Frances Robson's story about Lavengro

“Lavengro” by George Borrow

Of all the books I have read, the one that has played the most pivotal role in my life has been the less well known classic, “Lavengro” by George Borrow, which I found by chance in the school library.

Perhaps it was the subtitle: “The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest” that intrigued me. I was curious to discover how three rather disparate elements could be combined within the person of the narrator.

Though it is a fictionalised autobiography, leaving it vulnerable to a manipulation of the truth, this did not detract from my enjoyment. The narrator’s rootless wandering, and pursuit of linguistic knowledge captured my imagination, playing a crucial role in my development as a young adult, when I was already restless, and longing to see and understand the wider world.

The book is full of adventure, though at a more subtle level than swashbuckling heroes and swooning heroines. For me, it was a great adventure to follow the narrator as he delved into other languages, subsequently acquiring different perspectives on life. He possessed a flexibility, which allowed him to show empathy with the foreigner, while retaining his own identity as the stranger.

Though I may have had a natural linguistic aptitude, I believe it was this book that made the initial impact on my life choices: to travel as widely as possible and to learn the language of almost every country where I worked, or visited. It taught me that language was the key to unlocking prejudice, and establishing links with strangers whose world view I was compelled to share.

George Borrow used his life with gypsies as the basis for “Lavengro”. Because of this, there is an undeniable authenticity about the novel, which made his gypsy travels far more engaging to me than popular romance fiction.

The third element of the subtitle, “The Priest”, provided a more spiritual dimension to “Lavengro”. Since I had been growing up during the upheavals of the 60s, I was relieved to encounter a more humane, enlightened approach to conventional religion in the novel. Later on, this helped provide the basis for more informed personal decisions that played an important role in shaping my own beliefs during those turbulent years of adolescence.