George Borrow - The Man and His Books by Edward Thomas
page 262 of 365 (71%)
page 262 of 365 (71%)
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to Land's End and back. In his last week he walked to Tintagel and
Pentire. He was welcomed with hospitality and admiration. He in turn seems to have been pleased and at his ease, though he only understood half of what was said. Those who remember his visit speak of his tears in the house where his father was born, of his sitting in the centre of a group telling stories of his travels and singing a Gypsy song, of his singing foreign songs all day out of doors, of his fit of melancholy cured by Scotch and Irish airs played on the piano, of his violent opinions on sherry and "Uncle Tom's Cabin," of his protesting against some sign of gentility by using a filthy rag as a pocket handkerchief, and that in a conspicuous manner, of his being vain and not proud, of his telling the children stories, of one child crying out at sight of him: "That _is_ a man!" He made his mark by unusual ways and by intellectual superiority to his rustic cousins. He rode about with one of his cousin's grandchildren. He walked hither and thither alone, doing as much as twenty-five miles a day with the help of "Look out, look out, Svend Vonved," which he sang in the last dark stretches of road. Mr. Walling was "told that he roamed the Caradons in all weathers without a hat, in search of sport and specimens, antiquities and dialects," but I should think the "specimens" were for the table. He talked to the men by the wayside or dived into the slums of Liskeard for disreputable characters. He visited remarkable and famous places, and was delighted with "Druidic" remains and tales of fairies. Thus Borrow made "fifty quarto pages" of notes, says Knapp, about people, places, dialect, and folk lore. Some of the notes are mere shorthand; some are rapid gossipy jottings; and they include; a verse translation of a Cornish tale. A book on Cornwall, to have grown out of these notes, was advertised; but |
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