George Borrow Society

George Borrow

George Henry Borrow was born in 1803 in East Dereham, Norfolk, England. He spent the first fourteen years of his life moving from town to town around the British Isles, as his father was a soldier in the army. The family then settled in Norwich, where he was apprenticed to a law firm.

He showed an early aptitude for languages, picking up over a dozen languages by the time he was eighteen, including the Romani dialect that he learned from a local Gypsy family that he had befriended.

Physically Borrow was a very imposing young man, very tall and athletic, with prematurely white hair. He loved outdoor pursuits and spent time travelling around Britain and the continent, often seeking out the company of Gypsies. However, he also suffered from bouts of debilitating depression which he described as 'the horrors'.

Throughout his twenties he tried unsuccessfully to make a living from verse translation and hack journalism. Then at the age of thirty he found employment with the British and Foreign Bible Society and worked for them for six years, printing and distributing Bibles first in Russia and then in Spain. In 1840 he returned to England, married a rich widow, and settled down to become a writer. His first two books, The Zincali (1841) and The Bible in Spain (1843), were based on his experiences abroad, the latter becoming a best seller, outselling even Dickens. For a short while he was famous.

He spent the next thirteen years working intermittently on an autobiographical novel covering his childhood and early twenties, the majority of the book being a description of an idyllic summer tramp around England, living as a Gypsy. Borrow kept on adding and expanding and changing his initial plan, and eventually it was published as two books, Lavengro appearing in 1851 and its sequel The Romany Rye not appearing until 1857. The books were not a success at the time - contemporary readers were confused by the way the books merged fact with fiction in a unique style - but they subsequently came to be regarded as his most significant and influential work.

In his fifties and sixties Borrow undertook several long excursions on foot throughout the Celtic fringes of the British Isles, one result of which was his travelogue Wild Wales (1862), a sympathetic portrait of its inhabitants and its literature. It was a minor success and has remained in print ever since.

Borrow always felt he was an outsider and never felt comfortable in literary society, preferring the company of Gypsies and other outsiders. After the death of his wife he retreated into seclusion, and when he died at the age of 78 he was mostly ignored or forgotten. However, in the 1890s his reputation began to rise again, championed by the new 'bohemians', and his influence can be seen in the foundation of the Gypsy Lore Society and the growing popularity of camping and hiking. For at least fifty years he was regarded as an important Victorian writer, his books (especially Lavengro) being reprinted numerous times. Although his reputation has waned considerably in recent years, his work is now starting to garner serious attention again as an early forerunner of autobiographical fiction and nature writing.

Helpful References

• List of Borrow biographies.
• Letters of George Borrow to the British and Foreign Bible Society, edited by T. H. Darlow, Hodder and Stoughton, 1911. Project Gutenberg. 
• Borrow's family tree and information about his relatives.

Here is one of Borrow's very few original poems. It appeared in his 1826 self-published book of translations, Romantic Ballads. It is addressed to a fictionalised persona known only as 'Six Foot Three' (Borrow's own height), as though the young Borrow is conjuring up an idealised image of himself as the heroic traveller and successful author that he dreams of being.

Lines to Six-Foot Three

A lad, who twenty tongues can talk
And sixty miles a day can walk;
Drink at a draught a pint of rum,
And then be neither sick nor dumb
Can tune a song, and make a verse,
And deeds of Northern kings rehearse
Who never will forsake his friend,
While he his bony fist can bend;
And, though averse to brawl and strife
Will fight a Dutchman with a knife.
O that is just the lad for me,
And such is honest six-foot three.

A braver being ne'er had birth
Since God first kneaded man from earth:
O, I have cause to know him well,
As Ferroe’s blacken’d rocks can tell.
Who was it did, at Suderoe,
The deed no other dar’d to do?
Who was it, when the Boff had burst,
And whelm’d me in its womb accurst—
Who was it dash’d amid the wave,
With frantic zeal, my life to save?
Who was it flung the rope to me?
O, who, but honest six-foot three!

Who was it taught my willing tongue
The songs that Braga fram’d and sung?
Who was it op’d to me the store
Of dark unearthly Runic lore,
And taught me to beguile my time
With Denmark’s aged and witching rhyme:
To rest in thought in Elvir shades,
And hear the song of fairy maids;
Or climb the top of Dovrefeld,
Where magic knights their muster held?
Who was it did all this for me?
O, who, but honest six-foot three!

Wherever fate shall bid me roam
Far, far from social joy and home;
’Mid burning Afric’s desert sands,
Or wild Kamschatka’s frozen lands;
Bit by the poison-loaded breeze,
Or blasts which clog with ice the seas;
In lowly cot or lordly hall,
In beggar’s rags or robes of pall,
‘Mong robber-bands or honest men,
In crowded town or forest den,
I never will unmindful be
Of what I owe to six-foot three.

That form which moves with giant-grace
That wild, though not unhandsome, face;
That voice which sometimes in its tone
Is softer than the wood-dove’s moan,
At others, louder than the storm
Which beats the side of old Cairn Gorm;
That hand, as white as falling snow,
Which yet can fell the stoutest foe;
And, last of all, that noble heart,
Which ne’er from honour’s path would start,
Shall never be forgot by me—
So farewell, honest six-foot three!