The Romany Rye | Page 3

him. At that time George was in the nursery and I was a child. He took a wonderfully kind interest in us all; * * * * * * * * but the one he took most notice of was George, chiefly because he was a very big, massive child. It was then that he playfully christened him "Hales," because he said that the child would develop into a second "Norfolk giant." You will remember that he always addressed George by that pet name. But what do you think of Dr. Jessopp's saying that Borrow's voice was not that of a man? You yourself have spoken in some of your writings--I don't exactly remember where and when--of the "trumpet- like clearness" of Borrow's voice. As to his being beardless and therefore the "Narses of Literature" it is difficult to imagine that a man of intelligence, as I suppose Dr. Jessopp is, can really think virility depends upon the growth of a man's whiskers, as no doubt ignorant people often do. I should have thought that a man who knew Norfolk well would know that it is notable for its beardless giants of great power. I really think that, as Borrow's most intimate friend in his latest years (I mean after my father left Roehampton for Germany), it is your duty to write something and stand up for the dear old boy, and you are the one man now who can defend him and do him justice. I assure you that the last time that I ever saw him his talk was a good deal about yourself. I remember the occasion very well; it was just outside the Bank of England, when he was returning from one of those mysterious East-end expeditions that you wot of: he was just partially recovering from that sad accident which you have somewhere alluded to. As to Dr. Jessopp, it is clear from his remarks upon a friend of Borrow's--the Rev. Mr. John Gunn, of Norwich, that he never saw Borrow. Gunn, he says, was of colossal frame and must have been in his youth quite an inch taller than Borrow. And then he goes on to say that Gunn's arm was as big as an ordinary man's thigh. Now you and I and George, are specially competent to speak of Borrow's physical development, for we have been with Borrow when at seventy years of age he would bathe in a pond covered with thin ice. He then stood six feet four and his muscles were as fully developed as those of a young man in training. If Gunn was a more colossal man than Borrow he certainly ought to have been put into a show. But you should read the entire article, and I wish I had preserved it.
Yours ever affectionately, THOMAS ST. E. HAKE.
I consider this an interesting document to all Borrovians. There are only two things in it which I have to challenge. I infer that Mr. Hake shares the common mistake of supposing Borrow to have been an East Anglian. Not that this is surprising, seeing that Borrow himself shared the same mistake--a mistake upon which I have on a previous occasion remarked. I have said elsewhere that one might as well call Charlotte Bronte a Yorkshire woman as call Borrow an East Anglian. He was, of course, no more an East Anglian than an Irishman born in London is an Englishman. He had at bottom no East Anglian characteristics, and this explains the Norfolk prejudice against him. He inherited nothing from Norfolk save his accent--unless it were that love of "leg of mutton and turnips" which Mr. Hake and I have so often seen exemplified. The reason why Borrow was so misjudged in Norfolk was, as I have hinted above, that the racial characteristics of the Celt and the East Anglian clashed too severely. Yet he is a striking illustration of the way in which the locality that has given birth to a man influences his imagination throughout his life. His father, a Cornishman of a good middle-class family, had been obliged, owing to a youthful escapade, to leave his native place and enlist as a common soldier. Afterwards he became a recruiting officer, and moved about from one part of Great Britain and Ireland to another. It so chanced that while staying at East Dereham, in Norfolk, he met and fell in love with a lady of French extraction. Not one drop of East Anglian blood was in the veins of Borrow's father, and very little in the veins of his mother. Borrow's ancestry was pure Cornish on one side, and on the other mainly French. But such was the egotism of Borrow--perhaps I should have said, such is the egotism of human nature--that the fact of his having