class="citation pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[26]  He consequently left home to take up his abode at the house of the senior partner in the Upper Close. [27a]  Mr William Simpson was a man of considerable importance in the city; for besides being Treasurer of the County, he was Chamberlain and Town Clerk, whilst his wife was famed for her hospitality, in particular her expensive dinners.

With that unerring instinct of contrariety that never seemed to forsake him, Borrow proceeded to learn, not law but Welsh.  When the eyes of authority were on him he transcribed Blackstone, but when they were turned away he read and translated the poems of Ab Gwilym.  He performed his tasks “as well as could be expected in one who was occupied by so many and busy thoughts of his own.”

At the end of Tuck’s Court was a house at which was employed a Welsh groom, a queer fellow who soon attracted the notice of Simpson & Rackham’s clerks, young gentlemen who were bent on “mis-spending the time which was not legally their own.” [27b]  They would make audible remarks about the unfortunate and inoffensive Welsh groom, calling out after him “Taffy”—in short, rendering the poor fellow’s life a misery with their jibes, until at last, almost distracted, he had come to the determination either to give his master notice or to hang himself, that he might get away from that “nest of parcupines.”  Borrow saw in the predicament of the Welsh groom the hand of providence.  He made a compact with him, that in exchange for lessons in Welsh, he, Borrow, should persuade his fellow clerks to cease their annoyance.

From that time, each Sunday afternoon, the Welsh groom would go to Captain Borrow’s house to instruct his son in Welsh pronunciation; for in book Welsh Borrow was stronger than his preceptor.  Borrow had learned the language of the bards “chiefly by going through Owen Pugh’s version of ‘Paradise Lost’ twice” with the original by his side.  After which “there was very little in Welsh poetry that I could not make out with a little pondering.” [28a]  This had occupied some three years.  The studies with the groom lasted for about twelve months, until he left Norwich with his family. [28b]

Captain Borrow’s thoughts were frequently occupied with the future of his younger son, a problem that had by no means been determined by signing the articles that bound him to Simpson & Rackham.  The boy was frank and honest and did not scruple to give expression to ideas of his own, and it was these ideas that alarmed his father.  Once at the house of Mr Simpson, and before the assembled guests, he told an archdeacon, worth £7000 a year, that the classics were much overvalued, and compared Ab Gwilym with Ovid, to the detriment of the Roman.  To Captain Borrow the possession of ideas upon any subject by one so young was in itself a thing to be deplored; but to venture an opinion contrary to that commonly held by men of weight and substance was an unforgivable act of insubordination.

The boy had been sent to Tuck’s Court to learn law, and instead he persisted in acquiring languages, and such languages!  Welsh, Danish, Arabic, Armenian, Saxon; for these were the tongues with which he occupied himself.  None but a perfect mother such as Mrs Borrow could have found excuses for a son who pursued such studies, and her husband pointed out to her, it is “in the nature of women invariably to take the part of the second born.”

In one of those curiously self-revelatory passages with which his writings abound, Borrow tells how he continued to act as door-keeper long after it had ceased to be part of his duty.  As a student of men and a collector of strange characters, it was in keeping with his genius to do so, although he himself was unable to explain why he took pleasure in the task.  No one was admitted to the presence of the senior partner who did not first pass the searching scrutiny of his articled clerk.  Those who pleased him were admitted to Mr Simpson’s private room; to those who did not he proved himself an almost insuperable obstacle.  Unfortunately Borrow’s standards were those of the physiognomist rather than the lawyer; he inverted the whole fabric of professional desirability by admitting the goats and refusing the sheep.  He turned away a knight, or a baronet, and admitted a poet, until at last the distressed old gentleman in black, with the philanthropical head, his master, was forced to expostulate and adjure his clerk to judge, not by faces but by clothes, which in reality make the man.  Borrow bowed to the ruling of “the prince of English solicitors,” revised his standards and continued to act as keeper of the door.

Mr Simpson seems to have earned Borrow’s thorough regard, no small achievement considering in how much he differed from his illustrious articled-clerk in everything, not excepting humour, of which the delightful, old-world gentleman seems to have had a generous share.  He was doubtless puzzled to classify the strange being by whose instrumentality a stream of undesirable people was admitted to his presence, whilst distinguished clients were sternly and rigorously turned away.  He probably smiled at the story of the old yeoman and his wife who, in return for some civility shown to them by Borrow, presented him with an old volume of Danish ballads, which inspired him to learn the language, aided by a Danish Bible. [30a]  He was not only “the first solicitor in East Anglia,” but “the prince of all English solicitors—for he was a gentleman!” [30b]  In another place Borrow refers to him as “my old master . . . who would have died sooner than broken his word.  God bless him!” [30c]  And yet again as “my ancient master, the gentleman solicitor of East Anglia.” [30d]

Borrow was always handsome in everything he did.  If he hated a man he hated him, his kith and kin and all who bore his name.  His friendship was similarly sweeping, and his regard for William Simpson prompted him to write subsequently of the law as “a profession which abounds with honourable men, and in which I believe there are fewer scamps than in any other.  The most honourable men I have ever known have been lawyers; they were men whose word was their bond, and who would have preferred ruin to breaking it.” [31a]

Fortunately for Borrow there was at the Norwich Guildhall a valuable library consisting of a