Through the Magic Door, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [audio ebook reader TXT] 📗

Borrow, with his eagle head perched on his rocklike shoulders, brown-faced, white-headed, a king among men? Where did he get that remarkable face, those strange mental gifts, which place him by himself in literature? Once more, his father was a Cornishman. Yes, there is something strange, and weird, and great, lurking down yonder in the great peninsula which juts into the western sea. Borrow may, if he so pleases, call himself an East Anglian--"an English Englishman," as he loved to term it--but is it a coincidence that the one East Anglian born of Cornish blood was the one who showed these strange qualities? The birth was accidental. The qualities throw back to the twilight of the world.

There are some authors from whom I shrink because they are so voluminous that I feel that, do what I may, I can never hope to be well read in their works. Therefore, and very weakly, I avoid them altogether. There is Balzac, for example, with his hundred odd volumes. I am told that some of them are masterpieces and the rest pot-boilers, but that no one is agreed which is which. Such an author makes an undue claim upon the little span of mortal years. Because he asks too much one is inclined to give him nothing at all. Dumas, too! I stand on the edge of him, and look at that huge crop, and content myself with a sample here and there. But no one could raise this objection to Borrow. A month's reading--even for a leisurely reader--will master all that he has written. There are "Lavengro," "The Bible in Spain," "Romany Rye," and, finally, if you wish to go further, "Wild Wales." Only four books--not much to found a great reputation upon--but, then, there are no other four books quite like them in the language.

He was a very strange man, bigoted, prejudiced, obstinate, inclined to be sulky, as wayward as a man could be. So far his catalogue of qualities does not seem to pick him as a winner. But he had one great and rare gift. He preserved through all his days a sense of the great wonder and mystery of life--the child sense which is so quickly dulled. Not only did he retain it himself, but he was word-master enough to make other people hark back to it also. As he writes you cannot help seeing through his eyes, and nothing which his eyes saw or his ear heard was ever dull or commonplace. It was all strange, mystic, with some deeper meaning struggling always to the light. If he chronicled his conversation with a washer-woman there was something arresting in the words he said, something singular in her reply. If he met a man in a public-house one felt, after reading his account, that one would wish to know more of that man. If he approached a town he saw and made you see--not a collection of commonplace houses or frowsy streets, but something very strange and wonderful, the winding river, the noble bridge, the old castle, the shadows of the dead. Every human being, every object, was not so much a thing in itself, as a symbol and reminder of the past. He looked through a man at that which the man represented. Was his name Welsh? Then in an instant the individual is forgotten and he is off, dragging you in his train, to ancient Britons, intrusive Saxons, unheard-of bards, Owen Glendower, mountain raiders and a thousand fascinating things. Or is it a Danish name? He leaves the individual in all his modern commonplace while he flies off to huge skulls at Hythe (in parenthesis I may remark that I have examined the said skulls with some care, and they seemed to me to be rather below the human average), to Vikings, Berserkers, Varangians, Harald Haardraada, and the innate wickedness of the Pope. To Borrow all roads lead to Rome.

But, my word, what English the fellow could write! What an organ-roll he could get into his sentences! How nervous and vital and vivid it all is!

There is music in every line of it if you have been blessed with an ear for the music of prose. Take the chapter in "Lavengro" of how the screaming horror came upon his spirit when he was encamped in the Dingle. The man who wrote that has caught the true mantle of Bunyan and Defoe. And, observe the art of it, under all the simplicity--notice, for example, the curious weird effect produced by the studied repetition of the word "dingle" coming ever round and round like the master-note in a chime. Or take the passage about Britain towards the end of "The Bible in Spain." I hate quoting from these masterpieces, if only for the very selfish reason that my poor setting cannot afford to show up brilliants. None the less, cost what it may, let me transcribe that one noble piece of impassioned prose--

"O England! long, long may it be ere the sun of thy glory sink
beneath the wave of darkness! Though gloomy and portentous
clouds are now gathering rapidly around thee, still, still
may it please the Almighty to disperse them, and to grant thee
a futurity longer in duration and still brighter in renown
than thy past! Or, if thy doom be at hand, may that doom be
a noble one, and worthy of her who has been styled the Old
Queen of the waters! May thou sink, if thou dost sink, amidst
blood and flame, with a mighty noise, causing more than one
nation to participate in thy downfall! Of all fates, may it
please the Lord to preserve thee from a disgraceful and a
slow decay; becoming, ere extinct, a scorn and a mockery for
those self-same foes who now, though they envy and abhor thee,
still fear thee, nay even against their will, honour and
respect thee.... Remove from thee the false prophets, who
have seen vanity and divined lies; who have daubed thy wall
with untempered mortar, that it may fall; who see visions
of peace where there is no peace; who have strengthened the
hands of the wicked, and made the heart of the righteous sad.
Oh, do this, and fear not the result, for either shall
thy end be a majestic and an enviable one; or God shall
perpetuate thy reign upon the waters, thou Old Queen!"

Or take the fight with the Flaming Tinman. It's too long for quotation--but read it, read every word of it. Where in the language can you find a stronger, more condensed and more restrained narrative? I have seen with my own eyes many a noble fight, more than one international battle, where the best of two great countries have been pitted against each other--yet the second-hand impression of Borrow's description leaves a more vivid remembrance upon my mind than any of them. This is the real witchcraft of letters.

He was a great fighter himself. He has left a secure reputation in other than literary circles--circles which would have been amazed to learn that he was a writer of books. With his natural advantages, his six foot three of height and his staglike agility, he could hardly fail to be formidable. But he was a scientific sparrer as well, though he had, I have been told, a curious sprawling fashion of his own. And how his heart was in it--how he loved the fighting men! You remember his thumb-nail sketches of his heroes. If you don't I must quote one, and if you do you will be glad to read it again--

"There's Cribb, the Champion of England, and perhaps the best
man in England; there he is, with his huge, massive figure,
and face wonderfully like that of a lion. There is Belcher,
the younger, not the mighty one, who is gone to his place,
but the Teucer Belcher, the most scientific pugilist that
ever entered a ring, only wanting strength to be I won't say
what. He appears to walk before me now, as he did that
evening, with his white hat, white great coat, thin genteel
figure, springy step, and keen determined eye. Crosses him,
what a contrast! Grim, savage Shelton, who has a civil word
for nobody, and a hard blow for anybody. Hard! One blow
given with the proper play of his athletic arm will unsense
a giant. Yonder individual, who strolls about with his hands
behind him, supporting his brown coat lappets, undersized,
and who looks anything but what he is, is the king of the
light-weights, so-called--Randall! The terrible Randall,
who has Irish blood in his veins; not the better for that,
nor the worse; and not far from him is his last antagonist,
Ned Turner, who, though beaten by him, still thinks himself
as good a man, in which he is, perhaps, right, for it was
a near thing. But how shall I name them all? They were
there by dozens, and all tremendous in their way. There
was Bulldog Hudson, and fearless Scroggins, who beat the
conqueror of Sam the Jew. There was Black Richmond--no,
he was not there, but I knew him well; he was the most
dangerous of blacks, even with a broken thigh. There was
Purcell, who could never conquer until all seemed over with
him. There was--what! shall I name thee last? Ay, why not?
I believe that thou art the last of all that strong family
still above the sod, where mayst thou long continue--true
piece of English stuff--Tom of Bedford. Hail to thee, Tom
of Bedford, or by whatever name it may please thee to be
called, Spring or Winter! Hail to thee, six-foot Englishman
of the brown eye, worthy to have carried a six-foot bow at
Flodden, where England's yeomen triumphed over Scotland's
King, his clans and chivalry. Hail to thee, last of English
bruisers, after all the many victories which thou hast
achieved--true English victories, unbought by yellow gold."

Those are words from the heart. Long may it be before we lose the fighting blood which has come to us from of old! In a world of peace we shall at last be able to root it from our natures. In a world which is armed to the teeth it is the last and only guarantee of our future. Neither our numbers, nor our wealth, nor the waters which guard us can hold us safe if once the old iron passes from our spirit. Barbarous, perhaps--but there are possibilities for barbarism, and none in this wide world for effeminacy.

Borrow's views of literature and of literary men were curious. Publisher and brother author, he hated them with a fine comprehensive hatred. In all his books I cannot recall a word of commendation to any living writer, nor has he posthumous praise for those of the generation immediately preceding. Southey, indeed, he commends with what most would regard as exaggerated warmth, but for the rest he who lived when Dickens, Thackeray, and Tennyson were all in their glorious prime, looks fixedly past them at some obscure Dane or forgotten Welshman. The reason was, I expect, that his proud soul was bitterly wounded by his