Lavengro by George Borrow

Leaving Horncastle I bent my steps in the direction of the east. [345] I walked at a brisk rate, and late in the evening reached a large town, situate at the entrance of an extensive firth, or arm of the sea, which prevented my farther progress eastward. Sleeping that night in the suburbs of the town, I departed early next morning in the direction of the south. A walk of about twenty miles brought me to another large town, situated on a river, where I again turned towards the east. At the end of the town I was accosted by a fiery-faced individual, somewhat under the middle size, dressed as a recruiting sergeant.

[345]: Direction of the east, read "south. " He could only have gone south from Horncastle to reach Boston (the "large town on the arm of the sea") that day. The next he came to Spalding, some fifteen miles farther, where he met the recruiting serjeant, thence on to Norwich by Lynn Regis. We must not forget that before Lavengro was begun, and fifteen years prior to the publication of The Romany Rye, that is, 26th December, 1842, Mr. Petulengro remarked to George Borrow at Oulton: "I suppose you have not forgot how, fifteen [seventeen] years ago, when you made horseshoes in the dingle by the side of the great north road, I lent you fifty guineas to purchase the wonderful trotting cob of the innkeeper with the green Newmarket coat, which three days after you sold for two hundred. "414 Now, this is a very remarkable statement, and, taken in connection with the fact that so little is said about Horncastle in the book, it seems to me we are justified in proclaiming that Borrow was never in Horncastle at all. The interview with the Magyar and the syllabus of Hungarian history are clearly drawn from his experiences in Hungary and Transylvania in the year 1844, and hence are an anachronism here. It is a pity that the author did not adhere to the chronological facts of his life so strictly in The Romany Rye as he did in Lavengro. Truth and literature would have gained by it. And then that valedictory pledge,415 confirmed in the appendix, drawing a veil over the period of his travails, if not his travels, was an error of judgment which, in an autobiography will, we fear, not easily be condoned. -- Knapp ↩︎