ed up while staying in the neighbourhood. {80} Borrow
has himself something to say concerning his family in _Wild Wales_:--

Of my wife I will merely say that she is a perfect paragon of
wives--can make puddings and sweets and treacle posset, and is the
best woman of business in East Anglia: of my step-daughter, for such
she is though I generally call her daughter, and with good reason
seeing that she has always shown herself a daughter to me, that she
has all kinds of good qualities and several accomplishments, knowing
something of conchology, more of botany, drawing capitally in the
Dutch style, and playing remarkably well on the guitar.

Yes, I am not quite sure but that Borrow was really a good fellow all
round, as well as being a good husband and father. He hated the literary
class, it is true. He considered that the "contemptible trade of
author," as he called it, was less creditable than that of a jockey. He
avoided as much as possible the writers of books, and particularly the
blue-stocking, and when they came in his way he was not always very
polite, sometimes much the reverse. Only the other day a letter was
published from the late Professor Cowell describing a visit to Borrow and
his not very friendly reception. Well, Borrow was here as elsewhere a
man of insight. The literary class is usually a very narrow class. It
can talk about no trade but its own. Things have grown worse since
Borrow's day, I am sure, but they were bad enough then. Borrow was a man
of very varied tastes. He took interest in gypsies and horses and prize
fighters and a hundred other entertaining matters, and so he despised the
literary class, which cared for none of these things. But unhappily for
his fame the literary class has had the final word; it has revealed all
the gossip of a gossiping peasantry, and it has done its best to present
the recluse of Oulton in a disagreeable light. Fortunately for Borrow,
who kept the bores at bay and contented himself with but few friends,
there were at least two who survived him to bear testimony to the effect
that he was "a singularly steadfast and loyal friend." One of these was
Mr. Watts-Dunton, who tells us in one of his essays that:

George Borrow was a good man, a most winsome and a most charming
companion, an English gentleman, straightforward, honest, and brave as
the very best examplars of that fine old type.

I have dwelt longer on this aspe