r will be. I have said
nothing on this point in my letters home, as people would
perhaps say that I was lukewarm, whereas, on the contrary, I
think of nothing but the means best adapted to promote the
cause; but I am not one of those disposed to run a ship on a
rock when only a little skill is necessary to keep her in the
open sea.

I hope Mrs. Clarke will write shortly; tell her if she wishes
for a retreat I have found one here for her and Henrietta. I
have my eye on a beautiful one at fifteen pence a day. I call
it a small house, though it is a paradise in its way, having a
stable, court-yard, fountain, and twenty rooms. She has only to
write to my address at Madrid and I shall receive the letter
without fail. Henrietta had better bring with her a Spanish
grammar and pocket dictionary, as not a word of English is
spoken here. The house-dog--perhaps a real English bulldog
would be better--likewise had better come, as it may be useful.
God bless you therefore for the present, my dearest mother.

GEORGE BORROW.

Borrow had need of friends more tolerant of his idiosyncrasies than the
'powerful friends' he describes to his mother, for the Secretary of the
Bible Society was still in a critical mood:--

You narrate your perilous journey to Seville, and say at the
beginning of the description, 'my usual wonderful good fortune
accompanying us.' This is a mode of speaking to which we are
not accustomed--it savours, some of our friends would say, a
little of the profane.[124]

On 29th July 1839 Borrow was instructed by his Committee to return to
England, but he was already on the way to Tangier, whence in September
he wrote a long and interesting letter to Mr. Brandram, which was
afterwards incorporated in _The Bible in Spain_. He had left Mrs. Clarke
and her daughter in Seville, and they joined him at Gibraltar later. We
find him _en route_ for Tangier, staying two days with Mr. John M.
Brackenbury, the British Consul in Cadiz, who found him a most
fascinating man.

His Tangier life is fully described in _The Bible in Spain_. Here he
picked up a Jewish youth, Hayim Ben Attar, who returned to Spain as his
servant, and afterwards to England.

Borrow, at the end of September, was back again in Seville, in his house
near the cathedral, in the Plazuela de la Pila Seca, which, when I
visited Seville