prolix, for the slightest particular cannot fail of being
interesting to one who loves you far better than parent or
relation, or even than the God whom bigots would teach him to
adore, and who subscribes himself, Yours unalterably,

GEORGE BORROW.[47]

Borrow might improve his German--not sufficiently as we shall see in our
next chapter--but he would certainly never make a lawyer. Long years
afterwards, when, as an old man, he was frequently in Norwich, he not
seldom called at that office in Tuck's Court, where five strange years
of his life had been spent. A clerk in Rackham's office in these later
years recalls him waiting for the principal as he in his youth had
watched others waiting.[48]

FOOTNOTES:

[44] _Norvicensian_, 1888, p. 177.

[45] _Lavengro_, ch. xix.

[46] The _Britannia_ newspaper, 26th June 1851.

[47] This letter is in the possession of Mr. J. C. Gould, Trap Hill
House, Loughton, Essex.

[48] Mr. C. F. Martelli of Staple Inn, London, who has so generously
placed this information at my disposal. Mr. Martelli writes:

'Old memories brought him to our office for professional advice, and
there I saw something of him, and a very striking personality he was,
and a rather difficult client to do business with. One peculiarity I
remember was that he believed himself to be plagued by autograph
hunters, and was reluctant to trust our firm with his signature in any
shape or form, and that we in consequence had some trouble in inducing
him to sign his will. I have seen him sitting over my fire in my room at
that office for hours, half asleep, and crooning out Romany songs while
waiting for my chief.'

CHAPTER IX

SIR RICHARD PHILLIPS

_'That's a strange man!' said I to myself, after I had left the
house, 'he is evidently very clever; but I cannot say that I
like him much with his Oxford Reviews and Dairyman's
Daughters.'_--LAVENGRO.

Borrow lost his father on the 28th February 1824. He reached London on
the 2nd April of the same year, and this was the beginning of his many
wanderings. He was armed with introductions from William Taylor, and
with some translations in manuscript from Danish and Welsh poetry. The
principal introduction was to Sir Richard Phillips, a person of some
importance in his day, who has so far received but inadequate treatment
in our own.[49] Phillips was active in the cause of reform at a certain
period in h