“Methought I was in a small, comfortable room wainscotted with oak; I was seated on one side of a fireplace, close by a table on which were wine and fruit; on the other side of the fire sat a man in a plain suit of brown, with the hair combed back from the somewhat high forehead; he had a pipe in his mouth, which for some time he smoked gravely and placidly, without saying a word; at length, after drawing at the pipe for some time rather vigorously, he removed it from his mouth, and emitting an accumulated cloud of smoke, he exclaimed in a slow and measured tone: ‘As I was telling you just now, my good chap, I have always been an enemy of humbug.’” { 35c}
William Taylor appears to have flattered “the harum-scarum young men” with whom he surrounded himself by talking to them as if they were his intellectual equals. He encouraged them to form their own opinions, in itself a thing scarcely likely to make him popular with either parents or guardians, least of all with discipline-loving Captain Borrow, who declined even to return the salute of his son’s friend on the public highway.
Borrow now began to look to the future and speculate as to what his present life would lead to. His cogitations seem to have ended, almost invariably, in a gloomy mist of pessimism and despair—in other words, an attack of the “Horrors.” If Mr Petulengro were encamped upon Mousehold, the antidote lay near to hand in his friend’s pagan optimism; if, on the other hand, the tents of Egypt were pitched on other soil, there was no remedy, unless perhaps a prize-fight supplied the necessary stimulus to divert his thoughts from their melancholy trend.
[Picture: George Borrow (1821). From a hitherto unpublished painting by John Borrow, now in the posession of W. F. T. Jarrold, Esq.]
Borrow met at the house of his tutor and friend, in July 1821, Dr Bowring { 36a} (afterwards Sir John) at a dinner given in his honour. Bowring had recently published _Specimen of Russian Poets_, in recognition of which the Czar (Alexander I.) had presented him with a diamond ring. He had a considerable reputation as a linguist, which naturally attracted Borrow to him. Dr Bowring was told of Borrow’s accomplishments, and during the evening took a seat beside him. Borrow confessed to being “a little frightened at first” of the distinguished man, whom he described as having “a thin weaselly figure, a sallow complexion, a certain obliquity of vision, and a large pair of spectacles.” It would be dangerous to accept entirely the account that Borrow gives of the meeting, { 36b} because when that was written he had come to hate and despise the man whom he had begun by regarding with such awe. Bowring appears to have ventilated his views with some freedom, and to have had a rather serious passage of arms with another guest whom he had rudely contradicted. It is very probable that Borrow’s dislike of Bowring prompted him to exaggerate his account of what happened at Taylor’s house that evening.