Description
'The Scholar, the Gypsy, the Priest': thus George Borrow (1803-81) subtitled his great autobiographical work Lavengro; and his epithet may stand, though, as David Williams's biography of this neglected writer shows, it calls for unorthodox interpretation. George Borrow was an unorthodox man. Over six feet tall and white-haired by the age of twenty-five, he cut a striking figure as he wandered the roads of Britain and Europe to escape the trammels of a routine and respectable existence and to seek out those to whom he felt most kindred - the people on the margins of society, above all the gipsies. If he wasn't himself quite a gipsy, he wasn't quite a scholar either. His remarkable facility for learning languages stood him in good stead in his travels, but it never gained him access to literary London where he always hoped for recognition as a translator of poetry. As for being a priest, he was rabidly anti-Catholic, and was unaffiliated to any established church. However, besides bringing a kind of faith to the gipsies, his one serious spell of employment was as a spreader of the word for the evangelical Bible Society. His linguistic ability, combined with his courage, stamina, and tenacity, made him a valuable if unconventional and increasingly unappreciated representative in Russia and Spain. The latter experience gave him the material, based on his letters to the Bible Society, for The Bible in Spain; its runaway success made him an author as well known as Dickens and Thackeray in the 1840s, but despite the vitality and originality of the succeeding books he failed to recapture his following. David Williams has teased out all he can of the life of this idiosyncratic and elusive man.
