there has been much nonsense written concerning what has been called the “veiled period” of george borrow’s life. this has arisen from a letter which richard ford of the handbook for travellers in spain wrote to borrow after a visit to him at oulton in 1844. borrow was full of his projected lavengro, the idea of which he outlined to his friends. he was a genial man in those days, on the wave of a popular success. was not the bible in spain passing merrily from edition to edition! borrow, it is clear, told ford that he was writing his “autobiography”—he had no misgiving then as to what he should call it—and he evidently proposed to end it in 1825 and not in 1833, when the bible society gave him his real chance in life. his friend ford indeed begged him not to “drop a curtain” over the eight years succeeding 1825. “no doubt,” says ford, “it will excite a mysterious interest,” but then he adds in effect it will lead to a wrong construction being put upon the omission. well, there can be but one interpretation, and that not an unnatural one. borrow had a very rough time during these years. his vanity was hurt, and no wonder. it seems a strange matter to us now that charles dickens should have been ashamed of the blacking-bottle episode of his boyhood. genius has a right to a poverty-stricken—even to a sordid, boyhood. but genius has no right to a sordid manhood, and here was george “olaus” borrow, who was able to claim the friendship of william taylor, the german scholar; who was able to boast of his association with sound scholastic foundations, with the high school at edinburgh and the grammar school at norwich; who was a great linguist and had made rare translations from the poetry of many nations, starving in the byways of england and of france. what a fate for such a man that he should have been so unhappy for eight years; should have led the most penurious of p. 79roving lives, and almost certainly have been in prison as a common tramp. [79] it was all very well to romance about a poverty-stricken youth. but when youth had fled there ceased to be romance, and only sordidness was forthcoming. from his twenty-third to his thirty-first year george borrow was engaged in a hopeless quest for the means of making a living. there is, however, very little mystery. many incidents of each of these years are revealed at one or other point. his home, to which he returned from time to time, was with his mother at the cottage in willow lane, norwich. whether he made sufficient profit out of a horse, as in the romany rye, to enable him to travel upon the proceeds, as dr. knapp thinks, we cannot say. dr. knapp is doubtless right in assuming that during this period he led “a life of roving adventure,” his own authorised version of his career at the time, as we may learn from the biography in his handwriting from men of the time. but how far this roving was confined to england, how far it extended to other lands, we do not know. we are, however, satisfied that he starved through it all, that he rarely had a penny in his pocket. at a later date he gave it to be understood at times that he had visited the east, and that india had revealed her glories to him. we do not believe it. defoe was borrow’s master in literature, and he shared defoe’s right to lie magnificently on occasion. borrow certainly did some travel in these years, but it was sordid, lacking in all dignity—never afterwards to be recalled. for the most part, however, he was in england. we know that borrow was in norwich in 1826, for we have seen him superintending the publication of the romantic ballads by subscription in that year. in that year also he wrote the letter to haydon, the painter, to say that he was ready to sit for him, but that he was “going to the south of france in a little better than a fortnight.” we know also that he was in norwich in 1827, because it was then, and not in 1818 as described in lavengro, that he “doffed his hat” to the famous trotting stallion marshland shales, when that famous old horse was exhibited at tombland fair on the castle hill. we meet him next as the friend of dr. bowring. the letters to bowring we must leave to another chapter, but they commence in 1829 p. 80and continue through 1830 and 1831. through them all borrow shows himself alive to the necessity of obtaining an appointment of some kind, and meanwhile he is hard at work upon his translations from various languages, which, in conjunction with dr. bowring, he is to issue as songs of scandinavia. it has been said that in 1829 he made the translation of the memoirs of vidocq, which appeared in that year with a short preface by the translator. but these little volumes bear no internal evidence of borrow’s style, and there is no external evidence to support the assumption that he had a hand in their publication. his occasional references to vidocq are probably due to the fact that he had read this little book.
i have before me one very lengthy manuscript of borrow’s of this period. it is dated december, 1829, and is addressed, “to the committee of the honourable and praiseworthy association, known by the name of the highland society.” it is a proposal that they should publish in two thick octavo volumes a series of translations of the best and most approved poetry of the ancient and modern scots-gaelic bards. borrow was willing to give two years to the project, for which he pleads “with no sordid motive.” it is a dignified letter, which will be found in one of dr. knapp’s appendices—so presumably borrow made two copies of it. the offer was in any case declined, and so borrow passed from disappointment to disappointment during these eight years, which no wonder he desired, in the coming years of fame and prosperity, to veil as much as possible. the lean years in the lives of any of us are not those upon which we delight to dwell, or upon which we most cheerfully look back.
