n Guzman Dalfarache. The brawny
man who sits by the brasero of charcoal, is Salvador, the highwayman of
Ronda, who has committed a hundred murders. A fashionably dressed man,
short and slight in person, is walking about the room: he wears immense
whiskers and mustachios; he is one of that most singular race of Jews of
Spain; he is imprisoned for counterfeiting money. He is an atheist, but
like a true Jew, the name which he most hates is that of Christ: . . ."
{144} So well did Borrow choose his company, even in prison. Some of
his letters to the Society went astray at this time and he was vainly
expected in England. He was able to send them a very high testimony to
his discretion from the English Consul at Seville, and he himself
reminded them that he had been "fighting with wild beasts" during this
last visit. The Society several times repeated his recall, but he did
not return, apparently because he wished to remain with Mrs. Clarke in
Seville, and because he no longer felt himself at their beck and call. He
was also at work on "The Gypsies of Spain." Nevertheless he wrote to the
Society in March, 1840, a letter which would have been remarkable from
another man about to marry a wife, for he said that he wished to spend
the remaining years of his life in the northern parts of China, as he
thought he had a call, and still hoped "to die in the cause of my
Redeemer." In April he left Spain with Mrs. and Miss Clarke. Fifty or
sixty years later Mrs. Joseph Pennell "saw the sign, 'G. Borrow, Agent of
the British and Foreign Bible Society,' high upon a house in the Plaza de
la Constitucion, in Seville." Borrow was never again in Spain. After
reporting himself for the last time to the Society, and making a
suggestion which Brandram answered by saying, "the door seems shut," he
married Mrs. Clarke on April 23, 1840. She had 450 pounds a year and a
home at Oulton. Fifteen or sixteen years later he spoke of his wife and
daughter thus: "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 Eastern 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