential morass,
where she could play again her old antics. From the period of the
Reformation in England up to the present time, she has kept her
emissaries here, individuals contemptible in intellect, it is true, but
cat-like and gliding, who, at her bidding, have endeavoured, as much as
in their power has lain, to damp and stifle every genial, honest, loyal,
and independent thought, and to reduce minds to such a state of dotage as
would enable their old Popish mother to do what she pleased with them.

And in every country, however enlightened, there are always minds
inclined to grovelling superstition--minds fond of eating dust and
swallowing clay--minds never at rest, save when prostrate before some
fellow in a surplice; and these Popish emissaries found always some weak
enough to bow down before them, astounded by their dreadful denunciations
of eternal woe and damnation to any who should refuse to believe their
Romania; but they played a poor game--the law protected the servants of
Scripture, and the priest with his beads seldom ventured to approach any
but the remnant of those of the eikonolatry--representatives of
worm-eaten houses, their debased dependants, and a few poor crazy
creatures amongst the middle classes--he played a poor game, and the
labour was about to prove almost entirely in vain, when the English
legislature, in compassion or contempt, or, yet more probably, influenced
by that spirit of toleration and kindness which is so mixed up with
Protestantism, removed almost entirely the disabilities under which
Popery laboured, and enabled it to raise its head and to speak out almost
without fear.

And it did raise its head, and, though it spoke with some little fear at
first, soon discarded every relic of it; went about the land uttering its
damnation cry, gathering around it--and for doing so many thanks to
it--the favourers of priestcraft who lurked within the walls of the
Church of England; frightening with the loudness of its voice the weak,
the timid, and the ailing; perpetrating, whenever it had an opportunity,
that species of crime to which it has ever been most partial--_Deathbed
robbery_; for as it is cruel, so is it dastardly. Yes, it went on
enlisting, plundering, and uttering its terrible threats till--till it
became, as it always does when left to itself, a fool, a very fool. Its
plunderings might have been overlooked, and so might its insolence, had
it been common insolence, but it--, and then the roar of indignation
which arose from outraged England against the viper, the frozen viper,
which it had permitted to warm itself upon its bosom.

But thanks, Popery, you have done all that the friends of enlightenment
and religious liberty could wish; but if ever there were a set of foolish
ones to be found under heaven, surely it is the priestly rabble who came
over from Rome to direct the grand movement--so long in its getting up.

But now again the damnation cry is withdrawn, there is a subdued meekness
in your demeanour, you are now once more harmless as a lamb. Well, we
shall see how the trick--'the old trick'--will serve you.




CHAPTER I


Birth--My father--Tamerlane--Ben Brain--French Protestants--East
Anglia--Sorrow and troubles--True peace--A beautiful child--Foreign
grave--Mirrors--Alpine country--Emblems--Slow of speech--The Jew--Strange
gestures.

On an evening of July, in the year 18--, at East D---, a beautiful little
town in a certain district of East Anglia, I first saw the light.

My father was a Cornish man, the youngest, as I have heard him say, of
seven brothers. He sprang from a family of gentlemen, or, as some people
would call them, gentillatres, for they were not very wealthy; they had a
coat of arms, however, and lived on their own property at a place called
Tredinnock, which being interpreted means _the house on the hill_, which
house and the neighbouring acres had been from time immemorial in their
possession. I mention these particulars that the reader may see at once
that I am not altogether of low and plebeian origin; the present age is
highly aristocratic, and I am convinced that the public will read my
pages with more zest from being told that I am a gentillatre by birth
with Cornish blood {5} in my veins, of a family who lived on their own
property at a place bearing a Celtic name, signifying the house on the
hill, or more strictly the house on the _hillock_.

My father was what is generally termed a posthumous child--in other
words, the gentillatre who begot him never had the satisfaction of
invoking the blessing of the Father of All upon his head; having departed
this life some months before the birth of his youngest son. The boy,
therefore, never knew a father's care; he was, however, well tended by
his mother, whose favourite he was; so much so, indeed, that his
brethren, the youngest of whom was considerably older than himself, were
rather jealous of him. I never heard, however, that they treated him
with any marked unkindness, and it will be as well to observe here that I
am by no means well acquainted with his early history, of which, indeed,
as I am not writing his life, it is not necessary to say much. Shortly
after his mother's death, which occurred when he was eighteen, he adopted
the profession of arms, which he followed during the remainder of his
life, and in which, had circumstances permitted, he would probably have
shone amongst the best. By nature he was cool and collected, slow to
anger, though perfectly fearless, patient of control, of great strength;
and, to crown all, a proper man with his hands.

With far inferior qualifications many a man has become a field-marshal or
general; similar ones made Tamerlane, who was not a gentillatre, but the
son of a blacksmith, emperor of one-third of the world; but the race is
not always for the swift, nor the battle for the strong, indeed I ought
rather to say very seldom; certain it is, that my father, with all his
high military qualifications, never became emperor, field-marshal, or
even general: indeed, he had never an opportunity of distinguishing
himself save in one battle, and that took place neither in Flanders,
Egypt, nor on the banks of the Indus or Oxus, but in Hyde Park.

Smile not, gentle reader, many a battle has been fought in Hyde Park, in
which as much skill, science, and bravery have been displayed as ever
achieved a victory in Flanders or by the Indus. In such a combat as that
to which I allude, I opine that even Wellington or Napoleon would have
been heartily glad to cry for quarter ere the lapse of five minutes, and
even the Blacksmith Tartar would, perhaps, have shrunk from the opponent
with whom, after having had a dispute with him, my father engaged in
single combat for one hour, at the end of which time the champions shook
hands and retired, each having experienced quite enough of the other's
prowess. The name of my father's antagonist was Brain.

What! still a smile? did you never hear that name before? I cannot help
it! Honour to Brain, who four months after the event which I have now
narrated was champion of England, having conquered the heroic Johnson.
Honour to Brain, who, at the end of other four months, worn out by the
dreadful blows which he had received in his manly combats, expired in the
arms of my father, who read the Bible to him in his latter moments--Big
Ben Brain.

You no longer smile, even _you_ have heard of Big Ben.

I have already hinted that my father never rose to any very exalted rank
in his profession, notwithstanding his prowess and other qualifications.
After serving for many years in the line, he at last entered as captain
in the militia regiment of the Earl of ---, at that period just raised,
and to which he was sent by the Duke of York to instruct the young levies
in military manoeuvres and discipline; and in this mission I believe he
perfectly succeeded, competent judges having assured me that the regiment
in question soon came by his means to be considered as one of the most
brilliant in the service, and inferior to no regiment of the line in
appearance or discipline.

As the headquarters of this corps were at D--- the duties of my father
not unfrequently carried him to that place, and it was on one of these
occasions that he became acquainted with a young person of the
neighbourhood, for whom he formed an attachment, which was returned; and
this young person was my mother.

She was descended from a family of French Protestants, natives of Caen,
who were obliged to leave their native country when old Louis, at the
instigation of the Pope, thought fit to revoke the Edict of Nantes: their
name was Petrement, and I have reason for believing that they were people
of some consideration; that they were noble hearts, and good Christians,
they gave sufficient proof in scorning to bow the knee to the tyranny of
Rome. So they left beautiful Normandy for their faith's sake, and with a
few louis d'ors in their purse, a Bible in the vulgar tongue, and a
couple of old swords, which, if report be true, had done service in the
Huguenot wars, they crossed the sea to the isle of civil peace and
religious liberty, and established themselves in East Anglia.

And many other Huguenot families bent their steps thither, and devoted
themselves to agriculture or the mechanical arts; and in the venerable
old city, the capital of the province, in the northern shadow of the
Castle of De Burgh, the exiles built for themselves a church where they
praised God in the French tongue, and to which, at particular seasons of
the year, they were in the habit of flocking from country and from town
to sing--

'Thou hast provided for us a goodly earth; thou waterest her furrows,
thou sendest rain into the little valleys thereof, thou makest it soft
with the drops of rain, and blessest the increase of it.'

I have been told that in her younger days my mother was strikingly
handsome; this I can easily believe: I never knew her in her youth, for
though she was very young when she married my father (who was her senior
by many years), she had attained the middle age before I was born, no
children having been vouchsafed to my parents in the early stages of
their union. Yet even at the present day, now that years threescore and
ten have passed over her head, attended with sorrow and troubles
manifold, poorly chequered with scanty joys, can I look on that
countenance and doubt that at one time beauty decked it as with a
glorious garment? Hail to thee, my parent! as thou sittest there, in thy
widow's weeds, in the dusky parlour in the house overgrown with the
lustrous ivy of the sister isle, the solitary house at the end of the
retired court shaded by lofty poplars. Hail to thee, dame of the oval
face, olive complexion, and Grecian forehead; by thy table seated with
the mighty volume of the good Bishop Hopkins spread out before thee;
there is peace in thy countenance, my mother; it is not worldly peace,
however, not the deceitful peace which lulls to bewitching slumbers, and
from which, let us pray, humbly pray, that every sinner may be roused in
time to implore mercy not in vain! Thine is the peace of the righteous,
my mother, of those to whom no sin can be imputed, the score of whose
misdeeds has been long since washed away by the blood of atonement, which
imputeth righteousness to those who trust in it. It was not always thus,
my mother; a time was, when the cares, pomps, and vanities of this world
agitated thee too much; but that time is gone by, another and a better
has succeeded; there is peace now on thy countenance, the true peace;
peace around thee, too, in thy solitary dwelling, sounds of peace, the
cheerful hum of the kettle and the purring of the immense angola, which
stares up at thee from its settle with its almost human eyes.

No more earthly cares and affections now, my mother! Yes, one. Why dost
thou suddenly raise thy dark and still brilliant eye from the volume with
a somewhat startled glance? What noise is that in the distant street?
Merely the noise of a hoof; a sound common enough: it draws nearer,
nearer, and now it stops before thy gate. Singular! And now there is a
pause, a long pause. Ha! thou hearest something--a footstep; a swift but
heavy footstep! thou risest, thou tremblest, there is a hand on the pin
of the outer door, there is some one in the vestibule, and now the door
of thy apartment opens, there is a reflection on the mirror behind thee,
a travelling hat, a gray head and sunburnt face. My dearest Son!--My
darling Mother!

Yes, mother, thou didst recognise in the distant street the hoof-tramp of
the wanderer's horse.

I was not the only child of my parents; I had a brother some three years
older than myself. He was a beautiful child; one of those occasionally
seen in England, and in England alone; a rosy, angelic face, blue eyes,
and light chestnut hair; it was not exactly an Anglo-Saxon countenance,
in which, by the bye, there is generally a cast of loutishness and
stupidity; it partook, to a certain extent, of the Celtic character,
particularly in the fire and vivacity which illumined it; his face was
the mirror of his mind; perhaps no disposition more amiable was ever
found amongst the children of Adam, united, however, with no
inconsiderable portion of high and dauntless spirit. So great was his
beauty in infancy, that people, especially those of the poorer classes,
would follow the nurse who carried him about in order to look at and
bless his lovely face. At the age of three months an attempt was made to
snatch him from his mother's arms in the streets of London, at the moment
she was about to enter a coach; indeed, his appearance seemed to operate
so powerfully upon every person who beheld him, that my parents were
under continual apprehension of losing him; his beauty, however, was
perhaps surpassed by the quickness of his parts. He mastered his letters
in a few hours, and in a day or two could decipher the names of people on
the doors of houses and over the shop-windows.

As he grew up, his personal appearance became less prepossessing, his
quickness and cleverness, however, rather increased; and I may say of
him, that with respect to everything which he took in hand he did it
better and more speedily than any other person. Perhaps it will be asked
here, what became of him? Alas! alas! his was an early and a foreign
grave. As I have said before, the race is not always for the swift, nor
the battle for the strong.

And now, doubtless, after the above portrait of my brother, painted in
the very best style of Rubens, the reader will conceive himself justified
in expecting a full-length one of myself, as a child, for as to my
present appearance, I suppose he will be tolerably content with that
flitting glimpse in the mirror. But he must excuse me; I have no
intention of drawing a portrait of myself in childhood; indeed it would
be difficult, for at that time I never looked into mirrors. No attempts,
however, were ever made to steal me in my infancy, and I never heard that
my parents entertained the slightest apprehension of losing me by the
hands of kidnappers, though I remember perfectly well that people were in
the habit of standing still to look at me, ay, more than at my brother;
from which premisses the reader may form any conclusion with respect to
my appearance which seemeth good unto him and reasonable. Should he,
being a good-natured person, and always inclined to adopt the charitable
side in any doubtful point, be willing to suppose that I, too, was
eminently endowed by nature with personal graces, I tell him frankly that
I have no objection whatever to his entertaining that idea; moreover,
that I heartily thank him, and shall at all times be disposed, under
similar circumstances, to exercise the same species of charity towards
himself.