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Updated: September 23, 2025
Now the writer strongly advises any woman who is struck by a ruffian to strike him again; or if she cannot clench her fists, and he advises all women in these singular times to learn to clench their fists, to go at him with tooth and nail, and not to be afraid of the result, for any fellow who is dastard enough to strike a woman, would allow himself to be beaten by a woman, were she to make at him in self-defence, even if, instead of possessing the stately height and athletic proportions of the aforesaid Isopel, she were as diminutive in stature, and had a hand as delicate, and foot as small, as a certain royal lady, who was some time ago assaulted by a fellow upwards of six feet high, whom the writer has no doubt she could have beaten had she thought proper to go at him.
And if men passed over this as a youthful distemper, rather often recurring, what would they make of his saying that "Fame after death is better than the top of fashion in life"? Would they not accuse him of entertaining them, as he did his companion and half-sweetheart of the dingle, Isopel Berners, "with strange dreams of adventure, in which he figures in opaque forests, strangling wild beasts, or discovering and plundering the hordes of dragons; and sometimes . . . other things far more genuine how he had tamed savage mares, wrestled with Satan, and had dealings with ferocious publishers"?
'Have you made a long journey to-night? said I. 'A very long one, replied Belle, I have come nearly twenty miles since six o'clock. 'I believe I heard you coming in my sleep, said I; 'did the dogs above bark at you? 'Yes, said Isopel, 'very violently; did you think of me in your sleep? 'No, said I, 'I was thinking of Ursula and something she had told me. 'When and where was that? said Isopel.
"Have you made a long journey to-night?" said I. "A very long one," replied Belle. "I have come nearly twenty miles since six o'clock." "I believe I heard you coming in my sleep," said I; "did the dogs above bark at you?" "Yes," said Isopel, "very violently; did you think of me in your sleep?" "No," said I, "I was thinking of Ursula and something she had told me."
When old enough, she had entered the service of a kind widow, who travelled with small merchandise. After the death of her mistress, Isopel carried on the same avocation. Being friendless, and falling in with the Flaming Tinman and his wife, she had associated with them, yet acknowledged that she had found them to be bad people. Time passed on.
The Tinman brought with him his wife and Isopel Berners, the tall fair-haired girl who struck Borrow first with her beauty and then with her right arm.
"I don't care what the proverb says," said Belle; "I say my blood is the best my name is Berners, Isopel Berners it was my mother's name, and is better, I am sure, than any you bear, whatever that may be; and though you say that the descent on the father's side is the principal thing and I know why you say so," she added with some excitement "I say that descent on the mother's side is of most account, because the mother "
Isopel could handle her clenched fists like a prizefighter. She was magnificent in the forest, and never so perfectly in place as when she backed up George Borrow in his fight with the Flaming Tinman. Having been in the habit of taking her own part, she was able to give pertinent advice at a critical moment.
Isopel Berners is not so easy to settle; yet the picture of her is so convincing, and Borrow was unable to do more than colour his narrative, that she too must have existed. The failure of Lavengro is easily accounted for. Borrow wrote of vagabonds and vagabondage; it did not mitigate his offence in the eyes of the critics or the public that he wrote well about them. His crime lay in his subject.
But how delicate it is, the two lads talking amidst the furze of Mousehold Heath at sunset. And so with the rest. As he grows older the atmosphere thins but never quite fades away; even Thurtell, the bull-necked friend of bruisers, is as much a spirit as a man. Mr. Watts-Dunton has complained that Borrow makes Isopel taller than Borrow, and therefore too tall for beauty.
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