ars of age have decided upon a career for herself. In
any case we need not press too hard the Cornish and French origin of
George Borrow to explain his wandering tendencies, nor need we wonder at
the suggestion of Nathaniel Hawthorne, that he was 'supposed to be of
gypsy descent by the mother's side.' You have only to think of the
father, whose work carried him from time to time to every corner of
England, Scotland, and Ireland, and of the mother with her reminiscence
of life in a travelling theatrical company, to explain in no small
measure the glorious vagabondage of George Borrow.

Behold then Thomas Borrow and Ann Perfrement as man and wife, he being
thirty-five years of age, she twenty-one. A roving, restless life was in
front of the pair for many a day, the West Norfolk Militia being
stationed in some eight or nine separate towns within the interval of
ten years between Thomas Borrow's marriage and his second son's birth.
The first child, John Thomas Borrow, was born on the 15th April 1801.[6]
The second son, George Henry Borrow, the subject of this memoir, was
born in his grandfather's house at Dumpling Green, East Dereham, his
mother having found a natural refuge with her father while her husband
was busily recruiting in Norfolk. The two children passed with their
parents from place to place, and in 1809 we find them once again in
East Dereham. From his son's two books, _Lavengro_ and _Wild Wales_, we
can trace the father's later wanderings until his final retirement to
Norwich on a pension. In 1810 the family were at Norman Cross in
Huntingdonshire, when Captain Borrow had to assist in guarding the
French prisoners of war; for it was the stirring epoch of the Napoleonic
conflict, and within the temporary prison 'six thousand French and other
foreigners, followers of the Grand Corsican, were now immured.'

What a strange appearance had those mighty casernes, with their
blank blind walls, without windows or grating, and their
slanting roofs, out of which, through orifices where the tiles
had been removed, would be protruded dozens of grim heads,
feasting their prison-sick eyes on the wide expanse of country
unfolded from that airy height. Ah! there was much misery in
those casernes; and from those roofs, doubtless, many a wistful
look was turned in the direction of lovely France. Much had the
poor inmates to endure, and much to complain of, to the
disgrace of Eng