Bibliography:
18. Wanderings in West Africa. 2 vols. 1863. 19. Prairie Traveller, by
R. B. Marcy. Edited by Burton 1863. 20. Abeokuta and the Cameroons. 2
vols. 1863. 21. A Day among the Fans. 17th February 1863. 22. The Nile
Basin, 1864.
43. African Gold.
As the result of his exceptional services to the public Burton had hoped
that he would obtain some substantial reward; and his wife persistently
used all the influence at her disposal to this end. Everyone admitted
his immense brain power, but those mysterious rumours due to his
enquiries concerning secret Eastern habits and customs dogged him like
some terrible demon. People refused to recognise that he had pursued
his studies in the interest of learning and science. They said, absurdly
enough, "A man who studies vice must be vicious." His insubordination
at various times, his ungovernable temper, and his habit of saying out
bluntly precisely what he thought, also told against him. Then did
Mrs. Burton commence that great campaign which is her chief title to
fame--the defence of her husband. Though, as we have already shown, a
person of but superficial education; though, life through, she never got
more than a smattering of any one branch of knowledge; nevertheless by
dint of unremitting effort she eventually prevailed upon the public
to regard Burton with her own eyes. She wrote letters to friends, to
enemies, to the press. She wheedled, she bullied, she threatened, she
took a hundred other courses--all with one purpose. She was very often
woefully indiscreet, but nobody can withhold admiration for her. Burton
was scarcely a model husband--he was too peremptory and inattentive for
that--but this self-sacrifice and hero worship naturally told on him,
and he became every year more deeply grateful to her. He laughed at her
foibles--he twitted her on her religion and her faulty English, but he
came to value the beauty of her disposition, and the goodness of her
heart even more highly than the graces of her person. All, however, that
his applications, her exertions, and the exertions of her friends
could obtain from the Foreign Secretary (Lord Russell) [186] was the
Consulship of that white man's grave, Fernando Po, with a salary of L700
a year. In other words he was civilly shelved to a place where all his
energies would be required for keeping himself alive. "They want me to
die," said Burton, bitterly, "but I intend to live, just to spite the
devils." It is the old tale, England breeds great men, but grudges them
opportunities for the manifestation of their greatness.
The days that remained before his departure, Burton spent at various
Society gatherings, but the pleasures participated in by him and his
wife were neutralised by a great disaster, namely the loss of all his
Persian and Arabic manuscripts in a fire at Grindley's where they had
been stored. He certainly took his loss philosophically; but he could
never think of the event without a sigh.
Owing to the unwholesomeness of the climate of Fernando Po, Mrs. Burton
was, of course, unable to accompany him. They separated at Liverpool,
24th August 1861. An embrace, "a heart wrench;" and then a wave of the
handkerchief, while "the Blackbird" African steam ship fussed its way
out of the Mersey, having on board the British scape-goat sent away--"by
the hand of a fit man"--one "Captain English"--into the wilderness
of Fernando Po. "Unhappily," commented Burton, "I am not one of those
independents who can say ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute." The
stoic, however, after a fair fight, eventually vanquished the husband.
Still he did not forget his wife; and in his Wanderings in West Africa,
a record of this voyage, there is a very pretty compliment to her which,
however, only the initiated would recognise. After speaking of the
black-haired, black-eyed women of the South of Europe, and giving them
their due, he says, "but after a course of such charms, one falls back
with pleasure upon brown, yellow or what is better than all, red-auburn
locks and eyes of soft, limpid blue." How the blue eyes of Mrs. Burton
must have glistened when she read those words; and we can imagine
her taking one more look in the glass to see if her hair really was
red-auburn, as, of course, it was.
Burton dedicated this work to the "True Friends" of the Dark Continent,
"not to the 'Philanthropist' or to Exeter Hall." [187] One of its
objects was to give a trustworthy account of the negro character and to
point out the many mistakes that well-intentioned Englishmen had made in
dealing with it. To put it briefly, he says that the negro [188] is an
inferior race, and that neither education nor anything else can raise it
to the level of the white. After witnessing, at the Grand Bonny River, a
horrid exhibition called a Juju or sacrifice house, he wrote, "There is
apparently in this people [the negroes] a physical delight in cruelty to
beast as well as to man. The sight of suffering seems to bring them
an enjoyment without which the world is tame; probably the wholesale
murderers and torturers of history, from Phalaris and Nero downwards,
took an animal and sensual pleasure in the look of blood, and in the
inspection of mortal agonies. I can see no other explanation of the
phenomena which meet my eye in Africa. In almost all the towns on the
Oil Rivers, you see dead or dying animals in some agonizing position."
[189]
Cowper had written:
"Skins may differ, but affection
Dwells in white and black the same;"
"which I deny," comments Burton, "affection, like love, is the fruit of
animalism refined by sentiment." He further declares that the Black
is in point of affection inferior to the brutes. "No humane Englishman
would sell his dog to a negro." [190] The phrase "God's image in ebony"
lashed him to a fury.
Of his landing at Sierra Leone he gives the following anecdote: [191]
"The next day was Sunday, and in the morning I had a valise carried
up to the house to which I had been invited. When I offered the man
sixpence, the ordinary fee, he demanded an extra sixpence, 'for breaking
the Sabbath.' I gave it readily, and was pleased to find that the
labours of our missionaries had not been in vain." At Cape Coast
Castle, he recalled the sad fate of "L.E.L." [192] and watched the women
"panning the sand of the shore for gold." He found that, in the hill
region to the north, gold digging was carried on to a considerable
extent. "The pits," he says, "varying from two to three feet in
diameter, and from twelve to fifty feet deep, are often so near the
roads that loss of life has been the result. Shoring up being little
known, the miners are not infrequently buried alive.... This Ophir, this
California, where every river is a Tmolus and a Pactolus, every hillock
a gold-field--does not contain a cradle, a puddling-machine, a quartz
crusher, a pound of mercury." That a land apparently so wealthy should
be entirely neglected by British capitalists caused Burton infinite
surprise, but he felt certain that it had a wonderful future. His
thoughts often reverted thither, and we shall find him later in life
taking part in an expedition sent out to report upon certain of its gold
fields. [193]
By September 26th the "Blackbird" lay in Clarence Cove, Fernando Po; and
the first night he spent on shore, Burton, whose spirits fell, wondered
whether he was to find a grave there like that other great African
traveller, the Cornish Richard Lander. [194]
44. Anecdotes.
Fernando Po, [195] he tells us, is an island in which man finds it hard
to live and very easy to die. It has two aspects. About Christmas time
it is "in a state deeper than rest":
"A kind of sleepy Venus seemed Dudu."
But from May to November it is the rainy season. The rain comes down
"a sheet of solid water, and often there is lightning accompanied by
deafening peals of thunder." The capital, Sta. Isabel, nee Clarence,
did not prepossess him. Pallid men--chiefly Spaniards--sat or lolled
languidly in their verandahs, or crawled about the baking-hot streets.
Strangers fled the place like a pestilence. Fortunately the Spanish
colony were just establishing a Sanitarium--Sta. Cecilia--400 metres
above sea level; consequently health was within reach of those who
would take the trouble to seek it; and Burton was not slow to make a
sanitarium of his own even higher up. To the genuine natives or Bubes
he was distinctly attracted. They lived in sheds without walls, and wore
nothing except a hat, which prevented the tree snakes from falling
on them. The impudence of the negroes, however, who would persist in
treating the white man not even as an equal, but as an inferior, he
found to be intolerable. Shortly after his arrival "a nigger dandy"
swaggered into the consulate, slapped him on the back in a familiar
manner, and said with a loud guffaw, "Shake hands, consul. How d'ye do?"
Burton looked steadily at the man for a few moments, and then calling
to his canoe-men said, "Hi, Kroo-boys, just throw this nigger out of
window, will you?" The boys, delighted with the task, seized the black
gentleman by his head and feet, and out of the window he flew. As the
scene was enacted on the ground floor the fall was no great one, but
it was remarked that henceforward the niggers of Fernando Po were less
condescending to the Consul. When night fell and the fire-flies began
to glitter in the orange trees, Burton used to place on the table before
him a bottle of brandy, a box of cigars, and a bowl containing water and
a handkerchief and then write till he was weary; [196] rising now and
again to wet his forehead with the handkerchief or to gaze outside
at the palm plumes, transmuted by the sheen of the moon into lucent
silver--upon a scene that would have baffled the pen even of an Isaiah
or a Virgil.
The captains of ships calling at Sta. Isabel were, it seems, in the
habit of discharging their cargoes swiftly and steaming off again
without losing a moment. As this caused both inconvenience and loss to
the merchants from its allowing insufficient time to read and answer
correspondence, they applied to Burton for remedy. After the next ship
had discharged, its captain walked into the Consulate and exclaimed
off-handedly, "Now, Consul, quick with my papers; I want to be off."
Burton looked up and replied unconcernedly: "I haven't finished my
letters." "Oh d----- your letters," cried the captain, "I can't wait for
them." "Stop a bit," cried Burton, "let's refer to your contract,"
and he unfolded the paper. "According to this, you have to stay here
eighteen hours' daylight, in order to give the merchants an opportunity
of attending to their correspondence." "Yes," followed the captain," but
that rule has never been enforced." "Are you going to stay?" enquired
Burton. "No," replied the captain, with an oath. "Very good," followed
Burton. "Now I am going straight to the governor's and I shall fire two
guns. If you go one minute before the prescribed time expires I shall
send the first shot right across your bows, and the second slap into
you. Good-day." [197] The captain did not venture to test the threat;
and the merchants had henceforth no further trouble under his head.
45. Fans and Gorillas.
During his Consulship, Burton visited a number of interesting spots on
the adjoining African coasts, including Abeokuta [198] and Benin, but
no place attracted him more than the Cameroon country; and his work Two
Trips to Gorilla Land [199] is one of the brightest and raciest of all
his books. The Fan cannibals seem to have specially fascinated him. "The
Fan," he says "like all inner African tribes, with whom fighting is our
fox-hunting, live in a chronic state of ten days' war. Battles are
not bloody; after two or three warriors have fallen their corpses are
dragged away to be devoured, their friends save themselves by flight,
and the weaker side secures peace by paying sheep and goats." Burton,
who was present at a solemn dance led by the king's eldest daughter,
Gondebiza, noticed that the men were tall and upright, the women short
and stout. On being addressed "Mbolane," he politely replied "An," which
in cannibal-land is considered good form. He could not, however, bring
himself to admire Gondebiza, though the Monsieur Worth of Fanland had
done his utmost for her. Still, she must have looked really engaging
in a thin pattern of tattoo, a gauze work of oil and camwood, a dwarf
pigeon tail of fan palm for an apron, and copper bracelets and anklets.
The much talked of gorilla Burton found to be a less formidable creature
than previous travellers had reported. "The gorilla," he, says, in his
matter-of-fact way, "is a poor devil ape, not a hellish dream creature,
half man, half beast." Burton not only did not die at Fernando Po, he
was not even ill. Whenever langour and fever threatened he promptly
winged his way to his eyrie on the Pico de Sta. Isabel, where he made
himself comfortable and listened with complaisance to Lord Russell and
friends three thousand miles away fuming and gnashing their teeth.
46. The Anthropological Society, 6th Jan. 1863.
After an absence of a year and a half, Burton, as the result of his
wife's solicitation at the Foreign Office, obtained four months' leave.
He reached England in December 1862 and spent Christmas with her at
Wardour Castle, the seat of her kinsman, Lord Arundell. His mind ran
continually on the Gold Coast and its treasures. "If you will make me
Governor of the Gold Coast," he wrote to Lord Russell, "I will send home
a million a year," but in reply, Russell, with eyes unbewitched [200]
observed caustically that gold was getting too common. Burton's comment
was an explosion that terrorised everyone near him. He then amused
himself by compiling a pamphlet on West African proverbs, one of which,
picked up in the Yorubas country, ran, oddly enough: "Anger draweth
arrows from the quiver: good words draw kolas from the bag."
The principal event of this holiday was the foundation, with the
assistance of Dr. James Hunt, of the Anthropological Society of London
(6th January 1863). The number who met was eleven. Says Burton, "Each
had his own doubts and hopes and fears touching the vitality of the
new-born. Still, we knew that our case was good.... We all felt the
weight of a great want. As a traveller and a writer of travels I have
found it impossible to publish those questions of social economy and
those physiological observations, always interesting to our common
humanity, and at times so valuable." The Memoirs of the Anthropological
Society, [201] met this difficulty. Burton was the first president, and
in two years the Society, which met at No. 4, St. Martin's Place, had
500 members. "These rooms," Burton afterwards commented, "now offer
a refuge to destitute truth. There any man, monogenist, polygenist,
eugenestic or dysgenestic, may state the truth as far as is in him."
The history of the Society may be summed up in a few words. In 1871 it
united with the Enthnological Society and formed the Anthropological
Institute of Great Britain. In 1873 certain members of the old society,
including Burton, founded the London Anthropological Society, and issued
a periodical called Anthropologia, of which Burton wrote in 1885, "My
motive was to supply travellers with an organ which would rescue their
observations from the outer darkness of manuscript and print their
curious information on social and sexual matters out of place in the
popular book intended for the Nipptisch, and indeed better kept from
public view. But hardly had we begun when 'Respectability,' that whited
sepulchre full of all uncleanness, rose up against us. 'Propriety' cried
us down with her brazen, blatant voice, and the weak-kneed brethren fell
away. [202] Yet the organ was much wanted and is wanted still." [203]
Soon after the founding of the Society Burton, accompanied by his wife,
took a trip to Madeira and then proceeded to Teneriffe, where they
parted, he going on to Fernando Po and she returning to England; but
during the next few years she made several journeys to Teneriffe, where,
by arrangement, they periodically met.