On this he rose, fuming, as was his
wont when offended, and said to Mr. Donne, 'What a damned fool that woman
is!' The fact is that, whenever Borrow was induced to do anything
unwillingly, he lost his temper." {208}

The friend who tells this story, Gordon Hake, a poet and doctor at Bury
St. Edmunds, tells also that once when he was at dinner with a banker who
had recently "struck the docket" to secure payment from a friend of
Borrow's, and the banker's wife said to him: "Oh Mr. Borrow, I have read
your books with so much pleasure!" the great man exclaimed: "Pray, what
books do you mean, madam? Do you mean my account books?" How touchy he
was, Mr. Walling shows, by his story of Borrow in Cornwall neglecting a
lady all one evening because she bore the name of the man his father had
knocked down at Menheniot Fair. Several stories of his crushing remarks
prove nothing but that he was big and alarming and uncontrolled.

{picture: Gordon Hake. From the painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. By
kind permission of Mrs. George Gordon Hake: page209.jpg}

Very little record of his friendly intercourse with men at this middle
period remains. Several letters, of 1853, 1856 and 1857, alone survive
to show that he met and received letters from Fitzgerald. That
Fitzgerald enjoyed an evening with him in 1856 tells us little; and even
so it appears that Fitzgerald only wanted to ask him to read some of the
"Northern Ballads"--"but you shut the book"--and that he doubted whether
Borrow wished to keep up the acquaintance. They had friends in common,
and Fitzgerald had sent Borrow a copy of his "Six Dramas of Calderon," in
1853, confessing that he had had thoughts of sending the manuscript first
for an inspection. He also told Borrow when he was about to make the
"dangerous experiment" of marriage with Miss Barton "of Quaker memory."
In 1857 Borrow came to see him and had the loan of the "Rubaiyat" in
manuscript, and Fitzgerald showed his readiness to see more of the "Great
Man." In 1859 he sent Borrow a copy of "Omar." He found Borrow's
"masterful manners and irritable temper uncongenial," {209} but
succeeded, unlike many other friends, in having no quarrel with him. Near
the end of his life, in 1875, it was Borrow that tried to renew the
acquaintance, but in vain, for Fitzgerald reminded him that friends
"exist and enjoy themselves pretty reasonably without me," and asked, was
not being alone better than having company?

I