CHAPTER VII: AUGUST 1833-JANUARY 1834



On 19th/31st July 1833 Borrow set out on a journey that was to some
extent to realise his ambitions. He was to be trusted and encouraged
and, what was most important of all, praised for what he
accomplished; for Borrow's was a nature that responded best to the
praise and entire confidence of those for whom he worked.

Travelling second class for reasons of economy, he landed at Hamburg
at seven in the morning of the fourth day, after having experienced
"a disagreeable passage of three days, in which I suffered much from
sea-sickness." {107a} Exhausted by these days of suffering and want
of sleep, the heat of the sun brought on "a transient fit of
delirium," {107b} in other words, an attack of the "Horrors." Two
fellow-passengers (Jews), with whom he had become acquainted,
conveyed him to a comfortable hotel, where he was visited by a
physician, who administered forty drops of laudanum, caused his head
to be swathed in wet towels, ordered him to bed, and charged a fee of
seven shillings. The result was that by the evening he had quite
recovered.

One of Borrow's first duties was to write a lengthy letter to Mr
Jowett, telling him of his movements, describing the city, the
service at a church he attended, the lax morality of the Hamburgers
in permitting rope-dancers in the park, and the opening of dancing-
saloons, "most infamous places," on the Lord's day. "England, with
all her faults," he proceeds, "has still some regard to decency, and
will not tolerate such a shameless display of vice on so sacred a