ystery-man style.

[Picture: George Borrow's birthplace, Dumpling Green, East Dereham]

Again and again Borrow, throughout his life, suffered from some nervous
ailment which defied definition; thus, when he was fifteen, his strength
and appetite deserted him and he pined and drooped, but an ancient
female, a kind of doctress, who had been his nurse in his infancy, gave
him a decoction of a bitter root growing on commons and desolate places,
from which he took draughts till he was convalescent. In any estimate of
Borrow's life the strange attacks of what he called "the Fear" or "the
Horrors" must be taken into account. At times they even produced a
suicidal tendency, as when, in 1824, he wrote to his friend Roger
Kerrison, "Come to me immediately; I am, I believe, dying." The
facsimile of this note in Knapp's "Life of Borrow" is as tremulous as if
the writer was suffering from delirium tremens, which, of course, he was
not.

[Picture: Roger Kerrison]

We have in "Lavengro" a very interesting account of the boy Borrow being
taken twice every Sunday to the fine parish church at East Dereham,
where, from a corner of a spacious pew, he would fix his eyes on the
dignified high-Church rector and the dignified high-Church clerk, "from
whose lips would roll many a portentous word descriptive of the wondrous
works of the Most High." The rector was the Rev. F. J. H. Wollaston,
B.D., who was himself patron of the living, which reverted to the Crown
in 1841. At East Dereham, too, he came in touch with that exquisite old
gentlewoman, Lady Fenn, widow of Sir John Fenn, editor of the "Paston
Letters," as she passed to and fro from her mansion on some errand of
bounty or of mercy, leaning on her gold-headed cane, whilst the sleek old
footman walked at a respectful distance behind. But Borrow's admiration
for Philo, the clerk, was greatest--"Peace to thee, thou fine old chap,
despiser of dissenters, and hater of papists, as became a dignified and
high-Church clerk."

Leaving Dereham in April, 1810, Captain Borrow and his family were
transferred to Norman Cross, in the parish of Yaxley, some four miles
from Peterborough, to guard a large number of French prisoners in sixteen
long casernes, or barracks. At this place little Borrow, now seven years
old, made a friend, quite to his liking, in a wild sequestered spot which
was his favourite haunt; for he was allowed to pass his time principally
in wander