tion of Borrow's Collected
Writings, in which the unpublished verse will extend to two volumes.

[249] Certain of these have of late been privately printed in pamphlet
form--limited to thirty copies each.

[250] The works of Dr. George Sigerson, Dr. Douglas Hyde and Dr. Kuno
Meyer in Irish Literature are an evidence of this. Dr. Sigerson's _Bards
of the Gael and Gaul_ and Dr. Hyde's _Love Songs of Connaught_ have each
gone through more than one edition and have proved remunerative to their
authors.

[251] _The Quarterly Review_, January 1861, pp. 38-63.

CHAPTER XXXVI

HENRIETTA CLARKE

Borrow never had a child, but happy for him was the part played by his
stepdaughter Henrietta in his life. She was twenty-three years old when
her mother married him, and it is clear to me that she was from the
beginning of their friendship and even to the end of his life devoted to
her stepfather. Readers of _Wild Wales_ will recall not only the tribute
that Borrow pays to her, which we have already quoted, in which he
refers to her 'good qualities and many accomplishments,' but the other
pleasant references in that book. 'Henrietta,' he says in one passage,
'played on the guitar[252] and sang a Spanish song, to the great delight
of John Jones.' When climbing Snowdon he is keen in his praises of the
endurance of 'the gallant girl.' As against all this, there is an
undercurrent of depreciation of his stepdaughter among Borrow's
biographers. The picture of Borrow's home in later life at Oulton is
presented by them with sordid details. The Oulton tradition which still
survives among the few inhabitants who lived near the Broad at Borrow's
death in 1881, and still reside there, is of an ill-kept home, supremely
untidy, and it is as a final indictment of his daughter's callousness
that we have the following gruesome picture by Dr. Knapp:

On the 26th of July 1881 Mr. Borrow was found dead in his house
at Oulton. The circumstances were these. His stepdaughter and
her husband drove to Lowestoft in the morning on some business
of their own, leaving Mr. Borrow without a living soul in the
house with him. He had earnestly requested them not to go away
because he felt that he was in a dying state; but the response
intimated that he had often expressed the same feeling before,
and his fears had proved groundless. During the interval of
these few hours of abandonment nothing can palliate o