George Borrow - Early Scandal

Early Scandal

Because of Borrow's precocious linguistic skills, as a youth he became the protégé of the Norwich-born scholar William Taylor. Borrow depicts Taylor, an advocate of German Romantic literature, in his semi-autobiographical novel Lavengro (1851). In his recollection of his early youth in Norwich some thirty years earlier, Borrow depicts an old man (Taylor) and a young man (Borrow) discussing the merits of German literature, including Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther. Taylor confesses himself to be no admirer of either The Sorrows of Young Werther or its author but nevertheless states-

"It is good to be a German (for) the Germans are the most philosophical people in the world."

With Taylor’s encouragement, Borrow embarked upon his first translation: Von Klinger's version of the Faust legend, entitled Faustus, his Life, Death and Descent into Hell, first published in St.Petersburg in 1791. In his translation, Borrow altered the name of one city, thus making one passage of the legend read –

"They found the people of the place modelled after so unsightly a pattern, with such ugly figures and flat features that the devil owned he had never seen them equalled, except by the inhabitants of an English town, called Norwich, when dressed in their Sunday's best."

For his lampooning of Norwich society, the young Borrow earned the humiliation of having Norwich public subscription library burn his first publication.