ro_, ch. xxv.

[17] _Life of B. R. Haydon_, by Tom Taylor, 1853, vol. ii. p. 21.

[18] Or perhaps the experience contained in a letter to Miss Mitford in
1824 (_Benjamin Robert Haydon: Correspondence and Table Talk_, 2 vols.,
1876):

'I have had a horrid week with a mother and eight daughters! Mamma
_remembering_ herself a beauty; Sally and Betsey, etc., see her a
matron. They say, "Oh! this is more suitable to mamma's age," and "that
fits mamma's time of life!" But mamma does not agree. Betsey, and Sally,
and Eliza, and Patty want "mamma"! Mamma wants herself as she looked
when she was Betsey's age, and papa fell in love with her. So I am
distracted to death. I have a great mind to paint her with a long beard
like Salvator, and say, "That's _my_ idea of a fit accompaniment."'

[19] _Benjamin Robert Haydon: Correspondence and Table Talk_, with a
Memoir by his son Frederic Wordsworth Haydon, vol. i. pp. 360-61.

[20] From what are called the 'War Office Weeded Papers, Old Series, No.
33,063/17,' and succeeding numbers.

[21] ('his arrears' are ruled out.) Note by War Office.

[22] This letter is from the original among the Borrow Papers in my
possession.

CHAPTER IV

A WANDERING CHILDHOOD

We do not need to inquire too deeply as to Borrow's possible gypsy
origin in order to account for his vagabond propensities. The lives of
his parents before his birth, and the story of his own boyhood,
sufficiently account for the dominant tendency in Borrow. His father and
mother were married in 1793. Almost every year they changed their
domicile. In 1801 a son was born to them--they still continued to change
their domicile. Captain Borrow followed his regiment from place to
place, and his family accompanied him on these journeys. Dover,
Colchester, Sandgate, Canterbury, Chelmsford--these are some of the
towns where the Borrows sojourned. It was the merest accident--the Peace
of Amiens, to be explicit--that led them back to East Dereham in 1803,
so that the second son was born in his grandfather's house. George was
only a month old when he was carried off to Colchester; in 1804 he was
in the barracks of Kent, in 1805 of Sussex, in 1806 at Hastings, in 1807
at Canterbury, and so on. The indefatigable Dr. Knapp has recorded every
detail for all who love the minute, the meticulous, in biography. The
whole of the first thirteen years of Borrow's life is filled up in this
way, until in 1816 he and his parents found a ho