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The pretty daughter of Farmer Perfrement, whose farm lay about one and a half miles out of East Dereham, was one of those who took occasion to earn a few shillings for pin-money. The Perfrements were of Huguenot stock.
In 1809 and 1810 they were back at Dereham, which was then the home of Eleanor Fenn, his "Lady Bountiful," widow of the editor of the "Paston Letters," Sir John Fenn. He had "increased rapidly in size and in strength," but not in mind, and could read only imperfectly until "Robinson Crusoe" drew him out.
His father, a Cornishman of a good middle-class family, had been obliged, owing to a youthful escapade, to leave his native place and enlist as a common soldier. Afterwards he became a recruiting officer, and moved about from one part of Great Britain and Ireland to another. It so chanced that while staying at East Dereham, in Norfolk, he met and fell in love with a lady of French extraction.
Two children were born to them; the younger of whom, George Henry Borrow, was born on July 5th, 1803. The wandering instinct that George afterwards developed may well have been the natural outcome of the roving life of his early years. Before he was many months old, his parents, obedient to the dictates of military command, had moved from Dereham to Canterbury.
And through the clamour and din of it all, old Mrs Borrow wrote to her daughter-in-law telling her of the call of an old friend, whom she had not seen for twenty-eight years, and who had come to talk with her of the fame of her son, "the most remarkable man that Dereham ever produced. Capt. Girling is a man of few words, but when he DO speak it is to some purpose."
Hearing the author whom he met on his walk beyond Salisbury, speak of the "wine of 1811, the comet year," Borrow said that he remembered being in the market-place of Dereham, looking at that comet. Dr Knapp first makes sure exactly when Borrow was at Dereham in 1811 and then that there was a comet visible during that time.
To his mind, a change of the base of his operations was clearly indicated. Five years before this time he had acquired a block of land in the Township of Dereham, in the County of Oxford, Upper Canada, where his wife also owned some property. He now began to cast his eyes anxiously towards the setting sun, with a view to the rehabilitation of his broken fortunes.
He had no money with which to purchase a commission, and his rise was slow and deliberate. At the end of nine months he was promoted to the rank of corporal, and five years later he became a sergeant. In 1792 he was transferred as Sergeant-Major to the First, or West Norfolk Regiment of Militia, whose headquarters were at East Dereham in Norfolk.
"Come, boy, you have only to slip away to-morrow night, after I have gone, and join me privately in Yarmouth, at the sign of the 'Three-decker. I will tell my worthy uncle in the morning that I am on my way to East Dereham and Lynn, so it will be long enough before they suspect where you are gone.
Lord Dereham was perfectly tipsy and he did not know the road a bit, but he drove in beautiful style and was extraordinarily amusing; as soon as the coach took to swaying, instead of slackening speed as they all begged him, he lashed the horses into a tearing gallop, looking over his shoulder at the rest and cursing them with the greatest energy, grinning with rage, and looking more like a little white rat than ever.
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