Bibliography
60. Camoens, 6 vols. 1 and 2, the Lusiads. 1880. 3 and 4, Life of
Camoens and Commentary. 1882. 5 and 6, The Lyrics. 1884. 61. The
Kasidah. 1880. 62. Visit to Lissa and Pelagoza. 1880. 63. A Glance at
the Passion Play. 1881. 64. How to deal with the Slave Trade in Egypt.
1881. 65. Thermae of Montfalcone. 1881.
98. The Lusiads.
Burton had brought with him to Egypt his translation of The Lusiads,
which had been commenced as early as 1847, and at which, as we have
seen, he had, from that time onward, intermittently laboured. At Cairo
he gave his work the finishing touches, and on his return to Trieste in
May it was ready for the press. There have been many English translators
of Camoens, from Fanshawe, the first, to Burton and Aubertin; and Burton
likens them to the Simoniacal Popes in Dante's Malebolge-pit--each one
struggling to trample down his elder brother. [322] Burton's work, which
appeared in 1882, was presently followed by two other volumes consisting
of a Life of Camoens and a Commentary on The Lusiads, but his version of
The Lyrics did not appear till 1884.
Regarded as a faithful rendering, the book was a success, for Burton had
drunk The Lusiads till he was super-saturated with it. Alone among the
translators, he had visited every spot alluded to in the poem, and
his geographical and other studies had enabled him to elucidate many
passages that had baffled his predecessors. Then, too, he had the
assistance of Aubertin, Da Cunha and other able Portuguese scholars
and Camoens enthusiasts. Regarded, however, as poetry, the book was a
failure, and for the simple reason that Burton was not a poet. Like his
Kasidah, it contains noble lines, but on every page we are reminded
of the translator's defective ear, annoyed by the unnecessary use
of obsolete words, and disappointed by his lack of what Poe called
"ethericity." The following stanza, which expresses ideas that Burton
heartily endorsed, may be regarded as a fair sample of the whole:
"Elegant Phormion's philosophick store
see how the practised Hannibal derided
when lectured he with wealth of bellick lore
and on big words and books himself he prided.
Senhor! the soldier's discipline is more
than men may learn by mother-fancy guided;
Not musing, dreaming, reading what they write;
'tis seeing, doing, fighting; teach to fight." [323]
The first six lines contain nothing remarkable, still, they are
workmanlike and pleasant to read; but the two concluding lines are
atrocious, and almost every stanza has similar blemishes. A little more
labour, even without much poetic skill, could easily have produced a
better result. But Burton was a Hannibal, not a Phormion, and no man can
be both. He is happiest, perhaps, in the stanzas containing the legend
of St. Thomas, [324] or Thome, as he calls him,
"the Missioner sanctified
Who thrust his finger in Lord Jesu's side."
According to Camoens, while Thorme was preaching to the potent Hindu
city Meleapor, in Narsinga land [325] a huge forest tree floated down
the Ganges, but all the king's elephants and all the king's men were
incompetent to haul it ashore.
"Now was that lumber of such vasty size,
no jot it moves, however hard they bear;
when lo! th' Apostle of Christ's verities
wastes in the business less of toil and care:
His trailing waistcord to the tree he ties,
raises and sans an effort hales it where
A sumptuous Temple he would rear sublime,
a fit example for all future time."
This excites the jealousy and hatred of the Brahmins, for
"There be no hatred fell and fere, and curst
As by false virtue for true virtue nurst."
The chief Brahmin then kills his own son, and tries to saddle the crime
on Thome, who promptly restores the dead youth to life again and "names
the father as the man who slew." Ultimately, Thome, who is unable to
circumvent the further machinations of his enemies, is pierced to the
heart by a spear; and the apostle in glory is thus apostrophised:
"Wept Gange and Indus, true Thome! thy fate,
wept thee whatever lands thy foot had trod;
yet weep thee more the souls in blissful state
thou led'st to don the robes of Holy Rood.
But angels waiting at the Paradise-gate
meet thee with smiling faces, hymning God.
We pray thee, pray that still vouchsafe thy Lord
unto thy Lusians His good aid afford."
In a stanza presented as a footnote and described as "not in Camoens,"
Burton gives vent to his own disappointments, and expends a sigh for
the fate of his old friend and enemy, John Hanning Speke. As regards
himself, had he not, despite his services to his country, been relegated
to a third-rate seaport, where his twenty-nine languages were quite
useless, except for fulminating against the government! The fate of poor
Speke had been still more lamentable:
"And see you twain from Britain's foggy shore
set forth to span dark Africk's jungle-plain;
thy furthest fount, O Nilus! they explore,
and where Zaire springs to seek the Main,
The Veil of Isis hides thy land no more,
whose secrets open to the world are lain.
They deem, vain fools! to win fair Honour's prize:
This exiled lives, and that untimely dies."
Burton, however, still nursed the fallacious hope that his merits would
in time be recognised, that perhaps he would be re-instated in Damascus
or appointed to Ispahan or Constantinople.
99. At Ober Ammergau, August 1880.
In August (1880) the Burtons paid a visit to Ober Ammergau, which was
just then attracting all eyes on account of its Passion Play. Burton's
object in going was "the wish to compare, haply to trace some affinity
between, this survival of the Christian 'Mystery' and the living scenes
of El Islam at Mecca," while Mrs. Burton's object may be gauged by
the following prayer which she wrote previous to their departure from
Trieste: "O Sweet Jesu... Grant that I, all unworthy though I be, may so
witness this holy memorial of thy sacrificial love, Thy glorious victory
over death and hell, that I may be drawn nearer to Thee and hold Thee in
everlasting remembrance. Let the representation of Thy bitter sufferings
on the cross renew my love for Thee, strengthen my faith, and ennoble my
life, and not mine only, but all who witness it." Then follows a prayer
for the players.
Burton found no affinity between the scenes at Ober Ammergau and those
at Mecca, and he was glad to get away from "a pandemonium of noise and
confusion," while Mrs. Burton, who was told to mind her own business
by a carter with whom she remonstrated for cruelly treating a horse,
discovered that even Ober Ammergau was not all holiness. Both Burton
and his wife recorded their impressions in print, but though his volume
[326] appeared in 1881, hers [327] was not published till 1900.
100. Mrs. Burton's Advice to Novelists. 4th September 1880.
The following letter from Mrs. Burton to Miss Stisted, who had just
written a novel, A Fireside King, [328] gives welcome glimpses of the
Burtons and touches on matters that are interesting in the light of
subsequent events. "My dearest Georgie, On leaving you I came on to
Trieste, arriving 29th May, and found Dick just attacked by a virulent
gout. We went up to the mountains directly without waiting even to
unpack my things or rest, and as thirty-one days did not relieve him, I
took him to Monfalcone for mud baths, where we passed three weeks, and
that did him good. We then returned home to change our baggage and start
for Ober Ammergau, which I thought glorious, so impressive, simple,
natural. Dick rather criticises it. However, we are back.... I read
your book through on the journey to England. Of course I recognised your
father, Minnie, [329] and many others, but you should never let your
heroine die so miserably, because the reader goes away with a void in
his heart, and you must never put all your repugnances in the first
volume, for you choke off your reader.... You don't mind my telling the
truth, do you, because I hope you will write another, and if you like
you may stand in the first class of novelists and make money and do
good too, but put your beasts a little further in towards the end of
the first volume. I read all the reviews that fell in my way, but though
some were spiteful that need not discourage... Believe me, dearest G.,
your affectionate Zookins."
Miss Stisted's novel was her first and last, but she did write another
book some considerable time later, which, however, would not have won
Mrs. Burton's approval. [330]
101. The Kasidah, 1880.
This year, Burton, emulous of fame as an original poet, published The
Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi, A Lay of the Higher Law, which treats
of the great questions of Life, Death and Immortality, and has certain
resemblances to that brilliant poem which is the actual father of it,
Edward FitzGerald's rendering of The Rubaiyat of Oman Khayyam. Lady
Burton tells us that The Kasidah was written about 1853, or six years
before the appearance of FitzGerald's poem. Nothing, however, is more
certain than that, with the exception of a few verses, it was written
after FitzGerald's poem. The veriest tyro in literature, by comparing
the two productions, would easily understand their relationship. [331]
The facts are these. About 1853, Burton, in a time of dejection, caused
by the injustice done him in India, planned a poem of this nature, wrote
a few stanzas, and then put it by and forgot all about it. FitzGerald's
version of Omar Khayyam appeared in 1859, and Burton no sooner read than
he burned to rival it. So he drew from the pigeon-hole what he called
his Lay, furbished up the few old verses, made a number of new ones,
reconstructed the whole, and lo, The Kasidah! Burton calls it a
translation of a poem by a certain Haji Abdu. There may have been a
Haji Abdu who supplied thoughts, and even verses, but the production
is really a collection of ideas gathered from all quarters. Confucius,
Longfellow, Plato, the FitzGeraldian Oman Khayyam, Aristotle, Pope, Das
Kabir and the Pulambal are drawn upon; the world is placed under tribute
from Pekin to the Salt Lake City. A more careless "borrower" to use
Emerson's expression, never lifted poetry. Some of his lines are
transferred bodily, and without acknowledgment, from Hafiz; [332] and,
no doubt, if anybody were to take the trouble to investigate, it would
be found that many other lines are not original. It is really not
very much to anyone's credit to play the John Ferriar to so careless
a Sterne. He doesn't steal the material for his brooms, he steals
the brooms ready-made. Later, as we shall see, he "borrowed" with a
ruthlessness that was surpassed only by Alexandre Dumas. Let us say,
then, that The Kasidah is tesselated work done in Burton's usual way,
and not very coherently, with a liberal sprinkling of obsolete works. At
first it positively swarmed with them, but subsequently, by the advice
of a friend, a considerable number such as "wox" and "pight" was
removed. If the marquetry of The Kasidah compares but feebly with the
compendious splendours of FitzGerald's quatrains; and if the poem [333]
has undoubted wastes of sand, nevertheless, the diligent may here and
there pick up amber. But it is only fair to bear in mind that the Lay
is less a poem than an enchiridion, a sort of Emersonian guide to the
conduct of life rather than an exquisitely-presented summary of the
thoughts of an Eastern pessimist. FitzGerald's poem is an unbroken
lament. Burton, a more robust soul than the Woodbridge eremite, also has
his misgivings. He passes in review the great religious teachers, and
systems and comes to the conclusion that men make gods and Gods after
their own likeness and that conscience is a geographical accident; but
if, like FitzGerald, he is puzzled when he ponders the great questions
of life and afterlife, he finds comfort in the fact that probity and
charity are their own reward, that we have no need to be anxious about
the future, seeing that, in the words of Pope, "He can't be wrong, whose
life is in the right." He insists that self-cultivation, with due regard
for others, is the sole and sufficient object of human life, and he
regards the affections and the "divine gift of Pity" as man's highest
enjoyments. As in FitzGerald's poem there is talk of the False Dawn
or Wolf's Tail, "Thee and Me," Pot and Potter, and here and there are
couplets which are simply FitzGerald's quatrains paraphrased [334]--as,
for example, the one in which Heaven and Hell are declared to be mere
tools of "the Wily Fetisheer." [335] Like Omar Khayyam, Haji Abdu loses
patience with the "dizzied faiths" and their disputatious exponents;
like Omar Khayyam too, Haji Abdu is not averse from Jamshid's bowl, but
he is far less vinous than the old Persian.
Two of the couplets flash with auroral splendour, and of all the vast
amount of metrical work that Burton accomplished, these are the
only lines that can be pronounced imperishable. Once only--and only
momentarily--did the seraph of the sanctuary touch his lips with the
live coal.
"Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect
applause;
He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his
self-made laws."
and
"All other life is living death, a world where none but
phantoms dwell
A breath, a wind, a sound, a voice, a tinkling of the
camel-bell."
We are also bidden to be noble, genuine and charitable.
"To seek the true, to glad the heart, such is of life the Higher Law."
Neglecting the four really brilliant lines, the principal attraction
of The Kasidah is its redolence of the saffron, immeasurable desert. We
snuff at every turn its invigorating air; and the tinkle of the camel's
bell is its sole and perpetual music.
At first Burton made some attempt to create the impression that there
was actually a Haji Abdu, and that the verses were merely a translation.
Indeed, he quotes him, at the end of his Supplemental Nights, vol. ii.,
and elsewhere, as an independent author. Later, however, the mask
which deceived nobody was removed. Not only was The Kasidah written in
emulation of FitzGerald's Omar, but Burton made no secret that such was
the case. To further this end Mr. Schutz Wilson, who had done so much
for the Rubaiyat, was approached by one of Burton's friends; and the
following letter written to Burton after the interview will be read with
some amusement. "Dear Richard," it runs, "'Wox' made me shudder! If you
give more specimens do be good and be sparing of the 'pights,' 'ceres'
and 'woxes.' I showed the Lay to Schutz Wilson. He seemed absorbed in
the idea of Omar, and said 'Oh! I am the cause of its going through
five editions.' I told him this was even more striking than Omar, but he
didn't seem able to take in the new idea! When you want people's minds
they are always thinking of something else." [336] Although the critics
as a body fell foul of The Kasidah, still there were not wanting
appreciators, and its four great lines have often been quoted.
102. Lisa.
By this time Mrs. Burton had provided herself with another Chico. Chico
the Third (or Chica the Second) was a tall and lank, but well-built
Italian girl, daughter of a baron. Lisa had Khamoor's ungovernable
temper, but to the Burtons she at first exhibited the faithfulness of a
dog. Her father lived formerly at Verona, but in the war of 1866, having
sided with Austria, [337] he fell upon evil days; and retired to Trieste
on a trifling pension. Mrs. Burton and Lisa had not been long acquainted
before Lisa became a member of the Burton household as a kind of lady's
maid, although she retained her title of Baroness, and Mrs. Burton at
once set about Anglicising her new friend, though her attempt, as in
Khamoor's case, was only partially successful. For instance, Lisa, would
never wear a hat, "for fear of losing caste." She was willing, however,
to hang out her stocking on Christmas eve; and on finding it full next
morning said, "Oh, I like this game. Shall we play it every night!" Just
however, as a petted Khamoor had made a spoilt Khamoor; so a petted Lisa
very soon made a spoilt Lisa.
With Mrs. Burton, her Jane Digbys, her Chicos, and her servants, Burton
rarely interfered, and when he did interfere, it was only to make
matters worse; for his judgment was weaker even than hers. On one
occasion, however, he took upon himself to dismiss the cook and to
introduce another of his own finding. On being requested to prepare the
dinner the new acquisition set about it by drinking two bottles of
wine, knocking down the housemaid, and beating the kitchenmaid with
the saucepan. Burton, who flew to their rescue, thought he must be in
Somali-land once more.