The Life of George Borrow | Page 7

his father, mother, and brother to Colchester to rejoin the regiment. The whole infancy of George Borrow was spent in the same trailing restlessness. Napoleon was alive and at large, and the West Norfolks seemed doomed eternally to march and countermarch in the threatened area, Sussex, Kent, Essex.
No efforts appear to have been made to steal the younger brother, although "people were in the habit of standing still to look at me, ay, more than at my brother." {7b} Unlike John in about everything that one child could be unlike another, George was a gloomy, introspective creature who considerably puzzled his parents. He compares himself to "a deep, dark lagoon, shaded by black pines, cypresses and yews," {7c} beside which he once paused to contemplate "a beautiful stream . . . sparkling in the sunshine, and . . . tumbling merrily into cascades," {7d} which he likened to his brother.
Slow of comprehension, almost dull-witted, shy of society, sometimes bursting into tears when spoken to, George became "a lover of nooks and retired corners," {7e} where he would sit for hours at a time a prey to "a peculiar heaviness . . . and at times . . . a strange sensation of fear, which occasionally amounted to horror," {7f} for which there was no apparent cause. In time he grew to be as much disliked as his brother was admired. On one occasion an old Jew pedlar, attracted by the latent intelligence in the smouldering eyes of the silent child, who ignored his questions and continued tracing in the dust with his fingers curious lines, pronounced him "a prophet's child." This carried to the mother's heart a quiet comfort; and reawakened in her hope for the future of her second son.
The early childhood of George Borrow was spent in stirring times. Without, there was the menace of Napoleon's invasion; within, every effort was being made to meet and repel it. Dumouriez was preparing his great scheme of defence; Captain Thomas Borrow was doing his utmost to collect and drill men to help in carrying it into effect. Sometimes the family were in lodgings; but more frequently in barracks, for reasons of economy. Once, at least, they lived under canvas.
The strange and puzzling child continued to impress his parents in a manner well-calculated to alarm them. One day, with a cry of delight, he seized a viper that, "like a line of golden light," was moving across the lane in which he was playing. Whilst making no effort to harm the child, who held and regarded it with awe and admiration, the reptile showed its displeasure towards John, his brother, by hissing and raising its head as if to strike. This happened when George was between two and three years of age. At about the same period he ate largely of some poisonous berries, which resulted in "strong convulsions," lasting for several hours. He seems to have been a source of constant anxiety to his parents, who were utterly unable to understand the strange and gloomy child who had been vouchsafed to them by the inscrutable decree of providence.
In the middle of the year 1809 the regiment returned from Essex to Norfolk, marching first to Norwich and thence to other towns in the county. Captain Borrow and his family took up their quarters once more at Dereham. George was now six years old, acutely observant of the things that interested him, but reluctant to proceed with studies which, in his eyes, seemed to have nothing to recommend them. Books possessed no attraction for him, although he knew his alphabet and could even read imperfectly. The acquirement of book-learning he found a dull and dolorous business, to which he was driven only by the threats or entreaties of his parents, who showed some concern lest he should become an "arrant dunce."
The intelligence that the old Jew pedlar had discovered still lay dormant, as if unwilling to manifest itself. The boy loved best "to look upon the heavens, and to bask in the rays of the sun, or to sit beneath hedgerows and listen to the chirping of the birds, indulging the while in musing and meditation." {9a} Meanwhile John was earning golden opinions for the astonishing progress he continued to make at school, unconsciously throwing into bolder relief the apparent dullness of his younger brother. George, however, was as active mentally as the elder. The one was studying men, the other books. George was absorbing impressions of the things around him: of the quaint old Norfolk town, its "clean but narrow streets branching out from thy modest market-place, with thine old-fashioned houses, with here and there a roof of venerable thatch"; of that exquisite old gentlewoman Lady Fenn, {9b} as she passed to and from her mansion upon some errand of bounty