II

Sir,—I take the liberty of troubling you with these lines for the purpose of enquiring whether there is any objection to the issuing of the disembodied allowance of my brother Lieut. John Borrow of the Welsh Norfolk Militia, who is at present abroad. I do this by the advice of the Army Pay Office, a power of Attorney having been granted to me by Lieut. Borrow to receive the said allowance for him. I beg leave to add that my brother was present at the last training of his regiment, that he went abroad with the leave of his Commanding Officer, which leave of absence has never been recalled, that he has sent home the necessary affidavits, and that there is no clause in the Pay and Clothing Act to authorize the stoppage of his allowance. I have the honor to remain, Sir, your most obedient, humble servant,

George Borrow.

Willow Lane, Norwich,17th Septr. 1831.

Sir,—I have to acknowledge the receipt of No. 33,063, dated 16th inst., from the War Office, in which I am informed that the Office does not feel authorized to give instructions for the issue of the arrears of disembodied allowance claimed by my brother Lieut. Borrow of the West Norfolk, until he attend the next training of his regiment, and I now beg leave to ask the followingquestion, and to request that I may receive an answer with all convenient speed. What farther right to hispresentarrears of disembodied allowance will Lieut. Borrow's appearance at thenext trainingof his regiment confer upon him, and provided there is no authority at present for ordering the payment of those arrears, by what authority will the War Office issue instructions for the payment of the same, after his arrival in this country and attendance at the training? Sir, provided Lieut. Borrow is not entitled to his arrears of disembodied allowance at the present moment, he will be entitled to them at no future period, and I was to the last degree surprised at the receipt of an answer which tends to involve the office in an inextricable dilemma, for it is in fact a full acknowledgment of the justice of Lieutenant Borrow's claims, and a refusal to satisfy them until a certain time, which instantly brings on the question, 'By what authority does the War Office seek to detain the disembodied allowance of an officer, to which he is entitled by Act of Parliament, a moment after it has become due and is legally demanded?' If it be objected that it is not legally demanded, I reply that the affidavits filled up in the required form are in the possession of the Pay Office, and also a power of Attorney in the Spanish language, together with a Notarial translation, which power of Attorney has been declared by the Solicitor of the Treasury to be legal and sufficient. To that part of the Official letter relating to my brother's appearance at the next training I have to reply, that I believe he is at present lying sick in the Mountains above Vera Cruz, the pest-house of the New World, and that the last time I heard from him I was informed that it would be certain death for him to descend into the level country, even were he capable of the exertion, for the fever was then raging there. Full six months have elapsed since he prepared to return to his native country, having received information that there was a probability that his regiment would be embodied, (but) the hand of God overtook him on his route. He is the son, Sir, of an Officer who served his King abroad and at home for upwards of half a century; he had intended his disembodied allowance for the use of his widowed and infirm mother, but it must now be transmitted to him for his own support until he can arrive in England. But, Sir, I do not wish to excite compassion in his behalf, all I request is that he mayhave justice done him, and if it be, I shall be informed in the next letter, that the necessary order has been given to the Pay Office for the issue of his arrears. I have the honor to remain, Sir, your most obedient, humble servant,

George Borrow.

Norwich,Novr. 24, 1831.

Sir,—Not having been favoured with an answer to the letter which I last addressed to you concerning the arrears of disembodied allowance due to Lieut. John Borrow of the West Norfolk Militia, I again take the liberty of submitting this matter to your consideration. More than six months have elapsed since by virtue of a power of attorney granted to me by Lieut. Borrow, I made demand at the army Pay Office for a portion of those arrears, being the amount of two affidavits which were produced, but owing to the much unnecessary demur which ensued, chiefly with respect to the power of Attorney, since declared to be valid, that demand has not hitherto been satisfied. I therefore am compelled to beg that an order may be issued to the Pay Office for the payment to me of the sums specified in the said affidavits, that the amount may be remitted to Lieut. Borrow, he being at present in great need thereof. If it be answered that Lieut. Borrow was absent at the last training of his regiment, and that he is not entitled to any arrears of pay, I must beg leave to observe that the demand was legally made many months previous to the said training, and cannot now be set aside by his non-appearance, which arose from unavoidable necessity; he having for the last year been lying sick in one of the provinces of New Spain. And now, Sir, I will make bold to inquire whether Lieut. Borrow, the son of an Officer, who served his country abroad and at home, for upwards of fifty years, is to lose his commission for being incapable, from a natural visitation, of attending at the training; if it be replied in the affirmative, I have only to add that his case will be a cruelly hard one. But I hope and trust, Sir, that taking allthese circumstances into consideration you will notyetcause his name to be stricken off the list, and that you will permit him to retain his commission in the event of his arriving in England with all the speed which his health of body will permit, and that to enable him so to do his arrears[21]you will forthwith give an order for the payment of his arrears. I have the honor to be, Sir, your very humble servant,

George Borrow.

Norwich,Decr. 13, 1831.

Sir,—I have just received a letter from my brother Lieutenant J. Borrow, from which it appears he has had leave of absence from his Colonel, the Earl of Orford, up to the present year. He says 'in a letter dated Wolterton, 21st June 1828, Lord Orford writes: "should you want a further leave I will not object to it." 20th May 1829 says: "I am much obliged to you for a letter of the 18th March, and shall be glad to allow you leave of absence for a twelvemonth." I enclose his last letter from Brussels, August 6, 1829. At the end it gives very evident proof that my remaining in Mexicowas not only by his Lordship's permission, but even by his advice. Sir, if you should require it I will transmit this last letter of the Earl of Orford's, which my brother has sent to me, but beg leave to observe that no blame can be attached to his Lordship in this case, he having from a multiplicity of important business doubtless forgotten these minor matters. I hope now, Sir, that you will have no further objection to issue an order for the payment of that portion of my brother's arrears specified in the two affidavits in the possession of the Paymaster General. By the unnecessary obstacles which have been flung in my brother's way in obtaining his arrears he has been subjected to great inconvenience and distress. An early answer on this point will much oblige, Sir, your most obedient, humble servant,

George Borrow.

Willow Lane, Norwich,May 24, 1833.

Sir,—I take the liberty of addressing you for the purpose of requesting that an order be given to the Paymaster General for the issue of the arrears of pay of my brother Lieutenant John Borrow of the West Norfolk Militia, whose agent I am by virtue of certain powers of Attorney, and also for the continuance of the payment of his disembodied allowance. Lieutenant Borrow was not present at the last training of his Regiment, being in Mexico at the time, and knowing nothing of the matter. I beg leave to observe that no official nor other letter was dispatched to him by the adjutant to give him notice of the event, nor was I, his agent, informed of it, he therefore cannot have forfeited his arrears and disembodied allowance. He was moreover for twelve months previous to the training, and still is, so much indisposed from the effects of an attack of the yellow fever, that his return would be attended with great danger, which can be proved by the certificate of a Medical Gentleman practising in Norwich, who was consulted from Mexico. Lieutenants Harper and Williams, of the same Regiment, have recovered their pay and arrears, although absent at the last training, therefore it is clear and manifest that no objection can be made to Lieut. Borrow's claim, who went abroad with his Commanding Officer's permission, which those Gentlemen did not. In conclusion I have to add that I have stated nothing which I cannot substantiate, and that I court the most minute scrutiny into the matter. I have the honor to be, Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant,

George Borrow.

GEORGE BORROW From a portrait by his brother John Thomas Borrow taken in early youth when his hair was black. This portrait is now in the National Portrait Gallery, London.GEORGE BORROWFrom a portrait by his brother John Thomas Borrow taken in early youth when his hair was black. This portrait is now in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

The last of these letters is in another handwriting than that of Borrow, who by this time had started for St. Petersburg for the Bible Society. The officials were adamant. To one letter the War Office replied that they could not consider any claims until Lieutenant Borrow of the West Norfolk Militia should have arrived in England to attend the training of his regiment. These five letters are, as we have said, in the Rolls Office, although the indefatigable Professor Knapp seems to have dropped across only two of them there. Their chief interest is in that they are the earliest in order of date of the hitherto known letters of Borrow. There is one further letter on the subject written somewhat later by old Mrs. Borrow. She also appeals to the War Office for her son's allowance.[22]It would seem clear that the arrears were never paid.

Willow Lane, Norwich,26 May 1834.

My Lord,—I a few days since received the distressing intelligence of the death of my dear son John, a lieutenant in your Lordship's West Norfolk Regiment of Militia, after the sufferings of a protracted and painful illness; the melancholy event took place on the 22nd November last at Guanajuato in Mexico. Having on the former irreparable loss of my dear husband experienced your Lordship's kindness, I am induced to trespass on your goodness in a like case of heavy affliction, by requesting that you will be pleased to make the necessary application to the Secretary at War to authorise me to receive the arrears of pay due to my late son, viz.: ten months to the period of the training, and from that time to the day of his decease, for which I am informed it is requisite to have your Lordship's certificate of leave of absence from the said training. The amount is a matter of great importance to me in my very limited circumstances, having been at considerable expense in fitting him out, which, though at the time it occasioned me much pecuniary inconvenience, I thought it my duty to exert all my means to accomplish, my present distress ofmind is the greater having to struggle with my feelings without the consolation and advice of my son George, who is at this time at St. Petersburg. Your Lordship will, I trust, pardon the liberty I am taking, and the trouble I am giving, and allow for the feelings of an afflicted mother. I have the honor to be your Lordship's most obedient servant,

Ann Borrow.

I have said that there are letters of John Borrow's extant. Fragments of these will be found in Dr. Knapp's book. These show a keen intelligence, great practicality, and common sense. George—in 1829—had asked his brother as to joining him in Mexico. 'If the country is soon settled I shall say "yes,"' John answers. With equal wisdom he says to his brother, 'Do not enter the army; it is a bad spec.' In this same year, 1829, John writes to ask whether his mother and brother are 'still living in that windy house of old King's; it gives me the rheumatism to think of it.' In 1830 he writes to his mother that he wishes his brother were making money. 'Neither he nor I have any luck, he works hard and remains poor.' In February of 1831 John writes to George suggesting that he should endeavour to procure a commission in the regiment, and in July of the same year to try the law again:

I am convinced that your want of success in life is more owing to your being unlike other people than to any other cause.

John, as we have seen, died in Mexico of fever. George was at St. Petersburg working for the Bible Society when his mother writes from Norwich to tell him the news. John had died on 22nd November 1833. 'You are now my only hope,' she writes, ' ... do not grieve, my dear George. I trust we shall all meet in heaven. Put a crape on your hat forsome time.' Had George Borrow's brother lived it might have meant very much in his life. There might have been nephews and nieces to soften the asperity of his later years. Who can say? Meanwhile,Lavengrocontains no happier pages than those concerned with this dearly loved brother.

GEORGE BORROW'S BIRTHPLACE AT DUMPLING GREEN From a drawing by Fortunino MataniaGEORGE BORROW'S BIRTHPLACE AT DUMPLING GREENFrom a drawing by Fortunino Matania

FOOTNOTES:[15]I am not able to trace more than three of John Borrow's pictures: firstly, a portrait of George Borrow, reproduced in this book, which was long in the possession of Mr. William Jarrold, the well-known publisher of Norwich, and is now in the National Portrait Gallery in London, having been purchased by the Director in 1912; secondly, the portrait of Borrow's father in the possession of a lady at Leamington; and thirdly,The Judgment of Solomon, which for a long time hung as an overmantel in the Borrow Home in Willow Lane, Norwich. Dr. Knapp also saw in Norwich 'A Portrait of a Gentleman,' by John Borrow. A second portrait of George Borrow by his brother was taken by the latter to Mexico, and has not since been heard of.[16]Lavengro, ch. xxv.[17]Life of B. R. Haydon, by Tom Taylor, 1853, vol. ii. p. 21.[18]Or perhaps the experience contained in a letter to Miss Mitford in 1824 (Benjamin Robert Haydon: Correspondence and Table Talk, 2 vols., 1876):'I have had a horrid week with a mother and eight daughters! Mammarememberingherself a beauty; Sally and Betsey, etc., see her a matron. They say, "Oh! this is more suitable to mamma's age," and "that fits mamma's time of life!" But mamma does not agree. Betsey, and Sally, and Eliza, and Patty want "mamma"! Mamma wants herself as she looked when she was Betsey's age, and papa fell in love with her. So I am distracted to death. I have a great mind to paint her with a long beard like Salvator, and say, "That'smyidea of a fit accompaniment."'[19]Benjamin Robert Haydon: Correspondence and Table Talk, with a Memoir by his son Frederic Wordsworth Haydon, vol. i. pp. 360-61.[20]From what are called the 'War Office Weeded Papers, Old Series, No. 33,063/17,' and succeeding numbers.[21]('his arrears' are ruled out.) Note by War Office.[22]This letter is from the original among the Borrow Papers in my possession.

[15]I am not able to trace more than three of John Borrow's pictures: firstly, a portrait of George Borrow, reproduced in this book, which was long in the possession of Mr. William Jarrold, the well-known publisher of Norwich, and is now in the National Portrait Gallery in London, having been purchased by the Director in 1912; secondly, the portrait of Borrow's father in the possession of a lady at Leamington; and thirdly,The Judgment of Solomon, which for a long time hung as an overmantel in the Borrow Home in Willow Lane, Norwich. Dr. Knapp also saw in Norwich 'A Portrait of a Gentleman,' by John Borrow. A second portrait of George Borrow by his brother was taken by the latter to Mexico, and has not since been heard of.

[16]Lavengro, ch. xxv.

[17]Life of B. R. Haydon, by Tom Taylor, 1853, vol. ii. p. 21.

[18]Or perhaps the experience contained in a letter to Miss Mitford in 1824 (Benjamin Robert Haydon: Correspondence and Table Talk, 2 vols., 1876):'I have had a horrid week with a mother and eight daughters! Mammarememberingherself a beauty; Sally and Betsey, etc., see her a matron. They say, "Oh! this is more suitable to mamma's age," and "that fits mamma's time of life!" But mamma does not agree. Betsey, and Sally, and Eliza, and Patty want "mamma"! Mamma wants herself as she looked when she was Betsey's age, and papa fell in love with her. So I am distracted to death. I have a great mind to paint her with a long beard like Salvator, and say, "That'smyidea of a fit accompaniment."'

[18]Or perhaps the experience contained in a letter to Miss Mitford in 1824 (Benjamin Robert Haydon: Correspondence and Table Talk, 2 vols., 1876):

'I have had a horrid week with a mother and eight daughters! Mammarememberingherself a beauty; Sally and Betsey, etc., see her a matron. They say, "Oh! this is more suitable to mamma's age," and "that fits mamma's time of life!" But mamma does not agree. Betsey, and Sally, and Eliza, and Patty want "mamma"! Mamma wants herself as she looked when she was Betsey's age, and papa fell in love with her. So I am distracted to death. I have a great mind to paint her with a long beard like Salvator, and say, "That'smyidea of a fit accompaniment."'

[19]Benjamin Robert Haydon: Correspondence and Table Talk, with a Memoir by his son Frederic Wordsworth Haydon, vol. i. pp. 360-61.

[20]From what are called the 'War Office Weeded Papers, Old Series, No. 33,063/17,' and succeeding numbers.

[21]('his arrears' are ruled out.) Note by War Office.

[22]This letter is from the original among the Borrow Papers in my possession.

We do not need to inquire too deeply as to Borrow's possible gypsy origin in order to account for his vagabond propensities. The lives of his parents before his birth, and the story of his own boyhood, sufficiently account for the dominant tendency in Borrow. His father and mother were married in 1793. Almost every year they changed their domicile. In 1801 a son was born to them—they still continued to change their domicile. Captain Borrow followed his regiment from place to place, and his family accompanied him on these journeys. Dover, Colchester, Sandgate, Canterbury, Chelmsford—these are some of the towns where the Borrows sojourned. It was the merest accident—the Peace of Amiens, to be explicit—that led them back to East Dereham in 1803, so that the second son was born in his grandfather's house. George was only a month old when he was carried off to Colchester; in 1804 he was in the barracks of Kent, in 1805 of Sussex, in 1806 at Hastings, in 1807 at Canterbury, and so on. The indefatigable Dr. Knapp has recorded every detail for all who love the minute, the meticulous, in biography. The whole of the first thirteen years of Borrow's life is filled up in this way, until in 1816 he and his parents found a home of some permanence in Norwich. In 1809-10 they were at EastDereham, in 1810-11 at Norman Cross, in 1812 wandering from Harwich to Sheffield, and in 1813 wandering from Sheffield to Edinburgh; in 1814 they were in Norwich, and in 1815-16 in Ireland. In this last year they returned to Norwich, the father to retire on full pay, and to live in Willow Lane until his death. How could a boy, whose first twelve years of life had been made up of such continual wandering, have been other than a restless, nomad-loving man, envious of the free life of the gypsies, for whom alone in later life he seemed to have kindliness? Those twelve years are to most boys merely the making of a moral foundation for good or ill; to Borrow they were everything, and at least four personalities captured his imagination during that short span, as we see if we follow his juvenile wanderings more in detail to Dereham, Norman Cross, Edinburgh, and Clonmel, and the personalities are Lady Fenn, Ambrose Smith, David Haggart, and Murtagh. Let us deal with each in turn:

A.East Dereham and Lady Fenn.—In our opening chapter we referred to the lines inLavengro, where Borrow recalls his early impressions of his native town, or at least the town in the neighbourhood of the hamlet in which he was born. Borrow, we may be sure, would have repudiated 'Dumpling Green' if he could. The name had a humorous suggestion. To this day they call boys from Norfolk 'Norfolk Dumplings' in the neighbouring shires. But East Dereham was something to be proud of. In it had died the writer who, through the greater part of Borrow's life, remained the favourite poet of that half of England which professed the Evangelical creed in which Borrow was brought up. Cowper was buried here by the side ofMary Unwin, and every Sunday little George would see his tomb just as Henry Kingsley was wont to see the tombs in Chelsea Old Church. The fervour of devotion to Cowper's memory that obtained in those early days must have been a stimulus to the boy, who from the first had ambitions far beyond anything that he was to achieve. Here was his first lesson. The second came from Lady Fenn—a more vivid impression for the child. Twenty years before Borrow was born Cowper had sung her merits in his verse. She and her golden-headed cane are commemorated inLavengro. Dame Eleanor Fenn had made a reputation in her time. As 'Mrs. Teachwell' and 'Mrs. Lovechild' she had published books for the young of a most improving character,The Child's Grammar,The Mother's Grammar,A Short History of Insects, andCobwebs to Catch Fliesbeing of the number. The forty-fourth edition ofThe Child's Grammarby Mrs. Lovechild appeared in 1851, and the twenty-second edition ofThe Mother's Grammarin 1849. But it is her husband that her name most recalls to us. Sir John Fenn gave us the delightful Paston Letters—of which Horace Walpole said that 'they make all other letters not worth reading.' Walpole described 'Mr. Fenn of East Dereham in Norfolk' as 'a smatterer in antiquity, but a very good sort of man.' Fenn, who held the original documents of the Letters, sent his first two volumes, when published, to Buckingham Palace, and the King acknowledged the gifts by knighting the editor, who, however, died in 1794, before George Borrow was born. His widow survived until 1813, and Borrow was in his seventh or eighth year when he caught these notable glimpses of his 'Lady Bountiful,' who lived in 'the half-aristocratic mansion' of thetown. But we know next to nothing of Borrow in East Dereham, from which indeed he departed in his eighth year. There are, however, interesting references to his memories of the place inLavengro. The first is where he recalls to his author friend, who had offered him comet wine of 1811, his recollection of gazing at the comet from the market-place of 'pretty D——' in 1811.[23]The second reference is when he goes to church with the gypsies and dreams of an incident in his childhood:

It appeared as if I had fallen asleep in the pew of the old church of pretty Dereham. I had occasionally done so when a child, and had suddenly woke up. Yes, surely, I had been asleep and had woke up; but no! if I had been asleep I had been waking in my sleep, struggling, striving, learning and unlearning in my sleep. Years had rolled away whilst I had been asleep—ripe fruit had fallen, green fruit had come on whilst I had been asleep—how circumstances had altered, and above all myself whilst I had been asleep. No, I had not been asleep in the old church! I was in a pew, it is true, but not the pew of black leather in which I sometimes fell asleep in days of yore, but in a strange pew; and then my companions, they were no longer those of days of yore. I was no longer with my respectable father and mother, and my dear brother, but with the gypsy cral and his wife, and the gigantic Tawno, the Antinous of the dusky people. And what was I myself? No longer an innocent child but a moody man, bearing in my face, as I knew well, the marks of my strivings and strugglings; of what I had learnt and unlearnt.

But Borrow, as I have said, left Dereham in his eighth year, and the author of aHistory of East Derehamthus accounts for several inaccuracies in his memory, both as to persons and things.

B.Norman Cross and Ambrose Smith.—InLavengroBorrow recalls childish memories of Canterbury and of Hythe, at which latter place he saw the church vault filled with ancient skulls as we may see it there to-day. And after that the book which impressed itself most vividly upon his memory wasRobinson Crusoe. How much he came to revere Defoe the pages ofLavengromost eloquently reveal to us. 'Hail to thee, spirit of Defoe! What does not my own poor self owe to thee?' In 1810-11 his father was in the barracks at Norman Cross in Huntingdonshire. Here the Government had bought a large tract of land, and built upon it a huge wooden prison, and overlooking this a substantial barrack also of wood, the only brick building on the land being the house of the Commandant. The great building was destined for the soldiers taken prisoners in the French wars. The place was constructed to hold 5000 prisoners, and 500 men were employed by the War Office in 1808 upon its construction. The first batch of prisoners were the victims of the battle of Vimeiro in that year. Borrow's description of the hardships of the prisoners has been called in question by a later writer, Arthur Brown,[24]who denies the story of bad food and 'straw-plait hunts,' and charges Borrow with recklessness of statement. 'What could have been the matter with the man to write such stuff as this?' asksBrown in reference to Borrow's story of bad meat and bad bread: which was not treating a great author with quite sufficient reverence. Borrow was but recalling memories of childhood, a period when one swallow does make a summer. He had doubtless seen examples of what he described, although it may not have been the normal condition of things. Brown's own description of the Norman Cross prison was interwoven with a love romance, in which a French officer fell in love with a girl of the neighbouring village of Yaxley, and after Waterloo returned to England and married her. When he wrote his story a very old man was still living at Yaxley, who remembered, as a boy, having often seen the prisoners on the road, some very well dressed, some in tatters, a few in uniform. The milestone is still pointed out which marked the limit beyond which the officer-prisoners might not walk. The buildings were destroyed in 1814, when all the prisoners were sent home, and the house of the Commandant, now a private residence, alone remains to recall this episode in our history. But Borrow's most vivid memory of Norman Cross was connected with the viper given to him by an old man, who had rendered it harmless by removing the fangs. It was the possession of this tame viper that enabled the child of eight—this was Borrow's age at the time—to impress the gypsies that he met soon afterwards, and particularly the boy Ambrose Smith, whom Borrow introduced to the world inLavengroas Jasper Petulengro. Borrow's frequent meetings with Petulengro[25]are no doubt many of them mythical. He was an imaginative writer, and Dr. Knapp's worst banality is to suggest that he 'invented nothing.' ButPetulengro was a very real person, who lived the usual roving gypsy life. There is no reason to assume otherwise than that Borrow did actually meet him at Norman Cross when he was eight years old, and Ambrose a year younger, and not thirteen as Borrow states. In the original manuscript ofLavengroin my possession, as in the copy of it in Mrs. Borrow's handwriting that came into the possession of Dr. Knapp, 'Ambrose' is given instead of 'Jasper,' and the name was altered as an afterthought. It is of course possible that Borrow did not actually meet Jasper until his arrival in Norwich, for in the first half of the nineteenth century various gypsy families were in the habit of assembling their carts and staking their tents on the heights above Norwich, known as Mousehold Heath, that glorious tract of country that has been rendered memorable in history by the tragic life of Kett the tanner, and has been immortalised in painting by Turner and Crome. Here were assembled the Smiths and Hernes and Boswells, names familiar to every student of gypsy lore. Jasper Petulengro, as Borrow calls him, or Ambrose Smith, to give him his real name, was the son of Fāden Smith, and his name of Ambrose was derived from his uncle, Ambrose Smith, who was transported for stealing harness. Ambrose was twice married, and it was his second wife, Sanspirella Herne, who comes into the Borrow story. He had families by both his wives. Ambrose had an extraordinary varied career. It will be remembered by readers of theZincalithat when he visited Borrow at Oulton in 1842 he complained that 'There is no living for the poor people, brother, the chokengres (police) pursue us from place to place, and the gorgios are become either so poor or miserly that they grudge our cattle a bite of grass by the wayside, and ourselves a yard ofground to light a fire upon.' After a time Ambrose left the eastern counties and crossed to Ireland. In 1868 he went to Scotland, and there seems to have revived his fortunes. In 1878 he and his family were encamped at Knockenhair Park, about a mile from Dunbar. Here Queen Victoria, who was staying at Broxmouth Park near by with the Dowager Duchess of Roxburghe, became interested in the gypsies, and paid them a visit.[26]This was in the summer of 1878. Ambrose was then a very old man. He died in the following October. His wife, Sanspi or Sanspirella, received a message of sympathy from the Queen. Very shortly after Ambrose's death, however, most of the family went off to America, where doubtless they are now scattered, many of them, it may be, leading successful lives, utterly oblivious of the association of one of their ancestors with Borrow and his great book. Ambrose Smith was buried in Dunbar cemetery, the Christian service being read over his grave, and his friends erecteda stone to him which bears the following inscription, the hymn not being very accurately rendered:

In Memory ofAmbrose Smith, who died 22ndOctober 1878, aged 74 years.AlsoThomas, his son,who died 28th May 1879, aged 48 years.

'Nearer my Father's House,Where the many mansions be;Nearer the Great White Throne,Nearer the Jasper Sea.'Nearer the bound of lifeWhere we lay our burdens down;Nearer leaving the Cross,Nearer gaining the Crown.'Feel thee near me when my feetAre slipping over the brink;For it may be I'm nearer home,Nearer now than I think.'[27]

'Nearer my Father's House,Where the many mansions be;Nearer the Great White Throne,Nearer the Jasper Sea.

'Nearer the bound of lifeWhere we lay our burdens down;Nearer leaving the Cross,Nearer gaining the Crown.

'Feel thee near me when my feetAre slipping over the brink;For it may be I'm nearer home,Nearer now than I think.'[27]

In December 1912 a London newspaper contained an account of a gypsy meeting at which Jasper Petulengro was present. Not only was this obviously impossible, but no relative of Ambrose Smith is apparently alive in England who could by any chance have justified the imposition.

I have said that it is probable that Borrow did not meet Jasper or Ambrose until later days in Norwich. I assume this as possible because Borrow misstates the age of his boy friend inLavengro. Ambrose was actually a year younger than Borrow, whereas when George was eight years of age he represents Ambrose as 'a lad of some twelve or thirteen years,' and hekeeps up this illusion on more than one later occasion. However, we may take it as almost certain that Borrow received his first impression of the gypsies in these early days at Norman Cross.

C.Edinburgh and David Haggart.—Three years separated the sojourn of the Borrow family at Norman Cross from their sojourn in Edinburgh—three years of continuous wandering. The West Norfolk Militia were watching the French prisoners at Norman Cross for fifteen months. After that we have glimpses of them at Colchester, at East Dereham again, at Harwich, at Leicester, at Huddersfield, concerning which place Borrow incidentally inWild Waleswrites of having been at school, in Sheffield, in Berwick-on-Tweed, and finally the family are in Edinburgh, where they arrive on 6th April 1813. We have already referred to Borrow's presence at the High School of Edinburgh, the school sanctified by association with Walter Scott and so many of his illustrious fellow-countrymen. He and his brother were at the High School for a single session, that is, for the winter session of 1813-14, although with the licence of a maker of fiction he claimed, inLavengro, to have been there for two years. But it is not in this brief period of schooling of a boy of ten that we find the strongest influence that Edinburgh gave to Borrow. Rather may we seek it in the acquaintanceship with the once too notorious David Haggart. Seven years later than this all the peoples of the three kingdoms were discussing David Haggart, the Scots Jack Sheppard, the clever young prison-breaker, who was hanged at Edinburgh in 1821 for killing his jailer in Dumfries prison. How much David Haggart filled the imagination of every one who could read in the early years of lastcentury is demonstrated by a reference to the Library Catalogue of the British Museum, where we find pamphlet after pamphlet, broadsheet after broadsheet, treating of the adventures, trial, and execution of this youthful jailbird. Even George Combe, the phrenologist, most famous in his day, sat in judgment upon the young man while he was in prison, and published a pamphlet which made a great impression upon prison reformers. Combe submitted his observations to Haggart in jail, and told the prisoner indeed that he had a greater development of the organs of benevolence and justice than he had anticipated. There cannot be a doubt but that Combe started in a measure, through his treatment of this case, the theory that many of our methods of punishment led to the making of habitual criminals.[28]But by far the most valuable publication with regard to Haggart is one that Borrow must have read in his youth. This was a life of Haggart written by himself,[29]a little book that had awide circulation, and containing a preface by George Robertson, Writer to the Signet, dated Edinburgh, 20th July 1821. Mr. Robertson tells us that a portion of the story was written by Haggart, and the remainder taken down from his dictation. The profits of this book, Haggart arranged, were to go in part to the school of the jail in which he was confined, and part to be devoted to the welfare of his younger brothers and sister. From this little biography we learn that Haggart was born in Golden Acre, near Canon-Mills, in the county of Edinburgh in 1801, his father, John Haggart, being a gamekeeper, and in later years a dog-trainer. The boy was at school under Mr. Robin Gibson at Canon-Mills for two years. He left school at ten years of age, and from that time until his execution seems to have had a continuous career of thieving. He tells us that before he was eleven years old he had stolen a bantam cock from a woman belonging to the New Town of Edinburgh. He went with another boy to Currie, six miles from Edinburgh, and there stole a pony, but this was afterwards returned. When but twelve years of age he attended Leith races, and it was here that he enlisted in the Norfolk Militia, then stationed in Edinburgh Castle. This may very well have brought him into contact with Borrow in the way described inLavengro. He was only, however, in the regiment for a year, for when it was sent back to England the Colonel in command of it obtained young Haggart's discharge. These dates coincide with Borrow's presence in Edinburgh. Haggart's history for the next five or six years was in truth merely that of a wandering pickpocket, sometimes in Scotland, sometimes in England, and finally he became a notorious burglar. Incidentally he refers to a girlwith whom he was in love. Her name was Mary Hill She belonged to Ecclefechan, which Haggart more than once visited. He must therefore have known Carlyle, who had not then left his native village. In 1820 we find him in Edinburgh, carrying on the same sort of depredations both there and at Leith—now he steals a silk plaid, now a greatcoat, and now a silver teapot. These thefts, of course, landed him in jail, out of which he breaks rather dramatically, fleeing with a companion to Kelso. He had, indeed, more than one experience of jail. Finally, we find him in the prison of Dumfries destined to stand his trial for 'one act of house-breaking, eleven cases of theft, and one of prison-breaking.' While in prison at Dumfries he planned another escape, and in the attempt to hit a jailer named Morrin on the head with a stone he unexpectedly killed him. His escape from Dumfries jail after this murder, and his later wanderings, are the most dramatic part of his book. He fled through Carlisle to Newcastle, and then thought that he would be safer if he returned to Scotland, where he found the rewards that were offered for his arrest faced him wherever he went. He turned up again in Edinburgh, where he seems to have gone about freely, although reading everywhere the notices that a reward of seventy guineas was offered for his apprehension. Then he fled to Ireland, where he thought that his safety was assured. At Dromore he was arrested and brought before the magistrate, but he spoke with an Irish brogue, and declared that his name was John McColgan, and that he came from Armagh. He escaped from Dromore jail by jumping through a window, and actually went so far as to pay three pound ten shillings for his passage to America, but he was afraid of the sea, and changed his mind, and lost hispassage money at the last moment. After this he made a tour right through Ireland, in spite of the fact that the DublinHue and Cryhad a description of his person which he read more than once. His assurance was such that in Tullamore he made a pig-driver apologise before the magistrate for charging him with theft, although he had been living on nothing else all the time he was in Ireland. Finally, he was captured, being recognised by a policeman from Edinburgh. He was brought from Ireland to Dumfries, landed in Calton jail, Edinburgh, and was tried and executed. In addition to composing this biography Haggart wrote while in Edinburgh jail a rather long set of verses, of which I give the following two as specimens (the original autograph is in Lord Cockburn's copy in the British Museum):

Able and willing, you all will findThough bound in chains, still free in mind,For with these things I'll ne'er be grievedAlthough of freedom I'm bereaved.Now for the crime that I'm condemn'd,The same I never did intend,Only my liberty to take,As I thought my life did lie at stake.

Able and willing, you all will findThough bound in chains, still free in mind,For with these things I'll ne'er be grievedAlthough of freedom I'm bereaved.

Now for the crime that I'm condemn'd,The same I never did intend,Only my liberty to take,As I thought my life did lie at stake.

D. Ireland and Murtagh.—We may pass over the brief sojourn in Norwich that was Borrow's lot in 1814, when the West Norfolk Militia left Scotland. When Napoleon escaped from Elba the West Norfolk Regiment was despatched to Ireland, and Captain Borrow again took his family with him. We find the boy with his family at Clonmel from May to December of 1815. Here Borrow's elder brother, now a boy of fifteen, was promoted from Ensign to Lieutenant, gaining in a year, as Dr. Knapp reminds us, a position that ithad taken his father twelve years to attain. In January 1816 the Borrows moved to Templemore, returning to England in May of that year. Borrow, we see, was less than a year in Ireland, and he was only thirteen years of age when he left the country. But it seems to have been the greatest influence that guided his career. Three of the most fascinating chapters inLavengrowere one outcome of that brief sojourn, a thirst for the acquirement of languages was another, and perhaps a taste for romancing a third. Borrow never came to have the least sympathy with the Irish race, or its national aspirations. As the son of a half-educated soldier he did not come in contact with any but the vagabond element of Ireland, exactly as his father had done before him.[30]Captain Borrow was asked on one occasion what language is being spoken:

'Irish,' said my father with a loud voice, 'and a bad language it is.... There's one part of London where all the Irish live—at least the worst of them—and there they hatch their villainies to speak this tongue.'

And Borrow followed his father's prejudices throughout his life, although in the one happy year in which he wroteThe Bible in Spainhe was able to do justice to the country that had inspired so much of his work:

Honour to Ireland and her 'hundred thousand welcomes'! Her fields have long been the greenest in the world; her daughters the fairest; her sons the bravest and most eloquent. May they never cease to be so.[31]

In later years Orangemen were to him the only attractive element in the life of Ireland, and we may be surethat he was not displeased when his stepdaughter married one of them. Yet the creator of literature works more wisely than he knows, and Borrow's books have won the wise and benign appreciation of many an Irish and Roman Catholic reader, whose nationality and religion Borrow would have anathematised. Irishmen may forgive Borrow much, because he was one of the first of modern English writers to take their language seriously.[32]It is true that he had but the most superficial knowledge of it. He admits—inWild Wales—that he only knew it 'by ear.' The abundant Irish literature that has been so diligently studied during the last quarter of a century was a closed book to Borrow, whose few translations from the Irish have but little value. Yet the very appreciation of Irish as a language to be seriously studied in days before Dr. Sigerson, Dr. Douglas Hyde, and Dr. Kuno Meyer had waxed enthusiastic and practical kindles our gratitude. Then what a character is Murtagh. We are sure there was a Murtagh, although, unlike Borrow's other boyish and vagabond friend Haggart, we know nothing about him but what Borrow has to tell. Yet what a picture is this where Murtagh wants a pack of cards:

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