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The Borrows now settled at Norwich in what was then King’s Court and is now Borrow’s Court, off Willow Lane. George Borrow, therefore, again attended the Grammar School of Norwich. He could then, he says, read Greek. His father’s dissatisfaction was apparently due to some instinctive antipathy for the child, who had neither his hair nor his eyes, but was “absolutely swarthy, God forgive me! I had almost said like that of a Gypsy.” As in Scotland and Ireland, so now at Norwich, Captain Borrow probably let the boy do what he liked. As for Mrs. Borrow, perhaps she favoured the boy, who took after her in eyes and complexion, if not also in temperament. Her influence was of an unconscious kind, strengthening her prenatal influence; unlike her husband, she had no doubt that “Providence” would take care of the boy. Borrow, at least, thought her like himself. In a suppressed portion of the twentieth chapter of “Lavengo” he makes his parents talk together in the garden, and the mother having a story to tell suggests their going in because it is growing dark. The father says that a tale of terror is the better for being told in the dark, and hopes she is not afraid. The mother scoffs at the mention of fear, and yet, she says, she feels a thrill as if something were casting a cold shadow on her. She wonders if this feeling is like the indescribable fear, “which he calls the shadow,” which sometimes attacks her younger child. “Never mind the child or his shadow,” says the father, and bids her go on. And from what follows the mother has evidently told the story before to her son. This dialogue may very well express the contrast between husband and wife and their attitudes towards their younger son. Borrow very eloquently addresses his father as “a noble specimen of those strong single-minded Englishmen, who, without making a parade either of religion or loyalty, feared God and honoured their king, and were not particularly friendly to the French,” and as a pugilist who almost vanquished the famous Ben Bryan; but he does not conceal the fact that he was “so little to thee that thou understoodst me not.”

At Norwich Grammar School Borrow had as schoolfellows James Martineau and James Brooke, afterwards Rajah of Sarawak. The headmaster was one Edward Valpy, who thrashed Borrow, and there is nothing more to be said. The boy was fond of study but not of school. “For want of something better to do,” he taught himself some French and Italian, but wished he had a master. A master was found in a French émigré, the Rev. Thomas D’Eterville, who gave private lessons to Borrow, among others, in French, Italian and Spanish. His other teachers were an old musket with which he shot bullfinches, blackbirds and linnets, a fishing rod with which he haunted the Yare, and the sporting gent, John Thurtell, who taught him to box and accustomed him to pugilism.

Something is known of Thurtell apart from Borrow. He was the son of a man who was afterwards Mayor of Norwich. He had been a soldier and he was now in business. He arranged prize fights and boxed himself. He afterwards murdered a man who had dishonestly relieved him of £400 at gambling, and he was executed for the offence at Hertford in 1824. The trial was celebrated. It was there that a “respectable” man was defined by a witness as one who “kept a gig.” The trial was included in the “Celebrated Trials and Remarkable Cases of Criminal Jurisprudence” which Borrow compiled in 1825; and Borrow may have written this description of the accused:

“Thurtell was dressed in a plum-coloured frock coat, with a drab waistcoat and gilt buttons, and white corded breeches. His neck had a black stock on, which fitted as usual stiffly up to the bottom of the cheek and end of the chin, and which therefore pushed forward the flesh on this part of the face so as to give an additionally sullen weight to the countenance. The lower part of the face was unusually large, muscular and heavy, and appeared to hang like a load to the head, and to make it drop like the mastiff’s jowl. The upper lip was long and large, and the mouth had a severe and dogged appearance. His nose was rather small for such a face, but it was not badly shaped; his eyes, too, were small and buried deep under his protruding forehead, so indeed as to defy detection of their colour. The forehead was extremely strong, bony and knotted—and the eyebrows were forcibly marked though irregular—that over the right eye being nearly straight and that on the left turning up to a point so as to give a very painful expression to the whole face. His hair was of a good lightish brown, and not worn after any fashion. His frame was exceedingly well knit and athletic.”

An eye witness reports that seven hours before his execution, Thurtell said: “It is perhaps wrong in my situation, but I own I should like to read Pierce Egan’s account of the great fight yesterday” (meaning that between Spring and Langan). He slept well through his last night, and said: “I have dreamt many odd things, but I never dreamt anything about this business since I have been in Hertford.” Pierce Egan described the trial and execution, and how Thurtell bowed in a friendly and dignified manner to someone—“we believe, Mr. Pierce Egan”—in the crowd about the gallows. Pierce Egan did not mention the sound of his cracking neck, but Borrow is reported to have said it was a shame to hang such a man as Thurtell: “Why, when his neck broke it went off like a pistol.”

Thurtell is the second of Borrow’s friends who preceded him in fame.

During his school days under Valpy, Borrow met his sworn brother again—the Gypsy Petulengro. He places this meeting at the Tombland Fair at Norwich, and Dr. Knapp fixes it, precisely, on March 19, 1818. According to Borrow’s account, which is the only one, he was shadowed and then greeted by Jasper Petulengro. They went together to the Gypsy encampment on Household Heath, and they were together there often again, in spite of the hostility of one Gypsy, Mrs. Herne, to Borrow. He says that he went with them to fairs and markets and learnt their language in spite of Mrs. Herne, so that they called him Lav-engro, or Word Master. The mighty Tawno Chikno also called him Cooro-mengro, because of his mastery with the fist. He was then sixteen. He is said to have stained his face to darken it further, and to have been asked by Valpy: “Is that jaundice or only dirt, Borrow?”