Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 14, 2025
She had 450 pounds a year and a home at Oulton. Fifteen or sixteen years later he spoke of his wife and daughter thus: "Of my wife I will merely say that she is a perfect paragon of wives can make puddings and sweets and treacle posset, and is the best woman of business in Eastern Anglia of my step daughter for such she is, though I generally call her daughter, and with good reason, seeing that she has always shown herself a daughter to me that she has all kinds of good qualities, and several accomplishments, knowing something of conchology, more of botany, drawing capitally in the Dutch style, and playing remarkably well on the guitar not the trumpery German thing so called but the real Spanish guitar."
At Oulton he was much alone and was to be heard "by startled rowers on the lake" chanting verses after his fashion. His remarkable appearance, his solitariness in the neglected house and tangled garden, his conversation with Gypsies whom he allowed to camp on his land, created something of a legend. Children called after him "Gypsy!" or "Witch!"
In 1874 Borrow withdrew to Oulton, there to end his lonely life, his spirit seeming to enjoy the dreary solitude of the Cottage, with its mournful surroundings. His stepdaughter, the Henrietta of old, remained in London with her husband, and Borrow's loneliness was complete.
"They're carved turnips with candles inside them, fixed to a revolving pole, like those we used to play with at Oulton, on the 5th of November." My fear was gone in an instant. I thought to myself how fine it would be if I could get into that house, to stop the works, in revenge for the scare they had given me. I wondered how I could do that.
In the summer-house at Oulton hung his father's coat and sword, but it is to be noticed that to the end of his life an old friend held it "doubtful whether his father commenced his military career with a commission." Borrow probably realised the importance of belonging to the ruling classes and having a long steady pedigree.
Edmunds was contemporary with Borrow’s settling down at Oulton, writes in his Memoirs: “George Borrow was one of those whose mental powers are strong, and whose bodily frame is yet stronger—a conjunction of forces often detrimental to a literary career in an age of intellectual predominance.
The female, an ancient one, who did for the house, lives in the little cottage which the tourist will have already observed, and the interior of which presented, when I peeped in, a far greater idea of comfort than did Oulton Cottage, the residence of the late George Borrow.
He had had his day, a longer and fuller one than falls to the lot of most of the sons of men, and, when the weight of years began to tell upon him, he chose to live out the little time that was left to him amidst such scenes as were in harmony with his nature. He died at Oulton on July 26, 1881, just three weeks after the completion of his seventy-eighth year. His step-daughter, Mrs.
Old Mrs Skepper, Mrs Clarke's mother, had just died, and it is a proof of Borrow's intimacy with the family that he should be invited to stay with them whilst they were still in mourning. "There has been a Bible meeting at Oulton, in Suffolk, to which I was invited.
The application for permission to proceed with the distribution had, it is true, been unsuccessful; but there was, as Mr Brandram wrote, the "seed laid up in the granary; but 'it is not yet written' that the sowers are to go forth to sow." After remaining for a short time with his mother at Norwich, Borrow appears to have paid a visit to his friends the Skeppers of Oulton.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking