r excuse,
George Borrow died as he had lived--_alone_! His age was
seventy-eight years and twenty-one days.

Dr. Knapp no doubt believed all this;[253] it is endorsed by the village
gossip of the past thirty years, and the mythical tragedy is even
heightened by a further story of a farm tumbril which carried poor
Borrow's body to the railway station when it was being conveyed to
London to be buried beside his wife in Brompton Cemetery.

The tumbril story--whether correct or otherwise--is a matter of
indifference to me. The legend of the neglect of Borrow in his last
moments is however of importance, and the charge can easily be
disproved.[254] I have before me Mrs. MacOubrey's diary for 1881.

I have many such diaries for a long period of years, but this for 1881
is of particular moment. Here, under the date July 26th, we find the
brief note, _George Borrow died at three o'clock this morning_. It is
scarcely possible that Borrow's stepdaughter and her husband could have
left him alone at three o'clock in the morning in order to drive into
Lowestoft, less than two miles distant. At this time, be it remembered,
Dr. MacOubrey was eighty-one years of age. Now, as to the general
untidiness of Borrow's home at the time of his death--the point is a
distasteful one, but it had better be faced. Henrietta was twenty-three
years of age when her mother married Borrow. She was sixty-four at the
time of his death, and her husband, as I have said, was eighty-one years
of age at that time, being three years older than Borrow. Here we have
three very elderly people keeping house together and little accustomed
overmuch to the assistance of domestic servants. The situation at once
becomes clear. Mrs. Borrow had a genius for housekeeping and for
management. She watched over her husband, kept his accounts, held the
family purse,[255] managed all his affairs. She 'managed' her daughter
also, delighting in that daughter's accomplishments of drawing and
botany, to which may be added a zeal for the writing of stories which
does not seem, judging from the many manuscripts in her handwriting that
I have burnt, to have received much editorial encouragement. In short,
Henrietta was not domesticated. But just as I have proved in preceding
chapters that Borrow was happy in his married life, so I would urge that
as far as a somewhat disappointed career would permit to the sadly
bereaved author he was happy in his family circle to the end.