Bibliography:
39. Medinah and Meccah. 3 vols. in one, 1873. 40. Minas Geraes. 7th
January 1873. J. A. I. 41. The Lands of the Cazembe. 1873. 42. The
Captivity of Hans Stadt, 1874. 43. Articles on Rome. Macmillan's Mag.
1874-5. 44. The Castellieri of Istria. 45. Gerber's Province of Minas
Geraes. 46. New System of Sword Exercise. 47. Ultima Thule, or a Summer
in Iceland. 2 vols. 1875. 48. Two Trips to Gorilla Land. 2 vols. 1875.
49. The Inner Life of Syria. 2 vols., 1875, by Mrs. Burton. 50. The Long
Wall of Salona.
75. Burton at Trieste, 24th October 1872.
Burton left England for Trieste 24th October 1872, [271] but the popular
belief that he entered the town with a fighting cock under his arm and a
bull-terrier at his heels lacks foundation. He was fifty-one, the age
of the banished Ovid, to whom he often compared himself, and though the
independent and haughty Burton bears no resemblance to the sycophantic
and lachrymose yet seductive Sulmoan, nevertheless his letters
from Trieste are a sort of Tristia--or as the flippant would put
it--Triestia. Indeed, he read and re-read with an almost morbid interest
both the Tristia and the Ex Ponto. [272] Ovid's images seemed applicable
to himself. "I, too," he said, "am a neglected book gnawed by the moth,"
"a stream dammed up with mud," "a Phalaris, clapped, for nothing in
particular, into the belly of a brazen bull." Like Ovid, too, he could
and did pronounce his invective against the Ibis, the cause of all his
troubles, that is to say, Rashid Pasha, whose very name was as gall and
wormwood. His fate, indeed, was a hard one. The first linguist of his
day, for he spoke twenty-eight languages and dialects, he found himself
relegated to a third-rate port, where his attainments were absolutely
valueless to anybody. The greatest of travellers, the most indefatigable
of anthropologists, the man who understood the East as no other
Englishman had understood it--was set to do work that could in those
days have been accomplished with ease by any raw and untravelled
government official possessed of a smattering of German and Italian. But
the truth is, Burton's brilliant requirements were really a hindrance
to him. The morbid distrust of genius which has ever been incidental
to ordinary Government officialism, was at that time particularly
prevalent. The only fault to be found with Burton's conduct at Damascus,
was that, instead of serving his own interest, he had attempted to serve
the interests of his country and humanity. By trimming, temporizing,
shutting his eyes to enormities, and touching bribes, he might have
retained his post, or have been passed on to Constantinople.
When time after time he saw incompetent men advanced to positions of
importance, his anger was unrestrainable, "Why," he asked bitterly, "are
the Egyptian donkey-boys so favourable to the English?" Answer, "Because
we hire more asses than any other nation."
Trieste is a white splash between high wooded mountains and a dark
precipice rising from a sea intense as the blue of the gentian. The
population was about 140,000, mostly Italian speaking. Nominally they
were Catholics, and of genuine Catholics there might have been 20,000,
chiefly women. "Trieste," said Burton, "is a town of threes--three
quarters, three races (Italian, Slav and Austrian), and three winds
(Sirocco, Bora, and Contraste)." One brilliant man of letters had been
connected with the town, namely Marie-Henry Beyle, better known by his
pen name, Stendhal, [273] who, while he was French Counul here, pumice
polished and prepared for the press his masterpiece, La Chartreuse de
Parme, which he had written at Padua in 1830. To the minor luminary,
Charles Lever, we have already alluded. Such was the town in which the
British Hercules was set to card wool. The Burtons occupied ten rooms at
the top of a block of buildings situated near the railway station. The
corridor was adorned with a picture of our Saviour, and statuettes of
St. Joseph and the Madonna with votive lights burning before them.
This, in Burton's facetious phrase, was "Mrs. Burton's joss house;" and
occasionally, when they had differences, he threatened "to throw her
joss house out of the window." Burton in a rage, indeed, was the signal
for the dispersal of everybody. Furniture fell, knick-knacks flew from
the table, and like Jupiter he tumbled gods on gods. If, however, he and
his wife did not always symphonize, still, on the whole, they continued
to work together amicably, for Mrs. Burton took considerable pains to
accommodate herself to the peculiarities of her husband's temperament,
and both were blessed with that invaluable oil for troubled waters--the
gift of humour. "Laughter," Burton used to say, and he had "a curious
feline laugh," "animates the brain and stimulates the lungs." To his
wife's assumption of the possession of knowledge, of being a linguist,
of being the intellectual equal of every living person, saving himself,
he had no objection; and the pertinacity with which she sustained this
role imposed sometimes even on him. He got to think that she was really
a genius in a way, and saw merit even in the verbiage and rhodomontade
of her books. But whatever Isabel Burton's faults, they are all drowned
and forgotten in her devotion to her husband. It was more than love--it
was unreasoning worship. "You and Mrs. Burton seem to jog along pretty
well together," said a friend. "Yes," followed Burton, "I am a spoilt
twin, and she is the missing fragment."
Burton, of course, never really took to Trieste, his Tomi, as he called
it. He was too apt to contrast it with Damascus: the wind-swept Istrian
hills with the zephyr-ruffled Lebanon, the dull red plains of the
Austrian sea-board with the saffron of the desert, the pre-historic
castellieri or hill-forts, in which, nevertheless, he took some
pleasure, with the columned glories of Baalbak and Palmyra. "Did you
like Damascus?" somebody once carelessly asked Mrs. Burton.
"Like it!" she exclaimed, quivering with emotion, "My eyes fill, and my
heart throbs even at the thought of it."
Indeed, they always looked back with wistful, melancholy regret upon the
two intercalary years of happiness by the crystalline Chrysorrhoa, and
Mrs. Burton could never forget that last sad ride through the beloved
Plain of Zebedani. Among those who visited the Burtons at Trieste, was
Alfred Bates Richards. After describing Mrs. Burton's sanctuary, he
says: "Thus far, the belongings are all of the cross, but no sooner are
we landed in the little drawing-rooms than signs of the crescent
appear. These rooms, opening one into another, are bright with Oriental
hangings, with trays and dishes of gold and burnished silver, fantastic
goblets, chibouques with great amber mouth-pieces, and Eastern treasure
made of odorous woods." Burton liked to know that everything about him
was hand-made. "It is so much better," he used to say, than the "poor,
dull work of machinery." In one of the book-cases was Mrs. Burton's set
of her husband's works, some fifty volumes. [274]
Mr. Richards thus describes Burton himself, "Standing about five feet
eleven, his broad, deep chest and square shoulders reduce his apparent
height very considerably, and the illusion is intensified by hands and
feet of Oriental smallness. The Eastern and distinctly Arab look of
the man is made more pronounced by prominent cheek-bones (across one of
which is the scar of a javelin cut), by closely-cropped black hair, just
tinged with grey, and a pair of piercing, black, gipsy-looking eyes."
Out of doors, in summer, Burton wore a spotlessly white suit, a tie-pin
shaped like a sword, a pair of fashionable, sharply-pointed shoes, and
the shabbiest old white beaver hat that he could lay his hands upon. On
his finger glittered a gold ring, engraved with the word "Tanganyika."
[275] In appearance, indeed, he was a compound of the dandy, the
swash-buckler and the literary man. He led Mr. Richards through the
house. Every odd corner displayed weapons--guns, pistols, boar-spears,
swords of every shape and make. On one cupboard was written "The
Pharmacy." It contained the innocuous medicines for Mrs. Burton's
poor--for she still continued to manufacture those pills and drenches
that had given her a reputation in the Holy Land. "Why," asked Richards,
"do you live in a flat and so high up?" "To begin with," was the
reply, "we are in good condition, and run up and down the stairs like
squirrels. If I had a great establishment, I should feel tied and
weighed down. With a flat and two or three servants one has only to
lock the door and go out." The most noticeable objects in the rooms were
eleven rough deal tables, each covered with writing materials. [276] At
one sat Mrs. Burton in morning neglige, a grey choga--the long, loose
Indian dressing-gown of soft camel's hair--topped by a smoking cap of
the same material. She observed, "I see you are looking at our tables.
Dick likes a separate table for each book, and when he is tired of one
he goes to another." He never, it seems, wrote more than eleven books at
a time, unless stout pamphlets come under that category. Their life was
a peaceful one, except on Fridays, when Mrs. Burton received seventy
bosom and particular friends, and talked to them at the top of her voice
in faulty German, Italian, which she spoke fluently, or slangy English.
[277] In the insipid conversation of this "magpie sanhedrin," "these hen
parties," as he called them, Burton did not join, but went on with his
work as if no one was present. Indeed, far from complaining, he remarked
philosophically that if the rooms had been lower down probably 140
visitors instead of 70 would have looked in. The Burtons usually rose at
4 or 5, and after tea, bread and fruit, gave their morning to study. At
noon they drank a cup of soup, fenced, and went for a swim in the sea.
Burton then took up a heavy iron stick with a silver knob [278] and
walked to the Consulate, which was situated in the heart of the town,
while Mrs. Burton, with her pockets bulging with medicines, and a flask
of water ready for baptism emergencies hanging to her girdle, busied
herself with charitable work, including the promotion of the Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. They generally dined at the table
d'hote of the Hotel de la Ville, and dined well, for, as Burton says
used to "Only fools and young ladies care nothing for the carte." [279]
Having finished their coffee, cigarettes, and kirsch, outside the hotel,
they went home to bed, where, conscious of a good day's work done, they
took their rest merrily. Sometimes they interrupted the routine with
excursions into the surrounding country, of which they both knew every
stock and stone, pre-historic or modern. Of business ability, Burton
had never possessed one iota, and his private affairs were constantly
mis-managed. As at Fernando Po, Santos and Damascus, he promptly looked
out for a sanitarium, his choice finally resting upon a loftily-situated
village called Opcina.
Reviewing Burton's career, Mr. Alfred Bates Richards says: "He has done
more than any other six men, and is one of the best, noblest and truest
that breathes. While not on active service or on sick leave he has been
serving his country, humanity, science, and civilisation in other ways,
by opening up lands hitherto unknown, and trying to do good wherever he
went. He was the pioneer for all other living African travellers."
If Trieste was not an ideal post for him, still it had the patent
advantage of being practically a sinecure. He and his wife seem to
have been able to get away almost at any time. They sometimes travelled
together, but often went in different directions, and as Burton was
as restless as a hyena, he never stayed in any one place many hours.
Occasionally they met unexpectedly. Upon one of these meetings in a
Swiss hotel, Burton burst out affectionately with, "And what the devil
brought you here?" To which she replied, promptly but sweetly, "Ditto,
brother." For study, Burton had almost unlimited time, and nothing
came amiss to him. He lost himself in old sacramentaries, Oriental
manuscripts, works on the prehistoric remains of Istria, Camoens,
Catullus, The Arabian Nights, Boccaccio. His knowledge was
encyclopaedic.
76. At the Vienna Exhibition, 1873.
Early in 1873 the Burtons visited Vienna chiefly in order to see the
great Exhibition. The beauty of the buildings excited their constant
admiration, but the dearness of everything at the hotels made Burton
use forcible language. On one occasion he demanded--he never asked for
anything--a beefsteak, and a waiter hurried up with an absurdly small
piece of meat on a plate. Picking it up with the fork he examined it
critically, and then said, quite amiably for him, "Yaas, yaas, [280]
that's it, bring me some." Next he required coffee. The coffee arrived
in what might have been either a cup or a thimble. "What's this?"
demanded Burton. The waiter said it was coffee for one. "Then," roared
Burton, with several expletives, "bring me coffee for twenty." Their
bill at this hotel came to L163 for the three weeks.
77. A Visit from Drake, June 1873.
On their return from Vienna, they had the pleasure of meeting again Lady
Marion Alford, Aubertin, and that "true-hearted Englishman, staunch to
the backbone," Charles Tyrwhitt Drake, who "brought with him a breath
from the desert and stayed several weeks." The three friends went to a
fete held in the stalactite caverns of Adelsberg, from which Burton, who
called them the eighth wonder of the world, always assumed that Dante
got his ideas of the Inferno. Lighted by a million candles, and crowded
with peasants in their picturesque costumes, which made wondrous
arabesques of moving shadows, the caves presented a weird and unearthly
appearance, which the music and dancing subsequently intensified.
Shortly afterwards Drake left for Palestine. In May (1874), Burton was
struck down by a sudden pain, which proved to arise from a tumour. An
operation was necessary, and all was going on well when a letter brought
the sad news of Drake's death. He had succumbed, at Jerusalem, to
typhoid fever, at the early age of twenty-eight. [281] Burton took the
news so heavily, that, at Mrs. Burton says, [282] it "caused the wound
to open afresh; he loved Drake like a brother, and few know what a
tender heart Richard has." To use Dr. Baker's [283] phrase, he had "the
heart of a beautiful woman."
78. Khamoor returns to Syria, 4th December 1874.
In the meantime Mrs. Burton was reaping the fruits of her injudicious
treatment of Khamoor. Thoroughly spoilt, the girl now gave herself
ridiculous airs, put herself on a level with her mistress, and would do
nothing she was told. As there was no other remedy, Mrs. Burton resolved
philanthropically to send her back to Syria, "in order that she might
get married and settled in life." So Khamoor was put on board a ship
going to Beyrout, with nine boxes of clothes and a purse of gold. "It
was to me," says Mrs. Burton, "a great wrench." Khamoor's father met
her, the nine boxes, and the purse of gold at Beyrout, and by and by
came to the news that she was married and settled down in the Buka'a.
Such was the end of Chico the Second.