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To Mr. Borrow

Bible House, Oct. 7, 1839.

My dear Friend,—Mr. Brandram and myself being both on the eve of a long journey, I have only time to inform you that yours of the 2d ult. from Tangier, and 21st from Cadiz came to hand this morning. Before this time you have doubtless received Mr. Brandram’s letter, accompanying the resolution of the Comee., of which I apprised you, but which was delayed a few days, for the purpose of reconsideration. We are not able to suggest precisely the course you should take in regard to the books left at Madrid and elsewhere, and how far it may be absolutely necessary or not for you to visit that city again before you return. The books you speak of, as at Seville, may be sent to Gibraltar rather than to England, as well as any books you p. 127may deem it expedient or find it necessary to bring out of the country. As soon as your arrangements are completed we shall look for the pleasure of seeing you in this country. The haste in which I am compelled to write allows me to say no more than that my best wishes attend you, and that I am, with sincere regard, yours truly,

G. Browne.

I thank you for your kind remembrance of Mrs. Browne. Did I thank you for your letter to her? She feels, I assure you, very much obliged. Your description of Tangier will be another interesting “morceau” for her.

“Where is Borrow?” asked the Bible Society meanwhile of the Consuls at Seville and Cadiz, but Borrow had ceased to care. He hoped to become a successful author with his Gypsies; he would at any rate secure independence by marriage, which must have been already mooted. In November he and Mrs. Clarke were formally betrothed, and would have been married in Spain, but a Protestant marriage was impossible there. When preparing to leave Seville he had one of those fiery quarrels with which his life was to be studded. This time it was with an official of the city over a passport, and the official promptly locked him up for thirty hours. Hence the following letter in response to his complaint. The writer is Mr., afterwards Sir George, Jerningham, then Secretary of Legation at Madrid, who, it may be mentioned, came from Costessey, four miles from Norwich. It is written from the British Legation, and is dated 23rd December, 1839:

I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your two letters, the one without date, the second dated the 19th November (which however ought to have been December), respecting the outrageous conduct pursued towards you at Seville by the Alcalde of the district in which you resided. I lost no time in addressing a strong representation thereon to the Spanish Minister, and I have to inform you that he has acquainted me with his having written to Seville for exact information upon the whole subject, and that he has promised a further answer to my representation as soon as his inquiries shall have been answered. In the meantime I shall not fail to follow up your case with proper activity.

Borrow was still in Seville, hard at work upon the Gypsies, all through the first three months of the year 1840. In April the three friends left Cadiz for London. A letter of p. 128this period from Mr. Brackenbury, the British Consul at Cadiz, is made clear by these facts:

To George Borrow, Esq.

British Consulate, Cadiz, January 27th, 1840.

My dear Sir,—I received on the 19th your very acceptable letter without date, and am heartily rejoiced to find that you have received satisfaction for the insult, and that the Alcalde is likely to be punished for his unjustifiable conduct. If you come to Cadiz your baggage may be landed and deposited at the gates to be shipped with yourselves wherever the steamer may go, in which case the authorities would not examine it, if you bring it into Cadiz it would be examined at the gates—or, if you were to get it examined at the Custom House at Seville and there sealed with the seal of the Customs—it might then be transhipped into the steamer or into any other vessel without being subjected to any examination. If you take your horse, the agents of the steamer ought to be apprized of your intention, that they may be prepared, which I do not think they generally are, with a suitable box.

Consuls are not authorised to unite Protestant subjects in the bonds of Holy Matrimony in popish countries—which seems a peculiar hardship, because popish priests could not, if they would—hence in Spain no Protestants can be legally married. Marriages solemnised abroad according to the law of that land wheresoever the parties may at the time be inhabitants are valid—but the law of Spain excludes their priests from performing these ceremonies where both parties are Protestants—and where one is a Papist, except a dispensation be obtained from the Pope. So you must either go to Gibraltar—or wait till you arrive in England. I have represented the hardship of such a case more than once or twice to Government. In my report upon the Consular Act, 6 Geo. IV. cap. 87—eleven years ago—I suggested that provision should be made to legalise marriages solemnised by the Consul within the Consulate, and that such marriages should be registered in the Consular Office—and that duly certified copies thereof should be equivalent to certificates of marriages registered in any church in England. These suggestions not having been acted upon, I brought the matter under the consideration of Lord John Russell (I being then in England at the time of his altering the Marriage Act), and proposed that Consuls abroad should have the power of magistrates and civil authorities at home for receiving the declarations of British subjects who might wish to enter into the marriage state—but they feared lest the introduction of such a clause, simple and efficacious as it would have been, might have endangered the fate of the Bill; and so we are as Protestants deprived of all power of being legally married in Spain.

p. 129What sort of a horse is your hack?—What colour? What age? Would he carry me?—What his action? What his price? Because if in all these points he would suit me, perhaps you would give me the refusal of him. You will of course enquire whether your Arab may be legally exported.

All my family beg to be kindly remembered to you.—I am, my dear sir, most faithfully yours,

J. M. Brackenbury.

There is a young gentleman here, who is in Spain partly on account of his health—partly for literary purposes. I will give him, with your leave, a line of introduction to you whenever he may go to Seville. He is the Honourable R. Dundas Murray, brother of Lord Elibank, a Scottish nobleman.

CHAPTER XVIII Borrow’s Spanish Circle

There are many interesting personalities that pass before us in Borrow’s three separate narratives, as they may be considered, of his Spanish experiences. We would fain know more concerning the two excellent secretaries of the Bible Society—Samuel Brandram and Joseph Jowett. We merely know that the former was rector of Beckenham and was one of the Society’s secretaries until his death in 1850; that the latter was rector of Silk Willoughby in Lincolnshire, and belonged to the same family as Jowett of Balliol. But there are many quaint characters in Borrow’s own narrative to whom we are introduced. There is Maria Diaz, for example, his landlady in the house in the Calle de Santiago in Madrid, and her husband, Juan Lopez, also assisted Borrow in his Bible distribution. Very eloquent are Borrow’s tributes to the pair in the pages of The Bible in Spain. “Honour to Maria Diaz, the quiet, dauntless, clever, Castilian female! I were an ingrate not to speak well of her.” We get a glimpse of Maria and her husband long years afterwards—a pensioner in a Spanish almshouse revealing himself as the son of Borrow’s friends. Eduardo Lopez was only eight years of age when Borrow was in Madrid, and he really adds nothing to our knowledge. Then there were those two incorrigible vagabonds—Antonio Buchini, his Greek servant with an Italian name, and Benedict Mol, the Swiss of Lucerne, who turns up in all sorts of improbable circumstances as the seeker of treasure in the Church of St. James of Compostella—only a masterly imagination could have made him so interesting. Concerning these there is nothing to supplement Borrow’s own story. But we have attractive glimpses of Borrow in the frequently quoted narrative of Colonel Napier, and this is so illuminating that I venture to reproduce it at greater length than previous biographers have done. Edward Elers Napier, who was born p. 131in 1808, was the son of one Edward Elers of the Royal Navy. His widow married the famous Admiral Sir Charles Napier, who adopted her four children by her first husband. Edward Elers, the younger, or Edward Napier, as he came to be called, was educated at Sandhurst and entered the army, serving for some years in India. Later his regiment was ordered to Gibraltar, and it was thence that he made several sporting excursions into Spain and Morocco. Later he served in Egypt, and when, through ill-health, he retired in 1843 on half-pay, he lived for some years in Portugal. In 1854 he returned to the army and did good work in the Crimea, becoming a lieutenant-general in 1864. He died in 1870. He wrote, in addition to these Excursions, several other books, including Scenes and Sports in Foreign Lands. It was during his military career at Gibraltar that he met George Borrow at Seville, as the following extracts from his book testify. Borrow’s pretension to have visited the East is characteristic—and amusing:—

1839. Saturday 4th.—Out early, sketching at the Alcazar. After breakfast it set in a day of rain, and I was reduced to wander about the galleries overlooking the “patio.” Nothing so dreary and out of character as a rainy day in Spain. Whilst occupied in moralising over the dripping water-spouts, I observed a tall, gentlemanly-looking man, dressed in a zamarra, leaning over the balustrades, and apparently engaged in a similar manner with myself. Community of thoughts and occupation generally tends to bring people together. From the stranger’s complexion, which was fair, but with brilliant black eyes, I concluded he was not a Spaniard; in short, there was something so remarkable in his appearance that it was difficult to say to what nation he might belong. He was tall, with a commanding appearance; yet, though apparently in the flower of manhood, his hair was so deeply tinged with the winter of either age or sorrow as to be nearly snow-white. Under these circumstances, I was rather puzzled as to what language I should address him in. At last, putting a bold face on the matter, I approached him with a “Bonjour, monsieur, quel triste temps!”

“Yes, sir,” replied he in the purest Parisian accent; “and it is very unusual weather here at this time of the year.”

“Does ‘monsieur’ intend to be any time at Seville?” asked I. He replied in the affirmative. We were soon on a friendly footing, and from his varied information I was both amused and instructed. Still I became more than ever in the dark as to his nationality; I found he could speak English as fluently as French. I tried him on the Italian track; again he was perfectly at home. He had a Greek servant, to whom he gave his orders in Romaïc. p. 132He conversed in good Castilian with “mine host”; exchanged a German salutation with an Austrian Baron, at the time an inmate of the fonda; and on mentioning to him my morning visit to Triano, which led to some remarks on the gypsies, and the probable place from whence they derived their origin, he expressed his belief that it was from Moultan, and said that, even to this day, they retained many Moultanee and Hindoostanee expressions, such as “pánee” (water), “buree pánee” (the sea), etc. He was rather startled when I replied “in Hindee,” but was delighted on finding I was an Indian, and entered freely, and with depth and acuteness, on the affairs of the East, most of which part of the world he had visited.

In such varied discourse did the hours pass so swiftly away that we were not a little surprised when Pépé, the “mozo” (and I verily believe all Spanish waiters are called Pépé), announced the hour of dinner; after which we took a long walk together on the banks of the river. But, on our return, I was as much as ever in ignorance as to who might be my new and pleasant acquaintance.

I took the first opportunity of questioning Antonio Baillie (Buchini) on the subject, and his answer only tended to increase my curiosity. He said that nobody knew what nation the “mysterious Unknown” belonged to, nor what were his motives for travelling. In his passport he went by the name of —, and as a British subject, but in consequence of a suspicion being entertained that he was a Russian spy, the police kept a sharp look-out over him. Spy or no spy, I found him a very agreeable companion; and it was agreed that on the following day we should visit together the ruins of Italica.

May 5.—After breakfast, the “Unknown” and myself, mounting our horses, proceeded on our expedition to the ruins of Italica. Crossing the river, and proceeding through the populous suburb of Triano, already mentioned, we went over the same extensive plain that I had traversed in going to San Lucar, but keeping a little more to the right a short ride brought us in sight of the Convent of San Isidrio, surrounded by tall cypress and waving date-trees. This once richly-endowed religious establishment is, together with the small neighbouring village of Santi Ponci, I believe, the property of the Duke of Medina Coeli, at whose expense the excavations are now carried on at the latter place, which is the ancient site of the Roman Italica.

We sat down on a fragment of the walls, and sadly recalling the splendour of those times of yore, contrasted with the desolation around us, the “Unknown” began to feel the vein of poetry creeping through his inward soul, and gave vent to it by reciting, with great emphasis and effect, and to the astonishment of the wondering peasant, who must have thought him “loco,” the following well-known and beautiful lines:—

“Cypress and ivy, weed and wallflower, grown,

Matted and massed together, hillocks heap’d

p. 133On what were chambers, arch crush’d, column strown

In fragments, choked up vaults, and frescoes steep’d

In subterranean damps, where the owl peep’d,

Deeming it midnight; Temples, baths, or halls—

Pronounce who can: for all that Learning reap’d

From her research hath been, that these are walls.”

I had been too much taken up with the scene, the verses, and the strange being who was repeating them with so much feeling, to notice the approach of one who now formed the fourth person of our party. This was a slight female figure, beautiful in the extreme, but whose tattered garments, raven hair (which fell in matted elf-locks over her naked shoulders), swarthy complexion, and flashing eyes, proclaimed to be of the wandering tribe of “gitanos.” From an intuitive sense of natural politeness she stood with crossed arms, and a slight smile on her dark and handsome countenance, until my companion had ceased, and then addressed us in the usual whining tone of supplication, with “Caballeritos, una limosita! Dios se lo pagara a ustedes!” (“Gentlemen, a little charity! God will repay it to you!”) The gypsy girl was so pretty, and her voice so sweet, that I involuntarily put my hand in my pocket.