Lavengro

Lavengro

by George Borrow

Falling somewhere between the genres of memoir and novel, Lavengro has long been considered a classic of 19th-century English literature. According to the author lav-engro is a Romany word meaning "word master". The historian G.M. Trevelyan called this "a book that breathes the spirit of that period of strong and eccentric characters".

Its protagonist, whose name is never mentioned, is born the son of an officer in a militia regiment and is brought up in various barrack towns in England, Scotland and Ireland. After serving an apprenticeship to a lawyer he moves to London and becomes a Grub Street hack, an occupation which gives him ample opportunities to observe London low-life. Finally he takes to the road as a tinker. At various points through the book he associates with Romany travellers, of whom he gives memorable and generally sympathetic pen-portraits. Lavengro was followed by a sequel, The Romany Rye. Neither of the two books is self-contained. Rather, Lavengro ends abruptly with chapter 100, and carries on directly in the The Romany Rye. Thus both need to be read together, in order.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, British Literature, Walking, English Literature, Victorian, Historical Fiction

314 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1851

About the author

George Henry Borrow was an English author who wrote novels and travelogues based on his own experiences traveling around Europe. Over the course of his wanderings, he developed a close affinity with the Romani people of Europe, who figure prominently in his work. His best known books are The Bible in Spain (1843), the autobiographical Lavengro (1851), and The Romany Rye (1857), about his time with the English Romanichal (gypsies).

Reviews

[Debbie Zapata · Rating 4 out of 5]

I added this book to my lists two years ago after seeing it mentioned in an essay collection by Kenneth Grahame. Lavengro has lurked around ever since, along with the sequel Romany Rye.

So last week I decided it was high time to see why Grahame appreciated Borrow enough to mention him. I thought I would ramble along through the 100 chapters of the book, not being in any hurry. But then we decided to take a trip this next week and since I hate leaving an online book hanging, I concentrated on finishing the book by Sunday. And here I am a day earlier than expected, happy with the story, and ready to begin Romany Rye as soon as we get home again.

100 chapters sounds like a lot, but mostly they are short, and the story reads very quickly. It is considered a semi-autobiographical novel: we first meet Borrow on the day he is born, then follow him along to young adulthood. His father was a soldier, and since he could not afford to support two households, George's mother and older brother lived with him wherever he was stationed. George got used to moving around a lot, seeing and exploring new locations sometimes every few months.

I thought he was an interesting person, but there were spots about him that felt weird. He hated the Catholic Church with a passion and never lets the reader forget that. He loved languages and words, but never thought he could be an author of original works; he translated poems and ballads from Welsh and Danish to English and at the time he wrote this book was still mourning the fact that no publishers were interested in these works.

He could be morbidly sad at times, looking down from London Bridge wondering how it would feel to be swept away in the tidewaters below. He had a terror come upon him as a boy and later in adulthood it returned, a terror that made him scream with fear of.....nothing he could say exactly, just a terror of everything. He had some bizarre conversations; and I never could decide if he was behaving like himself or trying to be a smart-aleck to tease the person he was talking with.

Honestly, I never could decide if I would like the man in real life. He seemed to have a knack (or a need) to put others in their places, but he could also cut right to the simple core of a problem that others might not be able to see. He did this with the wandering Welsh preacher Peter Williams, who was torturing himself over a supposed sin committed in his own childhood. Our man Borrow gives his thoughts on the matter and immediately Williams sees his own life much more clearly. Now Peter Williams was a real person (I checked) but this is where the novel part of this book comes into play because although George and Peter have their discussion in the 1820-somethings, Williams had actually passed away in 1792 or so. I still haven't figured out the point of the chapters about Williams, unless it was simply to illustrate Borrow's religious ideas? I imagine I am missing something here, I usually do in such cases.

Anyway, this is not a book all full of Gypsy lore the way you might think from the title, although there are certain words explained in various adventures, and recurring characters who keep inviting Borrow to travel with the clan. It never was time yet for Borrow to stay with the Gypsies, though. I think that comes in the next book. Romany Rye means a non-Gypsy gentleman who travels with the Gypsies. And Lavengro? Well, when George first meets our recurring Gypsy friends, they called him Sap-engro, which meant Snake Master. (He had a de-fanged snake as a pet at the time.) And later, when their paths cross again and George learns more customs and language, here is what he is told:
“We’ll no longer call you Sap-engro, brother,” said he; “but rather Lav-engro, which in the language of the gorgios meaneth Word Master."

I must confess to skimming a few chapters that told the life stories of one or two characters who come into Borrow's life in the later parts of the book. I didn't mind when he himself shared another person's story, but when he allowed the other character to take over, becoming the 'I' of those chapters, I got bored. Perhaps in the next book I might regret not reading the entire life of Peter Williams as told by him, or of the man who showed up in the storm at the end of this volume. The literal end: he tells his tale for the last two chapters of the book, and chapter 100 concludes with the man saying he was tired and would go to sleep now. Bam! The End!

I am sorely tempted to peek at Romany Rye just to see if George went to sleep too. But no, I can wait until we get home from Teotihuacan.

[Monty Milne · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I misbehaved as a child I was sometimes threatened with being sold to the gypsies. Far from being terrified, I regarded this as an enthrallingly romantic prospect and was disappointed it was never carried out. I often fantasised about running away to join the gypsies, and even when that phase had passed, I recall as a teenager approaching the gangmaster in a field where gypsies laboured to pick brussels sprouts, and asked if I could join them. I was betrayed by my clothes and my accent, and the gangmaster dismissed me with a glance and a shake of his head and a mixture of amusement and contempt.

This novel is the grandfather of all those gypsy romances, or at least that is what I thought. The reality is more complex and there are lengthy sections where the gypsies aren’t even mentioned. The author’s anti Catholic prejudice is extreme. Early on we meet a classic bigoted Irish Protestant, a County Tipperary hotel keeper, whose garrulous sycophancy is quite amusing – “To your honour’s speedy promotion to Lord Lieutenant, and to the speedy downfall of the Pope and Saint Anthony of Padua!” But one wonders how far this is satire when the author reveals his own prejudices are just as bad – and this becomes tedious and distasteful.

Nevertheless we forgive the author a lot for his genuine sympathy with the downtrodden, his love of the wild gypsies, and his fascination for language. As well as his comic touches: there is a very funny section where he tries to communicate his fascination for the Armenian language to his monosyllabic father (though this also raises the somewhat vexatious point of trying to decide if this is a memoir or a novel),

Gypsies now are sometimes glimpsed surrounded by discarded white goods littering the space round their motor homes. They remain marginalised, but the glamour has gone. But who wouldn’t want to do a George Borrow: oh to run away with old style gyspies to the freedom of a horse drawn carriage on sunlit roads devoid of the motor car, stopping under the stars to eat baked hedgehog by the camp fire and listen to their stories and their songs. And quiz them about abstruse points of Sinti etymology. Perhaps it’s just as well I never read Lavengro until now: had I read it as a child, I might have ended up like the child who read Peter Pan and then jumped out of a window thinking he could fly.

[Jovan Autonomašević · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating read. The part autobiography of George Borrow, famous for having lived with and recorded the lifestyle of English Romanies 200 years ago. Although I would have liked the book to have dealt more with that now almost disappeared community.
He describes his childhood during the Napoleonic Wars, and life in Scotland and Ireland as the son of a professional soldier. As a young man he lived in London, before hitting the road. The descriptions of everyday life in those parts 200 years ago are fascinating of themselves; what struck me is how much everyone in those days was acquainted with the natural world, whether wild or domestic - nowhere was far from the countryside, and everyone was comfortable handling horses, not to mention turning their hand to fixing everyday objects that fell into disrepair. Today you need to be an IT engineer to be a mechanic, or a farmer.
The book contains several valuable examples of the now defunct English Romany dialect (very close to modern Balkan Romany). I will certainly be searching out others of his books!

[Sylvester (Taking a break in 2023) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm very surprised at the lack of reviews for this book. I picked it as an addition to my Gypsy theme, and may not have tried it otherwise. But wow! Wow. Not what I was expecting. Not a book about a gypsy, by the way. Romany's are recurring characters, yes, but the book is about a guy who doesn't know who he is and can't figure out what to do with his life (a very modern predicament, really). He loves languages, though (and Romany fascinates him most of all), and learns a lot of them, without knowing what to do with the skill afterwards. (He is obsessed with a Welsh poet, whom he translates.) The book is episodic, introducing one situation and character after another - and he lives by his wits enough for me to loosely call him a picaresque. I never knew where the book was going, and loved it. Lavengro is invited into many schemes and considers them all, but ends up almost homeless before he makes a decision. The humour is understated, with a recurring theme of him running into people whom he has affected in some way without their knowing - a pickpocket who stole from him, the relative of a woman he has become friends with, a Welshman who has no idea Lavengro can understand Welsh, and many more ( most of the time L never tells). The book is unique for other reasons too, though. It has the earliest mention of OCD I've ever come across, and panic attacks, it also has a lot about fighting, and yes, a little about Romany culture ( they are the ones who call him Lavengro - which means "word master").

Borrow digresses constantly, and I skimmed through these without mercy. And then there's the Catholic bashing - tedious, tedious, tedious - I skipped an entire chapter of this. Catholics beware! This book might be quite unpleasant for you! Though I'm not Catholic, I have read many books that criticize and ridicule my beliefs and been none the worse for it (all beliefs need to be examined and questioned), but Borrow does not quit, and it's annoying.

As for the abrupt ending - Borrow seemed to think 2 novels would pay better than one and cut this one into two. It just means that I will be reading "Romany Rye" in the near future. I'm looking forward to it.

[Lucy · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a badly-written hash this is, infuriating because of the author's habit of telling half a story and presumably expecting us to guess the rest. He also does that 18th/19th century think of leaving dashes for place names, so the geography isn't always easy either. The book does end abruptly, but that's because Romany Rye carries on exactly where this leaves off. If you want to read Lavengro, be prepared to skim through some of the byways containing minor characters - the Man in Black is particularly tedious. So why, you may think, 2 stars not 1? Because of the startlingly up-to-date and relevant mental health aspects: the narrator describes panic attacks (not with that name, obviously) to a T, there is a character with OCD ('touching') and then the Welsh preacher smitten with unjustifiable pangs of conscience. I can see why Borrow is an acquired taste, though.

[Ell · Rating 3 out of 5]

George Borrow is an incredibly charismatic hero in this autobiographical novel. He is definitely on the spectrum: mute and melancholy as a child, prone to fits of depression (or “visits by the evil one”) as an adult. He has an amazing facility for languages, teaching himself Irish, Hebrew and German in his teens, translating medieval Welsh and Danish poets before the age of 18, despite having little formal education. His father, a soldier, finds him quite peculiar. His hair turns grey before he is 20.

After a stint at a law firm, where he spends most of his time learning languages at his desk, he travels to London, works as essentially a ghost writer for a horrible publisher, tries to get his Welsh and Danish translations published, writes a novel while running out of money, and then gets it published finally. He then decides he’s had enough of city life and embraces a life of rural wandering, living off the proceeds of his book.

Along the way he meets all sorts of characters, most of whom tell long narratives which form huge chunks of the book. The one that stuck out to me was a gentleman who suffers from what we would now call
OCD. Many of the stories are quite boring, though.

There are lots of interesting details about life in the early 19th century, and some cool scenes with the Romani community. A lot of the dialogue is surprisingly funny; the prose has a sense of humour all the way through (apart from when Borrow is slagging off Catholics). The scenes where Borrow is wandering through the countryside are the best in the book; you really feel the possibilities of the road, and the sense of happy aimlessness he has. There is a vivid moment where he succumbs to a crippling fit of depression, so bad he starts to beat his head against a tree. The stuff with the publisher is also really funny: “Literature is a drug.”

My edition (an 1890s copy in green) has header titles over each page, summing up the action: “A GOOD CUP OF ALE”, “OH! THOSE FOOTMEN”, “THE EVIL CHANCE”, “THE FLAMING TINMAN”.

I expected this book to deal a lot more with the Romani community and with nature than it did, although there’s plenty of both here. The long narratives of characters he meets on the road get pretty dull and, as a picaresque novel, there’s really not much narrative drive, apart from the quest of a singular person to find out who he is and live on his own terms. Also, it just Ends. Like literally at the end of a minor scene it just ends. The next book by Borrow continues the story, if there is one.

[Jason Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Difficult book to assess. The closest thing I have read to this, weirdly, is Gurdjieff's Meetings with Remarkable Men.

The first 200 pages had almost no pattern, but once Byron's hearse passed by, it began to cohere, and there was some satisfying interconnecting of the tales. This then became pushed to extremes, collapsing finally when the narrator meets the son, returned from Botany Bay, on his way to the old lady on London Bridge. One would think there were only about six people in London for any of this to be credible, and what the author's intention may have been remains rather vague.

Many of the eccentric characters bear a resemblance to those that people Dickens' Barnaby Rudge, being representatives of Merry England.

The Belle character is extraordinary.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lavengro is part of a work which, whether novel or not, is completed in its sequel ‘Romany Rye’ written seven years later. ‘Lavengro’, which in gipsy language means ‘Wordmaster’ or ‘Philologist’, was the name given to Borrow by Ambrose Smith, a real contemporary gipsy of Norfolk. He appears in the novel as Jasper Petulengro. The book gives in a plain style an account of the author's wanderings as a boy with his father, a recruiting officer in the army; of his desultory schooling at Edinburgh High School; of his mastering almost all European languages in East Anglia, as also of Romany.

[Bettie]

Gutenberg rules: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30792

Opening: On an evening of July, in the year 18--, at East D---, a beautiful little town in a certain district of East Anglia, I first saw the light.

My father was a Cornish man, the youngest, as I have heard him say, of seven brothers. He sprang from a family of gentlemen, or, as some people would call them, gentillâtres, for they were not very wealthy; they had a coat of arms, however, and lived on their own property at a place called Tredinnock, which being interpreted means the house on the hill, which house and the neighbouring acres had been from time immemorial in their possession. I mention these particulars that the reader may see at once that I am not altogether of low and plebeian origin; the present age is highly aristocratic, and I am convinced that the public will read my pages with more zest from being told that I am a gentillâtre by birth with Cornish blood [1] in my veins, of a family who lived on their own property at a place bearing a Celtic name, signifying the house on the hill, or more strictly the house on the hillock.

[Samuel Moss · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was expecting a 'classic account of [romany] life in nineteenth-century england' but that part fills about 20 pages of this 570 page book. Barrow is not Romany and only really discusses them for a little bit.

Petulengro (Barrow's Romany friend) appears a handful of times then leaves just as quickly. His life and family are described a little bit, but in not very much depth. The rest of the book is just Barrow talking about his life, which really wasn't that interesting, in florid repetitive prose. The book ends with two or three other people relating their also mostly boring lives and a lot of discussion around the Church of England and the Catholic church.

Might be interesting if you are really, really into life in England during the early 19th century and have already read the better written accounts from the time. I will second the well rendered accounts of mental illness (Barrow's anxiety or panic attacks and another man's OCD) which are rendered in good detail.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

The line between autobiography and autobiographical fiction started to fuzz a long time ago, with George Borrow’s Lavengro / The Romany Rye (1851-57). A great book, which in my opinion reads much more like a memoir than a novel - intensely episodic, with as little “plot” as real life, and the narrator is the only “character” who matters.

[Pete · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many vivid scenes of life on the road, especially the open air prize fights with thousands attending, and a nasty incident with some cake. Much debate on language, people, class, and factions of the church and their scheming. The book seemed to come to rather an abrupt end though.

[Cassandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you can tolerate the wordy, old-fashioned style that this is written in, this mostly autobiographical novel is well worth the effort.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Re-reading/skimming for my Robinson Crusoe paper.

[Tanya]

I read la biblia book when I was in high school. I read a lot of Spanish lit while I was in PR. Jess introduced me to English lit years later. Anyway, I wanted to share this...
http://georgeborrow.org/literature/la...