A GOSSIP ABOUT GEORGE BORROW.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1848, 6 September 1913, Page 9

A GOSSIP ABOUT GEORGE BORROW.

. There were great doings at the ancient city of Norwich on July 5 last, when till! Lord Mayor presented the ] jeed of gift.of tlio house where George t Borrow nad lived to the corporation, j In the evening there was a dinner, at ' which such staunch Borroviana as Mr. ; Augustine Birrell, M.P., Sir Sidnoy ■ Lee, Mr. Clement K. Shorter, of "The j Sphere," aud Mr. Herbert Jenkins, to , whoso ','Lifo of Borrow" I have more ( than once alluded, delivered addresses ; h'in honour of what Mr. Birrell called • ' "the immortal memory" of tlie author , of "Lavengro,". and "The Bible in ( Spain." Mr. jßirrell, who seems to ha vo boon 'in specially good, form, re- i ferred to the long years of neglect i which, curiously enough, followed the | guccess made by "The Bible in Spain." ■ I'll at book was, Ije said, ono of the . greatest successes of the time. Sir | Robert Peel mentioned it in Parlia- < ment, and Mr. Gladstone "read it with ] delight, not unminglcd with very natu- i ral dismay, and he wrote a letter, which | he, Mr. Birrell understood, expressed j his emotions. Unluckily, that letter ] liad nover been, published. "Had it ] been, it would have been one of the most interesting documents in Moriey's 'Life.' but they could not get everything." A Fickle Public. Mr. Birrell waxed facetiously indig- | liauit about the ilckleness of public ( taste as displayed in the cold reception given to. Borrow's third book, the ( famous "Lavengro" :— The' world, that fickle monster. '; : no. longer shouted (over "Laven- ■ ■oro"), but groaned in derision. , ' ■ Like the mule on which Borrofr's • , • companion Todo into Salamanca, ■ it lifted its head in the air, curved its hips s and showed its yollow ' teeth. 1 (Laughter.) What a crude beast was the reading pub- ( lie. (Laughtor.) There was no ' second edition of "Lavengro" un- ' til 1872—a brief season of exces- ' J '' sive popularity followed by long years of total neglect. He (Mr. ' Birrell) found it very hard to say ; which puzzled him him the more — j 'the enormous vogue in 18-13 of I ' "The Bible in Spam" or tlio fail- I ■ ure, from the publisher's point of 'view, of "Lavengro" in 1851. The i aegis of the Bible Society might i htlp to for. the popularity 'of the former volume. Had it not been for that society, and for the fact that Borrow was a colporteur, ' '"The Bible in Spain", would never 'have.found' its way into his (Mr. Birrell's) father's house, and ' :bo ho should have had to postpone .his '.conversion-to tho true faith '"perhaps for thirty, years. (Laughter.) But the "public was a, great ;;jfool, for"!theW far; jnoro ;o.utr Fjrageous A ihi(i|a I '.''ih 'Bible."in ,rSpam" than there„were in "Lav'iengro," but unless they were her- t certain people never, i ..discovered anything. (Laughter.) ' I 'And then the witty author of "Obi- 1 idr Dicta" went on to say although "Borrow never recovered during his lifetimo "the long ears of the British public," "they were all Borroviana now," 'but then, he\slyly added, "they were all so many things nowadays that it was difficult to say how much and how long they were likely to.continue ..anything at all." . ft Borrow Revival. However the British' public may have neglected George - Barrow during the later years of his life, and he died' a disheartened and rather soured old man at his lonely cottage on Oulton Broad, today the author of "Lavengro" and that almost equally famous book, "The Bomany Rye," has now surely, come into his own. Mr. Edward Thomas and Mr. Herbert Jenkins have given us two new biographies of this eccentric . but undoubtedly briliant author (that by Mr. Jenkins is immeasurably the bettei* of tho two), and Mr. Shorter is, it is un- • derstood, hard at work on a third work of the Same character, in which manv hitherto unpublished Borrow letters will appear. John Murray, Barrow's own publishor, gives us a capital cheap edition '.at 2s. 6d. a volume, and John Lane has also issued the four principal books in a neat little edition at Is.- (id. & volume. Mr. Scccombo and Mr. Watts Dunton ! havo written qui to notable essays on Borrow, ,on his wondorful gift for languages—lie ,was the nearest .approach to a Mezzof ante that England has yet produced—and,, best of all, people are every year buying tho Borrow books in'increasing numbers. As to the Borrovian influence over some of our writers of to-day, it is. constantly cropping out. It: is strong ill both' Mr. Jeffrey Farnoil's stories, "The Broad Highway" and "Tho Amateur Gentleman," and it 'is,quite noticeably present in that best of recent .English novels, "Tho Happy Warrior." More ■ than one voung author of to-day has gone to the famous fig-lit with tho "Flaming Tinman" for inspiration, in tho description of some similar, hut more recent, encounter. Conan Doyle undoubtedly remembered his 'Lavengro,' when ho wrote bis "Rodnoy Stone." And as for tho gipiy folk, and their strange ways, concerning .which Mr. I'etulengro (a real personage) gavo Borrow such curious information, as for the love of t'lio "Open Road" and the "Wind on tho Hearth," and all tho freedom and joyousncss of the open air, tlio vagabond's life—why, all these subjects iiro being continually referred to in latter-day literature, not only in fiction, but in essays, and verso. Borrow, the Man. 'As for his works —"Liber's" vote is always given to "Lavengro" —I have on previous occasions said so much that I must not bo tempted to-day into any new disquisition. They aro full of queer and out-of-the-way comments upon bio: largely tinged by an autobiographical element, disfigured very'often by tedious diatribos against tho Pope, against publishers, and against Jaoobitism. What it- called "Tlio Ohavlio over the iWatcr rub!)te'li." was to Borrow as r rod rag to the bull, aud in this connection nis abominably cruel porsoiml attack on tho author of "\J£avorloy"— tho ourious in theso matters will find it wt forth in the famous appendix to "Tho Biblo in Spain"—can never bo forgiven him. But still it is in Borrow that wo find a sturdy, honest, John Bullism which is refreshing indeed, and wbatovor his prejudices nono can question the rugged honesty, the sterling slnosritv of tho man. A fow days ago I beguiled a wot evening by dipping into "Wild Wales," one of tho bestknowa and least popular of tho inmv.irtivl C!sorgo's books. It is a queer jun:blo of pedantry and pleasant liumoru, of violout prejudices and real "horse" common sense i it has faults, many and undeniable, evon by tho most !«vnl of liorroviaus. But in its every ehr.Dt«r is there evidonco of the eccentric, but fascinating, personality, of nis o!*iraffi. his de*pisal of people who al-v.-ojt) tho popular ride. »h«> "uluiut

with the crowd." As Mr. Birrell, so I notice, reminded his Norwich audience, Borrow "never played for safety." Borrow and Norwich. To Norwich, in future, now that it has its Borrow museum, will many pilgrimages bo mado by lovers of "Tho Jiiblo in Spain," just as ardent.Dickensiens go down to Rochester and sleep in Mr. Winkle's bedroom at the Bull Inn, and wander along the Dover Road to have a peep at the old Dickens home on Gad's Hill. It wais a wise, as well as a generous, thing for tho Mayor of Norwich to present his fellow citizens with Borrow s old home in; the city in which the famous word-master —"Lavengro" is Romany for word-master or great linguist—spent his childhood, in which good old Captain Borrow, the author's father, mado that touchingly pious end of which his distineuislied son wrote so lovingly. New Zealand admirers of Borrow, who 'may make'the pilgrimage to the fine old city, can push out into the country and visit Borrow's cottage on Oulton Broad. On tho way they will pass through tho pretty little villago of Blundeston,_ tho rectory in which Dickens took as his model for Blunderstone Rookery, the birthplace of David Copperfield. '