Lavengro: The Scholar, the Gypsy, the Priest — Edition Insights

There was not the same public to welcome the Gypsy as had hailed the Colporteur. The pious phrases which had garnished so plentifully the earlier book had now almost wholly disappeared. There is no evidence that Lavengro ever offered Petulengro a Bible. Even the denunciations of Popery have a dubious sound. What is sometimes called 'the religious world' were no longer buyers of Borrow. Nor was 'the polite world' much better pleased. The polite reader was both puzzled and annoyed. First of all: Was the book true--autobiography or romance? A polite reader objects to be made a fool of. One De Foe in a couple of centuries is enough for a polite reader. Then the glorification of ale and of gypsies and prize-fighters--would it not be better at once to dub the book vulgar, and so have done with it for ever? An ill-regulated book, a strange book, a mad book, a book which condemns the world's way. If I may judge from the reviews, this is how _Lavengro_ struck many, but by no means all. The book had its passionate admirers, its lovers from the first. Men, women, and boys took it to their hearts. Happy day when _Lavengro_ first fell into boyish hands. It brought adventure and the spirit of adventure to your doorstep. No need painfully to walk to Hull, and there take shipping with Robinson Crusoe; no need to sail round the world with Captain Cook, or even to shoot lions in Bechuanaland with that prince of missionaries, Mr. Robert Moffat; for were there not gypsies on the common half a mile from one's homestead, and a dingle at the end of the lane? But the general verdict was, '"Lavengro" has gone too far.'

Borrow was not the man to whistle and let the world go by. His advice to his country men and women was: 'To be courteous to everybody as Lavengro was, but always independent like him, and if people meddle with them, to give them as good as they bring, even as he and Isopel Berners were in the habit of doing; and it will be as well for him to observe that he by no means advises women to be too womanly, but, bearing the conduct of Isopel Berners in mind, to take their own parts, and if anybody strikes them to strike again.'

This is not the spirit which is patient under reproof. Borrow was not going to be sentenced by the gentility party. He would fulfil his dukkeripen. _Lavengro_ having ended abruptly enough, Borrow took .up the tale where he had left it off; and though he kept his admirers on the tenter-hooks for six years, did at last in 1857 give to the world _The Romany Rye_, to which he added an Appendix. Ah! that Appendix! It is Borrow's Apologia, and therefore must be read. It is interesting and amusing, and is therefore easily read. But it is a cruel and outrageous bit of writing all the same, proving, were proof needed, that it is every whit as easy to be spiteful and envious in dells as in drawing-rooms, and as vain and egotistical on a Norfolk Broad as in Grosvenor Square. In this Appendix Borrow defends 'Lavengro,' both the book and the man, at some length, and with enormous spirit. At gentility in all its manifestations he runs amuck. The Stuarts have a chapter to themselves. Jacobites, old and new; Papists, old and new; and, alas! Sir Walter Scott as the father of 'Charley o'er the Waterism,' all fall by turn under the lash of Lavengro. The attack on the memory of Sir Walter is brutal. Not so, we may be sure, did Pearce, and Cribb, and Spring, and Big Ben Brain, and Broughton, heroes of renown, win name and fame in the brave days of old. They never struck a man when he was down, or gloated over a rival's fall. However, it will not do to get angry with George Borrow. One could never keep it up. Still, the Appendix is a pity.