| Borges´ paternal side of the family had strong British roots. His grandmother was called Frances Haslam - she was born in Staffordshire in 1842. In 1871 she married Colonel Francisco Borges in the Argentine province of Entre Ríos. But the colonel died (or rather, deliberately got himself killed to prove his honor) in the Battle of La Verde (1874), final skirmish of a fruitless insurrection. The couple had two children: Francisco Eduardo (who was to follow the military career of his late father) and Jorge Guillermo (who instead followed the bookish tradition of his British ancestors, and would eventually become the writer´s father) After the colonel´s death, his widow, Frances Haslam was left to fend for herself - without ever having learned to speak proper Spanish. British, Borges´ father was thus raised in a fully British atmosphere. His mother only spoke to him in English and he grew up reading reading English literature. Colonel Borges´ premature death thus had the effect of duplicating his British widow´s British influence on coming generations. Even though Borges´ father was half "criollo" and half British, he was raised in a fully English household reading English literature. He then passed this British tradition on to his son, the writer. Borges clearly states in his Autobiographical Essay that he first heard poetry in English and that his first acquaintance with literature was in English. He even remarked, that he first read that most famous of Spanish-language novels, Miguel de Cervantes´ Don Quijote, in English. And when he finally had the chance to read it in Spanish, he deemed the Spanish edition to be a poor translation from the English "original" |