was forthcoming. From his
twenty-third to his thirty-first year George Borrow was engaged in a
hopeless quest for the means of making a living. There is, however, very
little mystery. Many incidents of each of these years are revealed at
one or other point. His home, to which he returned from time to time,
was with his mother at the cottage in Willow Lane, Norwich. Whether he
made sufficient profit out of a horse, as in _The Romany Rye_, to enable
him to travel upon the proceeds, as Dr. Knapp thinks, we cannot say. Dr.
Knapp is doubtless right in assuming that during this period he led 'a
life of roving adventure,' his own authorised version of his career at
the time, as we have quoted from the biography in his handwriting from
_Men of the Time_. But how far this roving was confined to England, how
far it extended to other lands, we do not know. We are, however,
satisfied that he starved through it all, that he rarely had a penny in
his pocket. At a later date he gave it to be understood at times that he
had visited the East, and that India had revealed her glories to him. We
do not believe it. Defoe was Borrow's master in literature, and he
shared Defoe's right to lie magnificently on occasion. Dr. Knapp has
collected the various occasions upon which Borrow referred to his
supposed earlier travels abroad prior to his visit to St. Petersburg in
1833. The only quotation that carries conviction is an extract from a
letter to his mother from St. Petersburg, where he writes of 'London,
Paris, Madrid, and other capitals which I have visited.' I am not,
however, disinclined to accept Dr. Knapp's theory that in 1826-7 Borrow
did travel to Paris and through certain parts of Southern Europe. It is
strange, all the same, that adventures which, had they taken place,
would have provoked a thousand observations, provoked but two or three
passing references. Yet there is no getting over that letter to his
mother, nor that reference in _The Gypsies of Spain_, where he
says--'Once in the south of France, when I was weary, hungry, and
penniless....' Borrow certainly did some travel in these years, but it
was sordid, lacking in all dignity--never afterwards to be recalled. For
the most part, however, he was in England. We know that Borrow was in
Norwich in 1826, for we have seen him superintending the publication of
the _Romantic Ballads_ by subscription in that year. In that year also
he wrote the letter to Haydon, the painter, to say tha