CHAPTER II: MAY 1816-MARCH 1824



For the first time since his marriage, Captain Borrow found himself
at liberty to settle down and educate his sons. He had spent much of
his life in Norfolk, and he decided to remain there and make Norwich
his home. It was a quiet and beautiful old-world city: healthy,
picturesque, ancient, and, above all, possessed of a Grammar School,
where George could try and gather together the stray threads of
education that he had acquired at various times and in various
dialects. It was an ideal city for a warrior to take his rest in;
but probably what counted most with Captain Borrow was the Grammar
School--more than the Norman Cathedral, the grim old Castle that
stands guardian-like upon its mound, the fact of its being a garrison
town, or even the traditions that surrounded the place. He had two
sons who must be appropriately sent out into the world, and Norwich
offered facilities for educating both. He accordingly took a small
house in Willow Lane, to which access was obtained by a covered
passage then called King's, but now Borrow's Court.

During the most nomadic portion of his life, when, with discouraging
rapidity, he was moving from place to place, Captain Borrow never for
one moment seems to have forgotten his obligations as a father.
Whenever he had been quartered in a town for a few months, he had
sought out a school to which to send John and George, notably at
Huddersfield and Sheffield. Had he known it, these precautions were
unnecessary; for he had two sons who were of what may be called the
self-educating type: John, by virtue of the quickness of his parts;