Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration Norwich, July 5th, 1913

Excerpt

George Borrow.

1

Man of the Book, thou Pilgrim of the Road,
  The love of travel
Drave thee on ever with pursuing goad;
Trust was thy burning light, Truth was thy load—
  Sweet riddles for the weary to unravel,
      Within thy breast
      Glowed the pure fire of an Eternal Quest.

2

The Bible was thy chart, the open sky
  Thy roof and rafter
Often, and thou didst learn night’s mystery;
Learning some tale from each poor passer-by,
  Some gracious secret for the grand Hereafter.
      Master of lore
      Occult, and wanderer on the wildest shore.

3

What country was not trodden by thy feet,
  Nor bared its bosom
And fragrance to the life it leapt to greet?
From field and upland or where waters meet
  Was stolen, the virgin dew, the veilèd blossom.
      Its native tongue
      On stranger lips, in every climate hung.

4

Pursuer of shy paths, all hunted things
  All creatures lonely,
Gypsy and fox and hawk with slanted wings;
These drank with thee at the same cosmic springs,
  These were thy teachers and thy playmates only.
      Nature gave up
      To them and thee alike, her hidden cup.

5

Who brought its glory back to cloistered Wales,
  And wrung their treasure
From sacred books and dim sequestered vales?
Who found the gold in haunted heights and dales,
  And showed a wondering world its pride and pleasure?
      Divine and strong
      Stood out the altar, with its flame of song.

      6

Thy bardlike power, the passion of thy thirst
  For something greater,
Awoke old Cymric melodies the first;
Till all the mountains into music burst,
  And their lost glory crowned the recreator.
      Outpoured as wine
      Thy magic words made every shade a shrine.

7

Priest of the portals into the Unknown,
  Taught by no college,
And free of every fountain but thine own;
A waif, an exile, by the breezes blown
  Hither and thither to fresh fields of knowledge,
      That giant form,
      Fearless, and still no moment, rode the storm.

8

From land to land a pilgrim, yet at home
  Where’er thy journey
Thou didst a dweller in the Eternal come;
The dust thy floor, the heaven of stars thy dome,
  To break a lance for Truth in some new tourney.
      With Nature blent
      Art thou, and the wide world thy monument.

9

Thou gypsy of all time, no lot seems strange,
  No life was sterile
To that free spirit, wrought by rugged change;
Thy heart found rest in strife, and did outrange
  The farthest fancy, and woo the sorest peril.
      Hardships and lack
      Were comrades, and the milestones on thy track.

F. W. Orde Ward.

The time is ripe, and over ripe, for a commemorative celebration of George Borrow in a city with which he was so long, and so intimately, associated as he was with Norwich.  His increasing fame as a foremost literary man of the nineteenth century is amply witnessed to by the various biographies of him, and the numerous appreciations of him by writers of repute, and Mr. Clement Shorter’s forthcoming “Life of Borrow” will certainly add to the cult.

The following sketch of this wayward genius is mainly devoted to outstanding characteristics, with necessarily brief accounts of his works and journeyings.  It seems convenient to sum up his career in the four divisions which follow.

Section I.
(1803-15)—Early Wandering Days.

Borrow’s father, Thomas Borrow, was a patriotic, pugnacious, but God-fearing Cornishman, born at an old homestead known as Trethinnick, in the parish of St. Cleer, in which his forbears had been settled well back in the seventeenth century, probably earlier.  To quote Dr. Knapp: “They feared God, honoured the king, and believed in ‘piskies’ and Holy Wells.”

Thomas Borrow, handsome, tall, and muscular, was an adept in the athletic sports for which Cornwall is famous, and early signalised himself by his prowess as a boxer.  As he grew up, George Borrow himself became an ardent admirer of “the Fancy,” and when asked “What is the best way to get through life quietly?” was wont to say, “Learn to box, and keep a civil tongue in your head.”

In 1778, when nineteen years of age, Thomas Borrow was articled for five years to a maltster; but just as that period expired, at Menheniot Fair a bicker arose in which Borrow and other young heroes triumphed over the braves of that town.  Constables appeared, but were promptly felled by the brawny Borrow, and, to crown his misdeeds, he knocked over the head-borough, who happened to be his maltster master.  He wisely fled, and shortly after enlisted as a private soldier in the Coldstream Guards, and was soon quartered in London.  In 1792, as a sergeant, he was transferred to the West Norfolk Regiment of Militia, with headquarters at East Dereham.  A company of players from Norwich frequently visited that nice little town, and in one of them appeared, as a supernumerary, Ann Perfrement, the pretty daughter of a small farmer of Dumpling Green, on the outskirts of the town.  This maiden, of Huguenot descent, fascinated the Cornish soldier, and the two were married at Dereham Church on February 11th, 1793.  The regiment was then about to start a wandering course over the highways of England—at Colchester; in Norfolk; then at Sheerness, Sandgate, and Dover; at Colchester once more; in Kent; Essex again, and then, in 1802-3, at East Dereham, where George was born July 5th, 1803, in the house of his maternal grandparents.  On July 17th he was baptized George Henry, names of the king and of the eldest brother of Captain Thomas Borrow.