The Life of George Borrow [204]
you don't know already.
"Borrow--has got back to his own Oulton Lodge. My Nephew, Edmund Kerrich, now Adjutant to some Volunteer Battalion, wants a house NEAR, not IN, Lowestoft: and got some Agent to apply for Borrow's-- who sent word that he is himself there--an old Man--wanting Retirement, etc. This was the account Edmund got.
"I saw in some Athenaeum a somewhat contemptuous notice of G. B.'s 'Rommany Lil' or whatever the name is. I can easily understand that B. should not meddle with SCIENCE of any sort; but some years ago he would not have liked to be told so, however Old Age may have cooled him now." {467a}
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.
Dear Borrow,--My nephew Kerrich told me of a very kind invitation that you sent to me, through him, some while ago. I think the more of it because I imagine, from what I have heard, that you have slunk away from human company as much--as I have! For the last fifteen years I have not visited any one of my very oldest friends, except the daughters of my old [?friend] George Crabbe, and Donne--once only, and for half a day, just to assure myself by--my own eyes how he was after the severe illness he had last year, and which he never will quite recover from, I think; though he looked and moved better than I expected.
Well--to tell you all about WHY I have thus fallen from my company would be a tedious thing, and all about one's self too--whom, Montaigne says, one never talks about without detriment to the person talked about. Suffice to say, 'so it is'; and one's friends, however kind and 'loyal' (as the phrase goes), do manage to exist and enjoy themselves pretty reasonably without one.
So with me. And is it not much the same with you also? Are you not glad now to be mainly alone, and find company a heavier burden than the grasshopper? If one ever had this solitary habit, it is not likely to alter for the better as one grows older--as one grows OLD. I like to think over my old friends. There they are, lingering as ineffaceable portraits--done in the prime of life--in my memory. Perhaps we should not like one another so well after a fifteen-years separation, when all of us change and most of us for the worse. I do not say THAT would be your case; but you must, at any rate, be less inclined to disturb the settled repose into which you, I suppose, have fallen. I remember first seeing you at Oulton, some twenty-five years ago; then at Donne's in London; then at my own happy home in Regent's Park; then ditto at Gorleston--after which, I have seen nobody, except the nephews and nieces left me by my good sister Kerrich.
So shall things rest? I could not go to you, after refusing all this while to go to older--if not better--friends, fellow Collegians, fellow schoolfellows; and yet will you still believe me (as I hope THEY do)
Yours and theirs sincerely, EDWARD FITZGERALD.
Borrow was still a remarkably robust man. Mr Watts-Dunton tells how,
"At seventy years of age, after breakfasting at eight o'clock in Hereford Square, he would walk to Putney, meet one or more of us at Roehampton, roam about Wimbledon and Richmond Park with us, bathe in the Fen Ponds with a north-east wind cutting across the icy water like a razor, run about the grass afterwards like a boy to shake off some of the water-drops, stride about the park for hours, and then, after fasting for twelve hours, eat a dinner at Roehampton that would have done Sir Walter Scott's eyes good to see. Finally, he would walk back to Hereford Square, getting home late at night. And if the physique of the man was bracing, his conversation, unless he happened to be suffering from one of his occasional fits of depression, was still more so. Its freshness, raciness and eccentric whim no pen could describe. There is a kind of humour the delight of which is that while you smile at the pictures it draws, you smile quite
"Borrow--has got back to his own Oulton Lodge. My Nephew, Edmund Kerrich, now Adjutant to some Volunteer Battalion, wants a house NEAR, not IN, Lowestoft: and got some Agent to apply for Borrow's-- who sent word that he is himself there--an old Man--wanting Retirement, etc. This was the account Edmund got.
"I saw in some Athenaeum a somewhat contemptuous notice of G. B.'s 'Rommany Lil' or whatever the name is. I can easily understand that B. should not meddle with SCIENCE of any sort; but some years ago he would not have liked to be told so, however Old Age may have cooled him now." {467a}
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.
Dear Borrow,--My nephew Kerrich told me of a very kind invitation that you sent to me, through him, some while ago. I think the more of it because I imagine, from what I have heard, that you have slunk away from human company as much--as I have! For the last fifteen years I have not visited any one of my very oldest friends, except the daughters of my old [?friend] George Crabbe, and Donne--once only, and for half a day, just to assure myself by--my own eyes how he was after the severe illness he had last year, and which he never will quite recover from, I think; though he looked and moved better than I expected.
Well--to tell you all about WHY I have thus fallen from my company would be a tedious thing, and all about one's self too--whom, Montaigne says, one never talks about without detriment to the person talked about. Suffice to say, 'so it is'; and one's friends, however kind and 'loyal' (as the phrase goes), do manage to exist and enjoy themselves pretty reasonably without one.
So with me. And is it not much the same with you also? Are you not glad now to be mainly alone, and find company a heavier burden than the grasshopper? If one ever had this solitary habit, it is not likely to alter for the better as one grows older--as one grows OLD. I like to think over my old friends. There they are, lingering as ineffaceable portraits--done in the prime of life--in my memory. Perhaps we should not like one another so well after a fifteen-years separation, when all of us change and most of us for the worse. I do not say THAT would be your case; but you must, at any rate, be less inclined to disturb the settled repose into which you, I suppose, have fallen. I remember first seeing you at Oulton, some twenty-five years ago; then at Donne's in London; then at my own happy home in Regent's Park; then ditto at Gorleston--after which, I have seen nobody, except the nephews and nieces left me by my good sister Kerrich.
So shall things rest? I could not go to you, after refusing all this while to go to older--if not better--friends, fellow Collegians, fellow schoolfellows; and yet will you still believe me (as I hope THEY do)
Yours and theirs sincerely, EDWARD FITZGERALD.
Borrow was still a remarkably robust man. Mr Watts-Dunton tells how,
"At seventy years of age, after breakfasting at eight o'clock in Hereford Square, he would walk to Putney, meet one or more of us at Roehampton, roam about Wimbledon and Richmond Park with us, bathe in the Fen Ponds with a north-east wind cutting across the icy water like a razor, run about the grass afterwards like a boy to shake off some of the water-drops, stride about the park for hours, and then, after fasting for twelve hours, eat a dinner at Roehampton that would have done Sir Walter Scott's eyes good to see. Finally, he would walk back to Hereford Square, getting home late at night. And if the physique of the man was bracing, his conversation, unless he happened to be suffering from one of his occasional fits of depression, was still more so. Its freshness, raciness and eccentric whim no pen could describe. There is a kind of humour the delight of which is that while you smile at the pictures it draws, you smile quite