George Borrow | Page 6

and mysterious. He
was impressive and mysterious without an effort; the individual or the
public was impressed, and he was naturally tempted to be more
impressive. Thus, in December of the year 1832 he had to go to
London for his first meeting with the Bible Society, who had been
recommended to give him work where he could use his knowledge of
languages. As he was at Norwich, the distance was a hundred and

twelve miles, and as he was poor he walked. He spent
fivepence-halfpenny on a pint of ale, half-pint of milk, a roll of bread
and two apples during the journey, which took him twenty-seven hours.
He reached the Society's office early in the morning and waited for the
secretary. When the secretary arrived he hoped that Borrow had slept
well on his journey. Borrow said that, as far as he knew, he had not
slept, because he had walked. The secretary's surprise can be imagined
from this alone, or if not, from what followed. For Borrow went on
talking, and told the man, among other things, that he was stolen by
Gypsies when he was a boy--had passed several years with them, but
had at last been recognised at a fair in Norfolk, and brought home to his
family by an uncle. It was not to be expected that Borrow would
conceal from the public "several years" of this kind. Nevertheless, in
none of his books has he so much as hinted at a period of adoption with
Gypsies when he was a boy. Nor has that massive sleuth-hound, Dr.
Knapp, discovered any traces of such an adoption. If there is any
foundation for the story except Borrow's wish to please the secretary, it
is the escapade of his fourteenth or fifteenth year--when he and three
other boys from Norwich Grammar School played truant, intending to
make caves to dwell in among the sandhills twenty miles away on the
coast, but were recognised on the road, deceitfully detained by a
benevolent gentleman and within a few days brought back, Borrow
himself being horsed on the back of James Martineau, according to the
picturesque legend, for such a thrashing that he had to lie in bed a
fortnight and must bear the marks of it while he was flesh and blood.
Borrow celebrated this escapade by a ballad in dialogue called "The
Wandering Children and the Benevolent Gentleman. An Idyll of the
Roads." {13a} There may have been another escapade of the same kind,
for Dr Knapp {13b} prints an account of how Borrow, at the age of
fifteen, and two schoolfellows lived for three days in a cave at Acle
when they ought to have been at school. But his companions were the
same in both stories, and "three days in a cave" is a very modest
increase for such a story in half-a-century. It was only fifteen years
later that Borrow took revenge upon the truth and told the story of his
exile with the Gypsies.
{picture: The Grammar School Norwich. Photo: Jarrold & Sons,

Norwich: page12.jpg}
Probably every man has more or less clearly and more or less
constantly before his mind's eye an ideal self which the real seldom
more than approaches. This ideal self may be morally or in other ways
inferior, but it remains the standard by which the man judges his acts.
Some men prove the existence of this ideal self by announcing now and
then that they are misunderstood. Or they do things which they
afterwards condemn as irrelevant or uncharacteristic and out of
harmony. Borrow had an ideal self very clearly before him when he
was writing, and it is probable that in writing he often described not
what he was but what in a better, larger, freer, more Borrovian world he
would have actually become. He admired the work of his Creator, but
he would not affect to be satisfied with it in every detail, and stepping
forward he snatched the brush and made a bolder line and braver colour.
Also he ardently desired to do more than he ever did. When in Spain he
wrote to his friend Hasfeldt at St. Petersburg, telling him that he wished
to visit China by way of Russia or Constantinople and Armenia. When
indignant with the Bible Society in 1838 he suggested retiring to "the
Wilds of Tartary or the Zigani camps of Siberia." He continued to
suggest China even after his engagement to Mrs. Clarke.
Just as he played up to the Secretary in conversation, so he played up to
the friends and the public who were allured by the stories left untold or
half-told in "The Zincali" and "The Bible in Spain." Chief among his
encouragers was Richard Ford, author (in 1845) of the "Handbook for
Travellers in Spain and