George Borrow | Page 2

What could be its cause? Their faults were proverbs. They lived by drawing fools into a circle and cheating them. Stealing and lying were first principles in their code of life. And yet because Borrow held that Nature did not forgive faults, much less allow men to profit by them, he could not but ask whether those gipsies were so thoroughly vicious as was supposed. One day, in a conversation with a gipsy girl under a hedge--one of the strangest talks in the chronicle of literature--he elicited the fact that domestic honour was held among them to be a primary law, and female unchastity an unpardonable offence. And he left that conversation on record for our admonition. That, you will say, is no new ideal to English women. As an ideal, no. But our English practice is something very different. And we have lived to see literature challenge even the ideal.
And then there was the secret, an open one indeed, but hidden from many Englishmen of Borrow's generation, though it had been recently proclaimed by the gentle and thoughtful poet who lay buried in Borrow's native town of Dereham, that though civilisation arose from life in cities, yet the joy of life was apt to escape the city liver. The vagabond gipsy had something which man was the better for having, a delight in the sun and air and wind and rain. We in Norwich are not likely to forget those magical words put into the mouth of the gipsy on Mousehold Heath, "There's night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet things; there's likewise a wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother." Allied with this love of nature was a keen satisfaction in manly exercises, walking, riding, boxing, swimming, which Borrow contrasted somewhat scornfully with the baser sports of dog fighting and cock fighting, then in vogue among gentlemen. And as a consequence of this love of the open air and the open country Borrow found in the gipsies a sense of freedom and independence, and so a self- respect, which he compared unfavourably with the mingled arrogance and servility of many city-bred people.
Here then we have some of the elements of the ideal, largely drawn from the despised gipsies, which Borrow held up before his generation. He does not indeed promulgate it as the whole duty of man, though we who have learned the lesson may think he is apt to over-emphasise it. He does not ignore other qualities of manliness. He holds that from the root of a self-respecting freedom, if the environment be but favourable, as with the gipsies it was not, other manly qualities will spring. From the strength of self-respect should spring the courage of truthfulness, and justice, and tenderness, and perseverance. On the love of truth and justice I need not dwell; they are conspicuous in every page that Borrow wrote. Perseverance is still more emphasised, because it was the main contribution of Jacob to the human ideal, the quality most lacking in Esau. Tenderness may seem to be less evident; and I know it is a common opinion that Borrow's ideal of life was too self-absorbed to allow of much sympathy with others. I think this view is mistaken. There was undoubtedly a strong stress laid on the duty of protecting one's own life and personality from outside influence, and a corresponding stress on the duty of respect for the independence of others; but where there was a claim, whether of blood, or friendship, or need, Borrow's ideal admitted it to the full. I have wished to confine myself this morning to the ideal of conduct which Borrow offers us in his books, because it was a conscious and reasoned ideal, and he wrote to propagate it. The question how far he himself attained to his own standard we are right in passing by unless there was any conspicuous contrast between his theory and his practice. But there was no such contrast. So far as our information goes, Borrow lived by his ideal resolutely. His truthfulness and perseverance and love of justice cannot be questioned; and on the point of tenderness it is not those who knew him best--his mother, or his wife, or his friends--who have found him wanting.
Let me pass on to indicate how this ideal connected itself with religion. The fundamental dogma of Borrow's religion was the providence of God. So far as I know, he did not formulate his notion of the purpose of the world; he accepted the view of St. Paul, that the creation is moving to some "divine event"; and that within the great scheme there are numberless subservient ends which man is being urged by Divine admonition to fulfil. Such admonitions come to men in many