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There are some writers who cannot be adequately criticised—who cannot, indeed, be adequately written about at all—save by those to whom they are personally known. I allude to those writers of genius who, having only partially mastered the art of importing their own individual characteristics into literary forms, end their life-work as they began it, remaining to the last amateurs in literary art. Of this class of writers George Borrow is generally taken to be the very type. Was he really so?
There are passages in “Lavengro” which are unsurpassed in the prose literature of England—unsurpassed, I mean, for mere perfection of style—for blending of strength and graphic power with limpidity and music of flow. Is “Lavengro” the work of a literary amateur who, yielding at will to every kind of authorial self-indulgence, fails to find artistic expression for the life moving within him—fails to project an individuality that his friends knew to have been unique? Of other writers of genius, admirable criticism may be made by those who have never known them in the flesh. Is this because each of those others, having passed from the stage of the literary amateur to that of the literary artist, is able to pour the stream of his personality into the literary mould and give to the world a true image of himself? It has been my chance of life to be brought into personal relations with many men of genius, but I feel that there are others who could write about them more adequately than I. Does Borrow stand alone? The admirers of his writings seem generally to think he does, for ever since I wrote my brief and hasty obituary notice of him in 1881, I have been urged to enlarge my reminiscences of him—urged not only by philologers and gypsologists, but by many others in England, America, and Germany. But I on my part have been for years urging upon the friend who introduced me to him, and who knew him years ago—knew him when he was the comparatively young literary lion of East Anglia—Dr. Gordon Hake, to do what others are urging me to do. Not only has the author of “Parables and Tales” more knowledge of the subject than any one else, but having a greater reputation than I, he can speak with more authority, and having a more brilliant pen than I, he can give a more vital picture than I can hope to give of our common friend. If he is, as he seems to be, fully determined not to depict Borrow in prose, let me urge him to continue in verse that admirable description of him contained in one of the well-known sonnets addressed to myself in “The New Day”:—
“And he, the walking lord of gipsy lore!
How often ’mid the deer that grazed the Park,
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’s friends who are apt to smile at the way in which critics of the highest intelligence will stand baffled and bewildered before the eccentricities of “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye”—some critics treating the work as autobiography spoilt, and some as spoilt fiction—forget that while it is easy to open a locked door with a key, to open a locked door without a key is a very different undertaking. On the subject of autobiographies and the autobiographic method, I had several interesting talks with Borrow. I remember an especial one that took place on Wimbledon Common, on a certain autumn morning when I was pointing out to him the spot called Gypsy Ring. He was in a very communicative mood that day, and more amenable to criticism than he generally was. I had been speaking of certain bold coincidences in “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye”—especially that of Lavengro’s meeting by accident in the neighbourhood of Salisbury Plain the son of the very apple-woman of London Bridge with whom he had made friends, and also of such apparently manufactured situations as that of Lavengro’s coming upon the man whom Wordsworth’s poetry 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’s life? or is it a picture of the man himself—his character, his soul?”
Now this I think a very suggestive question of Borrow’s with regard to himself and his own work. That he sat down to write his own life in “Lavengro” I know. He had no idea then of departing from the strict line of fact. Indeed, his letters to his friend Mr. John Murray would alone be sufficient to establish this in spite of his calling “Lavengro” a dream. In the first volume he did almost confine himself to matters of fact. But as he went on he clearly found that the ordinary tapestry into which Destiny had woven the incidents of his life were not tinged with sufficient depth of colour to satisfy his sense of wonder; for, let it be remembered, that of love as a strong passion he had almost none. Surely no one but Lavengro could have lived in a dingle with a girl like Belle Berners, and passed the time in trying to teach her Armenian. Without strong passion no very deeply coloured life-tapestry can, in these unadventurous days, be woven. The manufactured incidents of which there are so many in “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye,” are introduced to give colour to a web of life that strong Passion had left untinged. But why? In order to flash upon the personality of Lavengro, and upon Lavengro’s attitude towards the universe unseen as well as seen, a light more searching, as Borrow considered, than any picture of actual experience could have done. In other words, to build up the truth of the character of Lavengro, Borrow does not shrink from manipulating certain incidents and inventing others. And when he wishes to dive very boldly into the “abysmal deeps of personality,” he speaks and moves partly behind the mask of some fictitious character, such as the man who touched for the evil chance, and such as the hypochondriac who taught himself Chinese to ward off despair, but could not tell the time of day by looking at the clock. This is not the place for me to enter more fully into this matter, but I am looking forward to a fitting occasion of showing whether or not “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye” form a spiritual autobiography; and if they do, whether that autobiography does or does not surpass every other for absolute truth of spiritual representation. Meantime, let it be remembered by those who object to Borrow’s method that, as I have just hinted, at the basis of his character was a deep sense of wonder. Let it be remembered that he was led to study the first of the many languages he taught himself—Irish—because there was, as he said, “something mysterious and uncommon in its use.” Let it be remembered that it was this instinct of wonder, not the impulse of the mere poseur, that impelled him to make certain exaggerated statements about the characters themselves who are introduced into his books.
III. Isopel Berners.
For instance, the tall girl, Isopel Berners—the most vigorous sketch he has given us—is perfect as she is adorable. Among heroines she stands quite alone; there is none other that is in the least like her.
