a striking relation between the complexion, which was as
luminous and sometimes rosy as an English girl's, and the
features--almost perfect Roman-Greek in type, with a dash of
Hebrew. To the dark lustre of the eyes an increased intensity
was lent by the fair skin. No doubt, however, what most struck
the observer was the marked individuality, not to say
singularity, of his expression. If it were possible to describe
this expression in a word or two, it might, perhaps, be called
a self-consciousness that was both proud and shy.[242]

Here is another picture by Mr. Watts-Dunton of this London period:[243]

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 as much to think that there
is a mind so whimsical, crotchety, and odd as to draw them.
This was the humour of Borrow.

And there is yet another description, equally illuminating, in which Mr.
Watts-Dunton records how he won Borrow's heart by showing a familiarity
with Douglas Jerrold's melodrama _Ambrose Gwinett_:

From that time I used to see Borrow often at Roehampton,
sometimes at Putney, and sometimes, but not often, in London. I
could have seen much more of him than I did had not the
whirlpool of London, into which I plunged for a time, borne me
away from this most original of men; and this is what I so
greatly lament now: for of Borrow it may be said, as it was
said of a greater man still, that 'after Nature made _him_ s