G E O R G E B O R R O W A N D C L A U D E L O R R A I N MICHAEL COLLIE York University (je o rg e Borrow perplexed his early readers because, while seeming to tell the truth, he did not in fact do so. His best writing is not only rich in visual detail but is also so directly composed from the point of view of the narrator that the reader has little choice but to believe in what he is induced to see. This ability to compose a scene convincingly was an acquired skill: the snag was that each composition only included George Borrow by implication, because although he persuaded his readers to see the world as he remade it on the page, he, almost by definition, never included himself in his own scenes. This mattered little when Borrow was describing an unfamiliar place; it mattered a great deal when he tried to describe himself, that is, when he attempted to write an autobiography. It will be suggested here that Borrow’s early interest in the visual arts was consistent with his secretive temperament, that the adoption of a hypocritical double standard was a psychological necessity for him, and that his attempt to utilize the pictorial methods learnt from painters like Claude resulted in a type of breakdown when he wrote Lavengro which is both biographically interesting in itself and characteristic of the period in which Barrow published his books. This personal crisis paradoxically had to do with the three books which made George Borrow famous: The Bible in Spain, Lavengro, and The Romany Rye. Published in three volumes in 1843, The Bible in Spain was the book which made Borrow’s reputation overnight. In England, there were three further editions that year. In the United States, four publishers brought out pirated editions within a brief period. And in 1846 it became the first volume in John Murray’s Home & Colonial Library, which “ library” or series was one of the very earliest attempts to sell to an evergrowing overseas market large editions cheaply mass-produced by steam.1 “Never was a book more legibly impressed with the unmistakable mark of genius,” said an early reviewer.2 Lavengro, supposedly the first part of Borrow’s auto biography, and The Romany Rye, supposedly its sequel, appeared in 1851 and 1857 respectively. Lavengro was the book which established Borrow as “ among the great masters of English literature,” to use a phrase from an English Studies in Canada, ix, 3, September 1983 obituary in 1881,3 and several generations of school children between 1881 and 1939 were presented with famous passages from Lavengro as models of English prose style.4 At least by 1881 the book was widely regarded as a masterpiece, which was why Oliver Elton called the initial poor reaction to it “ a classical instance of the follies of criticism.” 5 Anyone who based his judgement on the book itself would have no difficulty, he thought, in seeing how good it was. For many years the general reader agreed. Yet the three books which made Borrow famous also brought about a disintegration of character, a breakdown of personality, a tragic and painful loss of focus in the way in which Borrow saw his own life. For him, if not for his readers, the pleasures of hypocrisy were to prove illusory. A little must be said about his life for this to be clear. George Borrow was bom in Norfolk in 1803, of a Cornish father, Thomas Borrow, who was a career soldier, first with the Coldstream Guards, then with the West Norfolk Militia, and Ann Parfrement, daughter of an East Anglican tenant farmer, probably of Huguenot origins.6 His schooling was erratic. Because the regi ment was literally on the march for much of the Napoleonic War, he had just one year at Edinburgh High School and three, when the war was over, at Norwich Grammar School. At the latter institution the Headmaster, a Christian, significantly reduced Borrow’s already somewhat underdeveloped interest in formal education by means of a public beating that resulted in a two-week confinement in...