in the early pages of lavengro borrow tells us nearly all we are ever likely to know of his sojourn in london in the years 1824 and 1825, during which time he had those interviews with sir richard phillips which are recorded in our last chapter. dr. knapp, indeed, prints a little note from him to his friend kerrison, in which he begs his friend to come to him as he believes he is dying. roger kerrison, it would seem, had been so frightened by borrow’s depression and threats of suicide that he had left the lodgings at 16 milman street, bedford row, and removed himself elsewhere, and so borrow was left friendless to fight what he called his “horrors” alone. the depression was not unnatural. from his own vivid narrative we learn of borrow’s bitter failure as an author. no one wanted his translations from the welsh and the danish, and phillips clearly had no further use for him after he had compiled his newgate lives and trials (borrow’s name in lavengro for celebrated trials), and was doubtless inclined to look upon him as an impostor for professing, with william taylor’s sanction, a mastery of the german language which had been demonstrated to be false with regard to his own book. no “spirited publisher” had come forward to give reality to his dream thus set down:
i had still an idea that, provided i could persuade any spirited publisher to give these translations to the world, i should acquire both considerable fame and profit; not, perhaps, a world-embracing fame such as byron’s; but a fame not to be sneered at, which would last me a considerable time, and would keep my heart from breaking;—profit, not equal to that which scott had made by his wondrous novels, but which would prevent me from starving, and enable me to achieve some other literary enterprise. i read and re-read my ballads, and the more i read them the more i was convinced that the public, in the event of their being published, would freely purchase, and hail them with the merited applause.
p. 61he has a tale to tell us in lavengro of a certain life and adventures of joseph sell, the great traveller, the purchase of which from him by a publisher at the last moment saved him from starvation and enabled him to take to the road, there to meet the many adventures that have become immortal in the pages of lavengro. dr. knapp has encouraged the idea that joseph sell was a real book, ignoring the fact that the very title suggests doubts, and was probably meant to suggest them. in norfolk, as elsewhere, a “sell” is a word in current slang used for an imposture or a cheat, and doubtless borrow meant to make merry with the credulous. there was, we may be perfectly sure, no joseph sell, and it is more reasonable to suppose that it was the sale of his translation of klinger’s faustus that gave him the much needed money at this crisis. dr. knapp pictures borrow as carrying the manuscript of his translation of faustus with him to london. there is not the slightest evidence of this. it may be reasonably assumed that borrow made the translation from klinger’s novel during his sojourn in london. it is true the preface is dated “norwich, april 1825,” but borrow did not leave london until the end of may, 1825, that is to say, until after he had negotiated with “w. simpkin and r. marshall,” now the well-known firm of simpkin and marshall, for the publication of the little volume. that firm, unfortunately, has no record of the transaction. my impression is that borrow in his wandering after old volumes on crime for his great compilation, celebrated trials, came across the french translation of klinger’s novel published at amsterdam. from that translation he acknowledges that he borrowed the plate which serves as frontispiece—a plate entitled “the corporation feast.” it represents the corporation of frankfort at a banquet turned by the devil into various animals. it has been erroneously assumed that borrow had had something to do with the designing of this plate, and that he had introduced the corporation of norwich in vivid portraiture into the picture. borrow does, indeed, interpolate a reference to norwich into his translation of a not too complimentary character, for at that time he had no very amiable feelings towards his native city. of the inhabitants of frankfort he says:
they found the people of the place modelled after so unsightly a pattern, with such ugly figures and flat features, that the devil p. 62owned he had never seen them equalled, except by the inhabitants of an english town called norwich, when dressed in their sunday’s best. [62]
in the original german version of 1791 we have the town of nuremberg thus satirised. but borrow was not the first translator to seize the opportunity of adapting the reference for personal ends. in the french translation of 1798, published at amsterdam, and entitled les aventures du docteur faust, the translator has substituted auxerre for nuremberg. what makes me think that borrow used only the french version in his translation is the fact that in his preface he refers to the engravings of that version, one of which he reproduced; whereas the engravings are in the german version as well.
friedrich maximilian von klinger (1752–1831), who was responsible for borrow’s “first book,” was responsible for much else of an epoch-making character. it was he who by one of his many plays, sturm und drang, gave a name to an important period of german literature. in 1780 von klinger entered the service of russia, and in 1790 married a natural daughter of the empress catherine. thus his novel, faust’s leben, thaten und höllenfahrt, was actually first published at st. petersburg in 1791. this was seventeen years before goethe published his first part of faust, a book which by its exquisite poetry was to extinguish for all self-respecting germans klinger’s turgid prose. borrow, like the translator of rousseau’s confessions and of many another classic, takes refuge more than once in the asterisk. klinger’s faustus, with much that was bad and even bestial, has merits. the devil throughout shows his victim a succession of examples of “man’s inhumanity to man.” borrow nowhere mentions klinger’s name in his book, of which the title-page runs:
faustus: his life, death, and descent into hell. translated from the german. london: w. simpkin and r. marshall, 1825.
i doubt very much if he really knew who was the author, as the book in both the german editions i have seen as well as in the french version bears no author’s name on its title-page. a letter of borrow’s in the possession of an american collector indicates that he was back in norwich in september, p. 631825, after, we may assume, three months’ wandering among gypsies and tinkers. it is written from willow lane, and is apparently to the publishers of faustus:
as your bill will become payable in a few days, i am willing to take thirty copies of faustus instead of the money. the book has been burnt in both the libraries here, and, as it has been talked about, i may perhaps be able to dispose of some in the course of a year or so.
this letter clearly demonstrates that the guileless simpkin and the equally guileless marshall had paid borrow for the right to publish faustus, and even though part of the payment was met by a bill, i think we may safely find in the transaction whatever verity there may be in the joseph sell episode. “let me know how you sold your manuscript,” writes borrow’s brother to him so late as the year 1829. and this was doubtless faustus. the action of the norwich libraries in burning the book would clearly have had the sympathy of one of its few reviewers had he been informed of the circumstance. it is thus that the literary gazette for 16th july, 1825, refers to borrow’s little book:
this is another work to which no respectable publisher ought to have allowed his name to be put. the political allusions and metaphysics, which may have made it popular among a low class in germany, do not sufficiently season its lewd scenes and coarse descriptions for british palates. we have occasionally publications for the fireside—these are only fit for the fire.
borrow returned then to norwich in the autumn of 1825 a disappointed man so far as concerned the giving of his poetical translations to the world, from which he had hoped so much. no “spirited publisher” had been forthcoming, although dr. knapp’s researches have unearthed a “note” in the monthly magazine, which, after the fashion of the anticipatory literary gossip of our day, announced that olaus borrow was about to issue legends and popular superstitions of the north, “in two elegant volumes.” but this never appeared. quite a number of borrow’s translations from divers languages had appeared from time to time, beginning with a version of schiller’s “diver” in the new monthly magazine for 1823, continuing with stolberg’s “ode to a mountain torrent” in the monthly magazine, and including the “deceived merman.” these p. 64he collected into book form and, not to be deterred by the coldness of heartless london publishers, issued them by subscription. three copies of the slim octavo book lie before me, with separate title-pages:
(1) romantic ballads, translated from the danish; and miscellaneous pieces by george borrow. norwich: printed and published by s. wilkin, upper haymarket, 1826.
(2) romantic ballads, translated from the danish; and miscellaneous pieces by george borrow. london: published by john taylor, waterloo place, pall mall, 1826.
(3) romantic ballads, translated from the danish; and miscellaneous pieces, by george borrow. london: published by wightman and cramp, 24 paternoster row, 1826.
the book contains an introduction in verse by allan cunningham, whose acquaintance borrow seems to have made in london. it commences:
sing, sing, my friend, breathe life again
through norway’s song and denmark’s strain:
on flowing thames and forth, in flood,
pour haco’s war-song, fierce and rude.
cunningham had not himself climbed very far up the literary ladder in 1825, although he was forty-one years of age. at one time a stonemason in a scots village, he had entered chantrey’s studio, and was “superintendent of the works” to that eminent sculptor at the time when borrow called upon him in london, and made an acquaintance which never seems to have extended beyond this courtesy to the younger man’s danish ballads. the point of sympathy of course was that in the year 1825 cunningham had published the songs of scotland, ancient and modern.
five hundred copies of the romantic ballads were printed in norwich by s. wilkin, about two hundred being subscribed for, mainly in that city, the other three hundred being dispatched to london—to taylor, whose name appears on the london title-page, although he seems to have passed on the book very quickly to wightman and cramp, for what reason we are not informed. borrow tells us that the two hundred subscriptions of half a guinea “amply paid expenses,” but he must have been cruelly disappointed, as he was doomed to be more than once in his career, by the lack of public appreciation outside of norwich. yet there were many reasons for this. if scott had made the ballad popular, p. 65he had also destroyed it for a century—perhaps for ever—by substituting the novel as the favourite medium for the storyteller. great ballads we were to have in every decade from that day to this, but never another “best seller” like marmion or the lady of the lake. our popular poets had to express themselves in other ways. then borrow, although his verse has been underrated by those who have not seen it at its best, or who are incompetent to appraise poetry, was not very effective here, notwithstanding that the stories in verse in romantic ballads are all entirely interesting. this fact is most in evidence in a case where a real poet, not of the greatest, has told the same story. we owe a rendering of “the deceived merman” to both george borrow and matthew arnold, but how widely different the treatment! the story is of a merman who rose out of the water and enticed a mortal—fair agnes or margaret—under the waves; she becomes his wife, bears him children, and then asks to return to earth. arriving there she refuses to go back when the merman comes disconsolately to the church-door for her. here are a few lines from the two versions, which demonstrate that here at least borrow was no poet and that arnold was a very fine one:
it says much for the literary proclivities of norwich at this period that borrow should have had so kindly a reception p. 66for his book as the subscription list implies. at the end of each of wilkin’s two hundred copies a “list of subscribers” is given. it opens with the name of the bishop of norwich, dr. bathurst; it includes the equally familiar names of the gurdons, gurneys, harveys, rackhams, hares (then as now of stow hall), woodhouses—all good norfolk or norwich names that have come down to our time. mayor hawkes, who is made famous in lavengro by haydon’s portrait, is there also. among london names we find john bowring, borrow’s new friend, and later to be counted an enemy, thomas campbell, benjamin haydon and john timbs. but the name that most strikes the eye is that of “thurtell.” three of the family are among the subscribers including mr. george thurtell of eaton, near norwich, brother of the murderer; there also is the name of john thurtell, executed for murder exactly a year before. this would seem to imply that borrow had been a long time collecting these names and subscriptions, and doubtless before the all-too-famous crime of the previous year he had made thurtell promise to become a subscriber, and, let us hope, had secured his half-guinea. that may account, with so sensitive and impressionable a man as our author, for the kindly place that weare’s unhappy murderer always had in his memory. borrow, in any case, was now, for a few years, to become more than ever a vagabond. not a single further appeal did he make to an unsympathetic literary public for a period of five years at least.
