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"I am here on a visit to El Gitano;" he writes, "two 'rum' coves, in a queer country . . . we defy the elements, and chat over las cosas de Espana, and he tells me portions of his life, more strange even than his book. By this last sentence Ford showed how thoroughly he understood Borrow's literary methods. A fortnight later Borrow writes to Ford:
It is not strange that Borrow's application failed; for he never refused leave to the gypsies to camp upon his land, and would sometimes join them beside their campfires. Once he took a guest with him after dinner to where the gypsies were encamped. They received Borrow with every mark of respect.
"It is not as philologist, or traveller, or wild missionary, or folk- lorist, or antiquary, that Borrow lives and will live. It is as the master of splendid, strong, simple English, the prose Morland of a vanished road-side life, the realist who, Defoe-like, could make fiction seem truer than fact. It is Borrow's personality that looms out from his pages.
The very novelty of Borrow's methods, coupled with the daring and unconventional independence of the man himself, ensured the success of his mission. There was something of the Camel-Driver of Mecca about his missionary work. He saw nothing anomalous in being possessed of a strong arm as well as a Christian spirit.
Here is Borrow's specimen, by-the-way "So I went with them to a music-booth, where they made me almost drunk with gin and began to talk their flash language, which I did not understand" and so on. But this dry simplicity is not in Fury's line.
Borrow gave him a dollar, which he paid to a witch for telling him where exactly the treasure lay. A third time, to his own satisfaction and Borrow's astonishment, he re-appeared at Oviedo. He had, in fact, followed Borrow to Corunna, having been despitefully used at Compostella, met highwaymen on the road, and suffered hunger so that he slaughtered a stray kid and devoured it raw.
Mrs Borrow's reply to this letter is significant. Again, on 30th October 1852, Mrs Borrow wrote to Robert Cooke asking that either he or John Murray would write to Borrow enquiring as to his health, and progress with The Romany Rye, and how long it would be before the manuscript were ready for the printer.
"I should consider myself wanting towards your enlightened sense of justice if, after the reasons given, I stopped to prove the just and prudent conduct of Seville authorities. "Hope he will therefore be completely satisfied, especially after the want of exactitude on Borrow's part. And so the matter ended.
There is always the strong, masterful man behind the words who, like a great general, can turn a reverse to his own advantage. In his style perhaps, after all, lay the secret of Borrow's unsuccess. He was writing for another generation; speaking in a voice too strong to be heard other than as a strange noise by those near to him.
On 4th August the body was brought to London, and buried beside that of Mrs George Borrow in Brompton Cemetery. A fruitless effort was made by the late J. J. Colman of Carrow to purchase the whole of Borrow's manuscripts, library, and papers for the Carrow Abbey Library; but the price asked, a thousand pounds, was considered too high, and they passed into the possession of another.
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