GEORGE BORROW AND HIS CIRCLE ***

Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Million Book Project).

[Illustration: George Henry Borrow

From a painting by Henry Wyndham Phillips]

GEORGE BORROW

AND HIS CIRCLE

WHEREIN MAY BE FOUND MANY HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED LETTERS OF BORROW AND HIS FRIENDS

BY

CLEMENT KING SHORTER

BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 1913

TO

AUGUSTINE BIRRELL

A FRIEND OF LONG YEARS AND A TRUE

LOVER OF GEORGE BORROW

C. K. S.

Transcriber's Notes: Minor typos have been corrected. A letter with a macron over it has been designated with a [=], for example [=a] is an a with a macron over it. There is Persian and Russian writing in this book, which have been marked as [Persian] or as [Russian]. V^{m} signifies that the m is a superscript.

PREFACE

I have to express my indebtedness first of all to the executors of Henrietta MacOubrey, George Borrow's stepdaughter, who kindly placed Borrow's letters and manuscripts at my disposal. To the survivor of these executors, a lady who resides in an English provincial town, I would particularly wish to render fullest acknowledgment did she not desire to escape all publicity and forbid me to give her name in print. I am indebted to Sir William Robertson Nicoll without whose kindly and active intervention I should never have taken active steps to obtain the material to which this biography owes its principal value. I am under great obligations to Mr. Herbert Jenkins, the publisher, in that, although the author of a successful biography of Borrow, he has, with rare kindliness, brought me into communication with Mr. Wilfrid J. Bowring, the grandson of Sir John Bowring. To Mr. Wilfrid Bowring I am indebted in that he has handed to me the whole of Borrow's letters to his grandfather. I have to thank Mr. James Hooper of Norwich for the untiring zeal with which he has unearthed for me a valuable series of notes including certain interesting letters concerning Borrow. Mr. Hooper has generously placed his collection, with which he at one time contemplated writing a biography of Borrow, in my hands. I thank Dr. Aldis Wright for reading my chapter on Edward FitzGerald; also Mr. W.H. Peet, Mr. Aleck Abrahams, and Mr. Joseph Shaylor for assistance in the little known field of Sir Richard Phillips's life. I have further to thank my friends, Edward Clodd and Thomas J. Wise, for reading my proof-sheets. To Theodore Watts-Dunton, an untiring friend of thirty years, I have also to acknowledge abundant obligations.

C. K. S.

CONTENTS

PREFACE, v

INTRODUCTION, xv

CHAPTER I

CAPTAIN BORROW OF THE WEST NORFOLK MILITIA, 1

CHAPTER II

BORROW'S MOTHER, 12

CHAPTER III

JOHN THOMAS BORROW, 18

CHAPTER IV

A WANDERING CHILDHOOD, 36

CHAPTER V

GEORGE BORROW'S NORWICH--THE GURNEYS, 54

CHAPTER VI

GEORGE BORROW'S NORWICH--THE TAYLORS, 63

CHAPTER VII

GEORGE BORROW'S NORWICH--THE GRAMM...

Show full text: 863,403 characters