George Borrow and His Circle | Page 3

professional biographer. It
certainly is novel; and in this case I am pretty sure that it is right.
With such a testimony before me I cannot hesitate to present my second
biography in similar form. In the case of George Borrow, however, I
am not in a position to supplement one transcendent biography, as in
the case of Charlotte Brontë and Mrs. Gaskell. I have before me no less
than four biographies of Borrow, every one of them of distinctive merit.
These are:
Life, Writings, and Correspondence of George Borrow. Derived from
Official and other Authentic Sources. By William I. Knapp, Ph.D.,
LL.D. 2 vols. John Murray, 1899.
George Borrow: The Man and his Work. By R. A. J. Walling. Cassell,
1908.
The Life of George Borrow. Compiled from Unpublished Official
Documents. His Works, Correspondence, etc. By Herbert Jenkins. John
Murray, 1912.
George Borrow: The Man and his Books. By Edward Thomas.
Chapman and Hall, 1912.
All of these books have contributed something of value and importance
to the subject. Dr. Knapp's work it is easiest to praise because he is
dead.[2] His biography of Borrow was the effort of a lifetime. A
scholar with great linguistic qualifications for writing the biography of
an author whose knowledge of languages was one of his titles to fame,

Dr. Knapp spared neither time nor money to achieve his purpose.
Starting with an article in The Chautauquan Magazine in 1887, which
was reprinted in pamphlet form, Dr. Knapp came to England--to
Norwich--and there settled down to write a Life of Borrow, which
promised at one time to develop into several volumes. As well it might,
for Dr. Knapp reached Norfolk at a happy moment for his purpose. Mrs.
MacOubrey, Borrow's stepdaughter, was in the humour to sell her
father's manuscripts and books. They were offered to the city of
Norwich; there was some talk of Mr. Jeremiah Coleman, M.P., whose
influence and wealth were overpowering in Norwich at the time,
buying them. Finally, a very considerable portion of the collection
came into the hands of Mr. Webber, a bookseller of Ipswich, who later
became associated with the firm of Jarrold of Norwich. From Webber
Dr. Knapp purchased the larger portion, and, as his bibliography
indicates (Life, vol. ii. pp. 355-88), he became possessed of sundry
notebooks which furnish a record of certain of Borrow's holiday tours,
about a hundred letters from and to Borrow, and a considerable number
of other documents. The result, as I have indicated, was a book that
abounded in new facts and is rich in new material. It was not, however,
a book for popular reading. You must love the subject before you turn
to this book with any zest. It is a book for your true Borrovian, who is
thankful for any information about the word-master, not for the casual
reader, who might indeed be alienated from the subject by this copious
memoir. The result was somewhat discouraging. There were not
enough of true Borrovians in those years, and the book was not
received too generously. The two volumes have gone out of print and
have not reached a second edition. Time however, will do them justice.
As it is, your good Borrow lover has always appreciated their merits.
Take Lionel Johnson for example, a good critic and a master of style.
After saying that these 'lengthy and rich volumes are a monument of
love's labour, but not of literary art or biographical skill,' he adds: 'Of
his over eight hundred pages there is not one for which I am not
grateful' and every new biographer of Borrow is bound to re-echo that
sentiment. Dr. Knapp did the spade work and other biographers have
but entered into his inheritance. Dr. Knapp's fine collection of Borrow
books and manuscripts was handed over by his widow to the American
nation--to the Hispanic Society of New York. Dr. Knapp's biography

was followed nine years later by a small volume by Mr. R. A. J.
Walling, whose little book adds considerably to our knowledge of
Borrow's Cornish relatives, and is in every way a valuable monograph
on the author of Lavengro. Mr. Herbert Jenkins's book is more
ambitious. Within four hundred closely printed pages he has
compressed every incident in Borrow's career, and we would not
quarrel with him nor his publisher for calling his life a 'definitive
biography' if one did not know that there is not and cannot be anything
'definitive' about a biography except in the case of a Master. Boswell,
Lockhart, Mrs. Gaskell are authors who had the advantage of knowing
personally the subjects of their biographies. Any biographer who has
not met his hero face to face and is dependent solely on documents is
crippled in his undertaking. Moreover, such a biographer is always
liable to be in a