6. Trinity College, October 1840.
Edward was then placed under a clergyman at Cambridge--The Rev. Mr.
Havergal, whose name, to that gentleman's indignation, the brothers
turned into "a peculiar form of ridicule." [44] Richard was to go to
Trinity College, Oxford. Neither, as we have seen, had been suitably
prepared for a University career. Richard, who could speak fluently
French, Italian, and modern Greek, did not know the Apostles' Creed, and
what was even more unusual in a prospective clergyman, had never heard
of the Thirty-nine Articles. He was struck with the architecture of
the colleges, and much surprised at the meanness of the houses that
surrounded them. He heretically calls the Isis 'a mere moat,' the
Cherwell 'a ditch.' The brilliant dare-devil from Italy despised alike
the raw, limitary, reputable, priggish undergraduates and the dull,
snuffling, smug-looking, fussy dons. The torpor of academic dulness,
indeed, was as irksome to Burton at Oxford as it had been to FitzGerald
and Tennyson at Cambridge. After a little coaching from Dr. Ogle and Dr.
William Alexander Greenhill [45], he in October 1840, entered Trinity,
where he has installed in "a couple of frowsy dog-holes" overlooking the
garden of old Dr. Jenkins, the Master of Balliol.
"My reception at College," says Burton, "was not pleasant. I had grown a
splendid moustache, which was the envy of all the boys abroad, and which
all the advice of Drs. Ogle and Greenhill failed to make me remove. I
declined to be shaved until formal orders were issued by the authorities
of the college. For I had already formed strong ideas upon the Shaven
Age of England, when her history, with some brilliant exceptions,
such as Marlborough, Wellington and Nelson, was at its meanest." An
undergraduate who laughed at him he challenged to fight a duel; and when
he was reminded that Oxford "men" like to visit freshmen's rooms and
play practical jokes, he stirred his fire, heated his poker red hot, and
waited impatiently for callers. "The college teaching for which one was
obliged to pay," says Burton, "was of the most worthless description.
Two hours a day were regularly wasted, and those who read for honours
were obliged to choose and pay a private coach."
Another grievance was the constant bell ringing, there being so many
churches and so many services both on week days and Sundays. Later,
however, he discovered that it is possible to study, even at Oxford, if
you plug your ears with cotton-wool soaked in glycerine. He spent his
first months, not in studying, but in rowing, fencing, shooting the
college rooks, and breaking the rules generally. Many of his pranks were
at the expense of Dr. Jenkins, for whose sturdy common sense, however,
he had sincere respect; and long after, in his Vikram and the Vampire,
in which he satirises the tutors and gerund-grinders of Oxford, he paid
him a compliment. [46]
Although he could not speak highly of the dons and undergraduates, he
was forced to admit that in one respect the University out-distanced
all other seats of learning. It produced a breed of bull-terriers of
renowned pedigree which for their "beautiful build" were a joy to think
about and a delirium to contemplate; and of one of these pugnacious
brutes he soon became the proud possessor. That he got drunk himself and
made his fellow collegians drunk he mentions quite casually, just as he
mentions his other preparations for holy orders. If he walked out with
his bull-terrier, it was generally to Bagley Wood, where a pretty,
dizened gipsy girl named Selina told fortunes; and henceforward he took
a keen interest in Selina's race.
He spent most of his time, however, in the fencing saloons of an Italian
named Angelo and a Scotchman named Maclaren; and it was at Maclaren's he
first met Alfred Bates Richards, who became a life friend. Richards,
an undergraduate of Exeter, was a man of splendid physique. A giant in
height and strength, he defeated all antagonists at boxing, but Burton
mastered him with the foil and the broad-sword. Richards, who, like
Burton, became a voluminous author [47] wrote long after, "I am sure,
though Burton was brilliant, rather wild, and very popular, none of us
foresaw his future greatness."
Another Oxford friend of Burton's was Tom Hughes, author of Tom Brown's
Schooldays; the man who, in Burton's phrase, "taught boys not to be
ashamed of being called good," [48] and he always revered the memory of
his tutor, the Rev. Thomas Short. [49] Burton naturally made enemies
as well as friends, but the most bitter was that imaginary person, Mrs.
Grundy. This lady, whom he always pictured as an exceedingly stout and
square-looking body with capacious skirts, and a look of austere piety,
had, he tells us, "just begun to reign" when he was at Oxford, although
forty years had elapsed since she first made her bow [50], and set
everybody asking, "What will Mrs. Grundy say?" Mrs. Grundy had a
great deal to say against Richard Burton, and, life through, he took
a peculiar delight in affronting her. The good soul disapproved of
Burton's "foreign ways" and his "expressed dislike to school and college
life," she disapproved of much that he did in his prime, and when
he came to translate The Arabian Nights she set up, and not without
justification, a scream that is heard even to this day and in the
remotest corners of the kingdom.
If Richard was miserable at Oxford, Edward was equally so at Cambridge.
After the polish and politeness of Italy, where they had been "such
tremendous dandies and ladies' men," the "boorishness and shoppiness,"
of Oxford and Cambridge were well-nigh unendurable. Seizing an early
opportunity, Richard ran over to Cambridge to visit his brother. "What
is the matter, Edward," enquired Richard. "Why so downcast?" "Oh, Dick,"
moaned Edward, "I have fallen among epiciers. [51]"
7. Expelled, April 1842.
The dull life at Oxford was varied by the occasional visit of a mesmeric
lecturer; and one youth caused peals of canorous laughter by walking
round in a pretended mesmeric sleep and kissing the pretty daughters of
the dons.
The only preacher Burton would listen to was Newman, then Vicar of St.
Mary's; of Pusey's interminable and prosy harangues he could not bear
even to think. Although unable to bend himself to the drudgery of
Oxford, Burton was already forming vast ambitions. He longed to excel
as a linguist, and particularly in Oriental languages. Hence he began
to teach himself Arabic; and got a little assistance from the Spanish
scholar Don Pascual de Gayangos. When he asked the Regius Professor of
Arabic to teach him, he was rebuffed with the information that it was
the duty of a professor to teach a class, not an individual. He spent
the vacation with his Grandmother Baker in Great Cumberland Place, and
he and his brother amused themselves about town with other roisterers,
chiefly in gambling. Returned to Oxford he applied sedulously to the
acquisition of foreign languages. He says, "I got a simple grammar and
vocabulary, marked out the forms and words which I knew were absolutely
necessary, and learnt them by heart.... I never worked more than
a quarter of an hour at a time, for after that the brain lost its
freshness. After learning some three hundred words, easily done in a
week, I stumbled through some easy book-work and underlined every
word that I wished to recollect.... Having finished my volume, I then
carefully worked up the grammar minutiae, and I then chose some other
book whose subject most interested me. The neck of the language was now
broken, and progress was rapid. If I came across a new sound, like the
Arabic Ghayn, I trained my tongue to it by repeating it so many thousand
times a day. When I read, I invariably read out loud, so that the ear
might aid memory. I was delighted with the most difficult characters,
Chinese and Cuneiform, because I felt that they impressed themselves
more strongly upon the eye than the eternal Roman letters." [52] Such
remarks from the man who became the first linguist of his day are well
worth remembering. For pronouncing Latin words the "Roman way" he was
ridiculed, but he lived long enough to see this pronunciation adopted in
all our schools. The long vacation of 1841 was spent at Wiesbaden with
his father and mother. Here again the chief delights of Richard and
his brother were gambling and fencing; and when tired of Wiesbaden they
wandered about the country, visiting among other places Heidelberg
and Mannheim. Once more Richard importuned his father to let him leave
Oxford and enter the army, but Colonel Burton, who still considered
his son peculiarly fitted for the church, was not to be moved. Upon his
return to England, however, Burton resolved to take the matter into
his own hands. He laid his plans, and presently--in April 1842--an
opportunity offered.
The Oxford races of that year were being looked forward to with
exceptional interest because of the anticipated presence of a noted
steeplechaser named Oliver, but at the last moment the college
authorities forbade the undergraduates to attend them.
Burton, however, and some other lawless spirits resolved to go all the
same, and a tandem conveyed them from the rear of Worcester College
to the race meeting. Next morning the culprits were brought before
the college dignitaries; but the dons having lectured Burton, he began
lecturing them--concluding with the observation that young men ought not
to be treated like children. As a consequence, while the other offenders
were merely rusticated, Burton was expelled. [53] He made a ceremonious
bow, and retired "stung with a sense of injustice," though where the
injustice comes in, it is difficult to see. His departure from
Oxford was characteristic. He and Anderson of Oriel, one of the other
offenders, hired a tandem in which they placed their luggage, and then
with "a cantering leader and a high-trotting shaft horse" they rode
through the High Street, and so on to London, Burton artistically
performing upon a yard of tin trumpet, waving adieux to his friends and
kissing his hands to the shop girls. About the same time Edward, also
for insubordination, had to leave Cambridge. Thus Burton got his own
way, but he long afterwards told his sister, Lady Stisted, that beneath
all his bravado there lay a deep sense of regret that such a course had
been necessary.