Read the book free, right now....

Transcribed from the 1893 Ward, Lock, Bowden, and Co. editionby David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

LAVENGRO:
THE SCHOLAR—THE GYPSY—THE PRIEST.

by
GEORGE BORROW,
author of
“THE BIBLE IN SPAIN,” etc.

with anintroduction
by
THEODORE WATTS.

WARD, LOCK, BOWDEN, AND CO.
london: warwickhouse, salisbury square, e.c.
new york: east12th street.
melbourne: st.james’s street. sydney: yorkstreet.

1893.

p. viiNOTES UPON GEORGE BORROW.

I. Borrow as a Splendid LiteraryAmateur.

There are some writers who cannot be adequatelycriticised—who cannot, indeed, be adequately written aboutat all—save by those to whom they are personallyknown. I allude to those writers of genius who, having onlypartially mastered the art of importing their own individualcharacteristics into literary forms, end their life-work as theybegan it, remaining to the last amateurs in literary art. Of this class of writers George Borrow is generally taken to bethe very type. Was he really so?

There are passages in “Lavengro” which areunsurpassed in the prose literature of England—unsurpassed,I mean, for mere perfection of style—for blending ofstrength and graphic power with limpidity and music offlow. Is “Lavengro” the work of a literaryamateur who, yielding at will to every kind of authorialself-indulgence, fails to find artistic expression for the lifemoving within him—fails to project an individuality thathis friends knew to have been unique? Of other writers ofgenius, admirable criticism may be made by those who have neverknown them in the flesh. Is this because each of thoseothers, having passed from the stage of the literary amateur tothat of the literary artist, is able to pour the stream of hispersonality into the literary mould and give to the world a trueimage of himself? It has been my chance of life to bebrought into personal relations with many men of genius, but Ifeel that there are others who could write about them moreadequately than I. Does Borrow stand alone? Theadmirers of his writings seem generally to think he does, forever since I wrote my brief and hasty obituary notice of him in1881, I have been urged to enlarge my reminiscences ofhim—urged p. viiinot only by philologers andgypsologists, but by many others in England, America, andGermany. But I on my part have been for years urging uponthe friend who introduced me to him, and who knew him yearsago,—knew him when he was the comparatively young literarylion of East Anglia,—Dr. Gordon Hake, to do what others areurging me to do. Not only has the author of “Parablesand Tales” more knowledge of the subject than any one else,but having a greater reputation than I, he can speak with moreauthority, and having a more brilliant pen than I, he can give amore vital picture than I can hope to give of our commonfriend. If he is, as he seems to be, fully determined notto depict Borrow in prose, let me urge him to continue in versethat admirable description of him contained in one of thewell-known sonnets addressed to myself in “The NewDay”:—

“And he, the walking lord of gipsy lore!
   How often ’mid the deer that grazed thePark,
Or in the fields and heath and windy moor,
   Made musical with many a soaring lark,
Have we not held brisk commune with him there,
   While Lavengro, then towering by your side,
With rose complexion and bright silvery hair,
   Would stop amid his swift and lounging stride
To tell the legends of the fading race—
   As at the summons of his piercing glance,
Its story peopling his brown eyes and face,
   While you called up that pendant of romance
To Petulengro with his boxing glory,
   Your Amazonian Sinfi’s noble story!”

II. Is there a Key to“Lavengro”?

Dr. Hake, however, and those others among Borrow’sfriends who are apt to smile at the way in which critics of thehighest intelligence will stand baffled and bewildered before theeccentricities of “Lavengro” and “The RomanyRye”—some critics treating the work as autobiographyspoilt, and some as spoilt fiction—forget that while it iseasy to open a locked door with a key, to open a locked doorwithout a key is a very different undertaking. On thesubject of autobiographies and the autobiographic method, I hadseveral interesting talks with Borrow. I remember anespecial one that took place on Wimbledon Common, on a certainautumn morning when I was pointing out to him the spot p.ixcalled Gypsy Ring. He was in a very communicativemood that day, and more amenable to criticism than he generallywas. I had been speaking of certain bold coincidences in“Lavengro” and “The RomanyRye”—especially that of Lavengro’s meeting byaccident in the neighbourhood of Salisbury Plain the son of thevery apple-woman of London Bridge with whom he had made friends,and also of such apparently manufactured situations as that ofLavengro’s coming upon the man whom Wordsworth’spoetry had sent into a deep slumber in a meadow.

“What is an autobiography?” he asked. “Is it a mere record of the incidents of a man’slife? or is it a picture of the man himself—his character,his soul?”

Now this I think a very suggestive question of Borrow’swith regard to himself and his own work. That he sat downto write his own life in “Lavengro” I know. Hehad no idea then of departing from the strict line of fact. Indeed, his letters to his friend Mr. John Murray would alone besufficient to establish this in spite of his calling“Lavengro” a dream. In the first volume he didalmost confine himself to matters of fact. But as he went

on he clearly found that the ordinary tapestry into which Destinyhad woven the incidents of his life were not tinged withsufficient depth of colour to satisfy his sense of wonder; for,let it be remembered, that of love as a strong passion he hadalmost none. Surely no one but Lavengro could have lived ina dingle with a girl like Belle Berners, and passed the time intrying to teach her Armenian. Without strong passion novery deeply coloured life-tapestry can, in these unadventurousdays, be woven. The manufactured incidents of which thereare so many in “Lavengro” and “The RomanyRye,” are introduced to give colour to a web of life thatstrong Passion had left untinged. But why? In orderto flash upon the personality of Lavengro, and uponLavengro’s attitude towards the universe unseen as well asseen, a light more searching, as Borrow considered, than anypicture of actual experience could have done. In otherwords, to build up the truth of the character of Lavengro, Borrowdoes not shrink from manipulating certain incidents and inventingothers. And when he wishes to dive very boldly into the“abysmal deeps of personality,” he speaks and movespartly behind the mask of some fictitious character, such as theman who touched for the evil chance, and such as thehypochondriac who taught himself Chinese to ward off despair, butcould not tell the time of day by looking at the clock. This is not the place for me to enter more fully into thismatter, but I am looking forward to a fitting occasion of showingwhether or not “Lavengro” and “The RomanyRye” form p. xa spiritual autobiography; and if theydo, whether that autobiography does or does not surpass everyother for absolute truth of spiritual representation. Meantime, let it be remembered by those who object toBorrow’s method that, as I have just hinted, at the basisof his character was a deep sense of wonder. Let it beremembered that he was led to study the first of the manylanguages he taught himself—Irish—because there was,as he said, “something mysterious and uncommon in itsuse.” Let it be remembered that it was this instinctof wonder, not the impulse of the mere poseur, thatimpelled him to make certain exaggerated statements about thecharacters themselves who are introduced into his books.

III. Isopel Berners.

For instance, the tall girl, Isopel Berners—the mostvigorous sketch he has given us—is perfect as she isadorable. Among heroines she stands quite alone; there isnone other that is in the least like her. Yet she is inmany of her qualities typical of a class. Among the verybravest of all human beings in the British Islands are, or were,the nomadic girls of the high road and the dingle. Theirbravery is not only an inherited quality: it is in every wayfostered by their mode of life. No tenderness from the menwith whom they travel, either as wives or as mistresses, do they

get—none of the chivalry which girls in most other gradesof life experience—and none do they expect. In alldisputes between themselves and the men, their associates, theyknow that the final argument is the knock-down blow. Withthe Romany girl, too, this is the case, to be sure; but then,while the Romany girl, as a rule, owing to tribal customs,receives the blow in patience, the English girl is apt to returnit, and with vigour. This condition of things gives theEnglish road-girl a frank independence of bearing whichdistinguishes her from girls of all other classes. There issomething of the charm of the savage about her, even to her oddpassion for tattoo. No doubt Isopel is an idealisation ofthe class; but the class, with all its drawbacks, has a certainwinsomeness for men of Borrow’s temperament.

But, unfortunately, his love of the wonderful, his instinctfor exaggeration, asserts itself even here. I need giveonly one instance of what I mean. He makes Isopel Bernersspeak of herself as being taller than Lavengro. Now, asBorrow gives Lavengro his own character and p. xiphysique inevery detail, even to the silvery hair and even to the somewhatpeculiar method of sparring, and as he himself stood six feet twoinches, Isopel must have been better adapted to shine as agiantess in a show than as a fighting woman capable of cowing the“Flaming Tinman” himself.

It is a very exceptional woman that can really stand upagainst a trained boxer, and it is, I believe, or used to be, anaxiom among the nomads that no fighting woman ought to stand morethan about five feet ten inches at the outside. A handsomeyoung woman never looks so superb as when boxing; but it is underpeculiar disadvantages that she spars with a man, inasmuch as shehas, even when properly padded (as assuredly every woman ought tobe) to guard her chest with even more care than she guards herface. The truth is, as Borrow must have known, that women,in order to stand a chance against men, must rely upon somespecial and surprising method of attack—such, for instance,as that of the sudden “left-hand body blow” of themagnificent gypsy girl of whose exploits I told him that day at“Gypsy Ring”—who, when travelling in England,was attached to Boswell’s boxing-booth, and was alwaysaccompanied by a favourite bantam cock, ornamented with a goldring in each wattle, and trained to clap his wings and crowwhenever he saw his mistress putting on the gloves—the mostbeautiful girl, gypsy or other, that ever went into EastAnglia. This “left-hand body blow” of hers shedelivered so unexpectedly, and with such an engine-like velocity,that but few boxers could “stop it.”

But, with regard to Isopel Berners, neither Lavengro, nor theman she thrashed when he stole one of her flaxen hairs to conjurewith, gives the reader the faintest idea of Isopel’s methodof attack or defence, and we have to take her prowess ontrust.

In a word, Borrow was content to give us the Wonderful,without taking that trouble to find for it a logical basis whicha literary master would have taken. And instances mighteasily be multiplied of this exaggeration of Borrow’s,which is apt to lend a sense of unreality to some of the mostpicturesque pages of “Lavengro.”

IV. Borrow’s Use ofPatois.

Nor does Borrow take much trouble to give organic life to adramatic picture by the aid of patois in dialogue. In every conversation between Borrow’s gypsies, and betweenthem and Lavengro, the illusion is constantly being disturbed bythe vocabulary of the speakers. It is hard p.xiifor the reader to believe that characters such asJasper Petulengro, his wife, and sister Ursula, between whom somuch of the dialogue is distributed, should make use of thecomplex sentences and book-words which Borrow, on occasion, putsinto their mouths.

I remember once remarking to him upon the value ofpatois within certain limits—not only in imaginativebut in biographic art.

His answer came in substance to this, that if the matter ofthe dialogue be true to nature, the entire verisimilitude of theform is a secondary consideration.

“Walter Scott,” said he, “has run to deaththe method of patois dialogue.”

He urged, moreover, that the gypsies really are extremely fondof uncommon and fine words. And this, no doubt, is true,especially in regard to the women. There is nothing inwhich the native superiority of the illiterate Romany woman overthe illiterate English woman of the road is more clearly seenthan in the love of long “book-words” (oftenmispronounced) displayed by the former. Strong, however, asis the Romany chi’s passion for fine words, her sentencesare rarely complex like some of the sentences Borrow puts intoher mouth.

With regard, however, to the charge of idealising gypsylife—a charge which has often been brought againstBorrow—it must be remembered that the gypsies to whom heintroduces us are the better kind of gryengroes (horse-dealers),by far the most prosperous of all gypsies. Borrow’s“gryengroes” are not in any way more prosperous thanthose he knew.

These nomads have an instinctive knowledge ofhorseflesh—will tell the amount of “blood” inany horse by a lightning glance at his quarters—and willsometimes make large sums before the fair is over.

Yet, on the whole, I will not deny that Borrow was assuccessful in giving us vital portraits of English and Irishcharacters as of Romany characters, perhaps more so.

That hypochondriacal strain in Borrow’s nature, whichDr. Hake alludes to, perhaps prevented him from sympathisingfully with the joyous Romany temper. But over and abovethis, and charming as the Petulengro family are, they do not liveas do the characters of Mr. Groome in his delightful book“In Gypsy Tents”—a writer whose treatises onthe gypsies in the “Encyclopædia Britannica,”and in “Chambers’ Encyclopedia,” are as full ofthe fruits of actual personal contact with the gypsies as of thelearning to be derived from books.

p. xiiiV. TheSaving Grace of Pugilism.

Borrow’s “Flaming Tinman” is, of course, a

Read Entire Book Free at Gutenberg.org