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Updated: June 14, 2025
"I saw in some Athenaeum a somewhat contemptuous notice of G. B.'s 'Rommany Lil' or whatever the name is. Borrow sent a message to FitzGerald through Edmund Kerrich of Geldeston, asking him to visit Oulton Cottage. The reply shows all the sweetness of the writer's nature: LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE, Jan. 10/75.
This is Borrow’s account of how he obtained his own way; it would have been interesting had his wife and step-daughter also recorded their version of the affair. Borrow’s mother, who had given up her house in Willow Lane, died at Oulton, in 1860. The same year Borrow published a small volume, entitled “The Sleeping Bard,” a translation from the Welsh of Elis Wyn.
Towards the end he was joined at Oulton by his stepdaughter and her husband, Dr. MacOubrey. In 1879 he was too feeble to walk a few hundred yards, and furious with a man who asked his age. In 1880 he made his will. On July 26, 1881, when he was left entirely alone for the day, he died, after having expected death for some time.
I was trained to neat habits by my father. The Oulton seamen had given me a taste for doing clever neat work, such as plaits or pointing, so that I was not such a bungler at delicate handicraft as most boys of my age. I even took the trouble to hide the tar marks on my wads by smearing wetted gunpowder all over them.
"All this is very pleasing to me," added the proud old lady. "God bless you!" From Mrs Clarke of Oulton Hall, with whom he kept up a correspondence, he heard how his name had been mentioned at many of the Society's meetings during the year, and how the Rev. Francis Cunningham had referred to him as "one of the most extraordinary and interesting individuals of the present day."
The spelling points to Borrow's ignorance of the relation of pronunciation and orthography. In 1858 Borrow's mother died at Oulton and was buried in Oulton churchyard. During October and November in that year, partly to take his mind from his bereavement, he was walking in the Scottish Highlands and Islands.
If at such times he was away from Oulton, he thought of his home as his only refuge in this world; if he was at home he thought of travel or foreign employment. His disease was, perhaps, now middle age, and too good a memory in his blood and in his bones.
Borrow has left a dependable record of a meeting which took place between them at his Oulton home, during the Christmas of 1842. “He stayed with me during the greater part of the morning, discoursing on the affairs of Egypt, the aspect of which, he assured me, was becoming daily worse and worse. Yet there was much of Borrow’s nature that was in common with that of Jasper Petulengro.
A narrow path from the church leads you to Oulton Hall, which came into the possession of Borrow by marriage, really a very plain, red-brick, capacious, comfortable-looking old farmhouse, only of a superior class. Keeping the Hall to the right, you reach a gate, which opens into a very narrow lane, full of mud in the winter and dust in the summer.
There is little doubt that Lord Stradbroke's enquiries had revealed some curious gossip concerning the Master of Oulton Hall, possibly the dispute with his rector over the inability of their respective dogs to live in harmony; perhaps even the would-be magistrate's predilection for the society of gypsies, and his profound admiration for "the Fancy" had reached the Lord-Lieutenant's ears.
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