108. Anecdotes of Burton.
In 1883 the Burtons removed from their eyrie near the Railway
Station and took up their abode in a palazzone [378]--"the Palazzo
Gosleth"--situated in a large garden, on the wooded promontory that
divides the city from the Bay of Muggia. It was one of the best houses
in Trieste, and boasted an entrance so wide that one could have driven
a carriage into the hall, a polished marble staircase and twenty large
rooms commanding extensive and delightful views. The garden, however,
was the principal amenity. Here, in fez and dressing-gown, Burton used
to sit and write for hours with nothing to disturb him except the song
of birds and the rustle of leaves. In the Palazzo Gosleth he spent the
last eight years of his life, and wrote most of his later works.
Perhaps this is the best place to introduce a sheaf of miscellaneous
unpublished anecdotes which have been drawn together from various
sources. We are uncertain as to their dates, but all are authentic.
To the ladies Burton was generally charming, but sometimes he behaved
execrably. Once when he was returning alone to Trieste, a lady past
her prime, being destined for the same place, asked whether she might
accompany him. Burton, who hated taking care of anyone, frowned and
shook his head. "There can be no scandal, Captain Burton," pleaded the
lady, "because I am old."
"Madame," replied Burton, "while fully appreciating your kindness,
I must decline. Had you been young and good-looking I would have
considered the matter."
109. Burton and Mrs. Disraeli.
But Burton could be agreeable enough even to plain ladies when he
wished. In one of his books or pamphlets he had said "There is no
difference except civilization between a very old woman and an ape."
Some time after its publication, when he was the guest of Mr. and Mrs.
Disraeli, Mrs. Disraeli, herself both elderly and very plain, laid a
plan to disconcert him. She seated herself close to a low mirror, in the
hopes that Burton would presently join her. He soon fell into the trap
and was observed a few minutes later leaning over her and "doing the
amiable."
"Captain Burton," said Mrs. Disraeli, with affected annoyance, and
pointing to her reflection, "There must be an ape in the glass. Do you
not see it?"
Burton instantly recalled the remark in his book, but without exhibiting
the least disconcertion, he replied, "Yaas, yaas, Madam, quite plainly;
I see myself."
It was altogether impossible for Burton to do anything or to be in
anything without causing a commotion of some kind. Generally it was his
own fault, but sometimes the Fates were to blame. Few scenes at that
period could have been more disgraceful than those at the official
receptions held in London by the Prime Minister. Far too many persons
were invited and numbers behaved more like untutored Zulus than
civilised human beings.
"Now darling," said Mrs. Burton to her husband, just before one of these
functions, "You are to be amiable, remember, and not lose your temper."
Burton readily promised compliance, but that day, unfortunately, the
crush on the staircase was particular disgraceful. Apparently Burton,
his wife on arm, was pushed on to the train of a lady in front of him,
but whatever he was doing the crush had rendered him helpless.
"Oh dear!" cried the lady, "this horrid man is choking me."
"It's that blackguard of a Burton!" followed the lady's husband.
Burton's eyes flashed and his lips went livid, "I'll have you out for
this," he cried, "and if you won't fight I'll thrash you like a dog."
"That's how you keep your promise," said Mrs. Burton to him, when they
got home. "You don't get half a dozen steps up the staircase before you
have a row with someone." Then he burst out with his "pebble on ice"
laughter.
For Burton to overhear remarks uncomplimentary to himself was no
uncommon occurrence, but he rarely troubled to notice them. Now and
again, however, as the previous anecdote shows, he broke his rule. Once
at a public gathering a lady said, loudly, to a companion, "There is
that infamous Captain Burton, I should like to know that he was down
with some lingering and incurable illness."
Burton turned round, and fixing his eyes upon her, said with gravity:
"Madame, I have never in all my life done anything so wicked as to
express so shocking a wish as that."
The next anecdote shows how dangerous Burton could be to those who
offended him. When the Sultan of Zanzibar was paying a visit to
England, Burton and the Rev. Percy Badger were singled out to act as
interpreters. But Burton had quarrelled with Badger about something or
other; so when they approached the Sultan, Burton began addressing
him, not in Arabic, but in the Zanzibar patois. The Sultan, after some
conversation, turned to Badger, who, poor man, not being conversant with
the patois, could only stand still in the dunce's cap which Burton,
as it were, had clapped on him and look extremely foolish; while the
bystanders nodded to each other and said, "Look at that fellow. He can't
say two words. He's a fraud." Burton revelled in Badger's discomfiture;
but a little later the two men were on good terms again; and when Badger
died he was, of course, Burton's "late lamented friend."
Another of Burton's aversions was "any old woman made up to look very
young." "Good gracious," he said, one day to a painted lady of that
category. "You haven't changed since I saw you forty years ago. You're
like the British flag that has braved a thousand years of the battle and
the breeze." But the lady heaped coals of fire on his head.
"Oh, Captain Burton," she cried, "how could you, with that musical--that
lovely voice of yours--make such very unpleasant remarks."
110. "I am an Old English Catholic."
In England, whatever objections Protestants may make to Roman Catholic
services, they admit that everything is done decently and in order.
The laxity, however, in the Italian churches is, or was until recently,
beyond belief, and every traveller brought home some queer tale. Mrs.
Burton, who prided herself on being "an old English Catholic," was
frequently distressed by these irregularities, and she never hesitated
to reprove the offending priests. One day a priest who had called at
Burton's house was requested to conduct a brief service in Mrs. Burton's
private chapel. But the way in which he went through the various
ceremonies so displeased Mrs. Burton that she called out to him, "Stop!
stop! pardon me, I am an old English Catholic--and therefore particular.
You are not doing it right--Stand aside, please, and let me show you."
So the astonished priest stood aside, and Mrs. Burton went through all
the gesticulations, genuflexions, etcetera, in the most approved
style. Burton, who was standing by, regarded the scene with suppressed
amusement. When all was over, he touched the priest on the shoulder and
said gravely and slowly, pointing to Mrs. Burton: "Do you know who
this is? It is my wife. And you know she will some day die--We all must
die--And she will be judged--we must all be judged--and there's a
very long and black list against her. But when the sentence is being
pronounced she will jump up and say: 'Stop! stop! please pardon my
interruption, but I am an old English Catholic.'"
To one house, the hostess of which was one of the most fashionable women
in London, Burton, no matter how much pressed, had never been prevailed
upon to go. He disliked the lady and that was enough. "Here's an
invitation for all of us to Lady ----'s," said Mrs. Burton to him one
day in honied tones. "Now, Dick, darling, this time you must go just for
Lisa's sake. It's a shame she should lose so excellent a chance of going
into good society. Other people go, why shouldn't we? Eh, darling?"
"What won't people do," growled Burton, "for the sake of a dinner!"
Eventually, however, after an explosion, and he'd be asterisked if he
would, and might the lady herself be asterisked, etcetera, etcetera,
etcetera, "Dick Darling" was coaxed over, and he, Mrs. Burton and Lisa
at the appointed time sallied forth in all the glory of war paint, and
in due course were ushered into the detested house.
As he approached the hostess she looked steadily at him through her
lorgnon, and then, turning to a companion, said with a drawl: "Isn't it
horrid, my dear! Every Dick, Tom and Harry's here to-night."
"That's what comes of being amiable," said Burton to his wife, when
they got home again--and he'd be asterisked, and might everybody else be
asterisked, if he'd enter that asterisked house again. Then the humour
of it all appealed to him; and his anger dissolved into the usual hearty
laughter.
One very marked feature of Burton's character was that, like his father,
he always endeavoured to do and say what he thought was right, quite
regardless of appearances and consequences. And we may give one anecdote
to illustrate our meaning.
On one occasion [379] he and another Englishman who was known by Burton
to have degraded himself unspeakably, were the guests at a country
house. "Allow me, Captain Burton," said the host, "to introduce you to
the other principal guest of the evening, Mr. ----" Looking Mr. ----
in the face, Burton said: "When I am in Persia I am a Persian, when in
India a Hindu, but when in England I am an English gentleman," and then
he turned his back on Mr. ----and left him. As Mr. ----'s record was not
at the time generally known, those who were present at the scene
merely shrugged their shoulders and said: "Only another of Burton's
eccentricities." A few months, later, however, Mr. ---'s record received
publicity, and Burton's conduct and words were understood.
One of Burton's lady relations being about to marry a gentleman who was
not only needy but also brainless, somebody asked him what he thought of
the bridegroom-elect.
"Not much," replied Burton, drily, "he has no furniture inside or out."
To "old maids" Burton was almost invariably cruel. He found something
in them that roused all the most devilish rancours in his nature; and he
used to tell them tales till the poor ladies did not know where to tuck
their heads. When reproved afterwards by Mrs. Burton, he would say:
"Yaas, yaas, no doubt; but they shouldn't be old maids; besides, it's no
good telling the truth, for nobody ever believes you." He did, however,
once refer complimentarily to a maiden lady--a certain Saint Apollonia
who leaped into a fire prepared for her by the heathen Alexandrians.
He called her "This admirable old maid." Her chief virtue in his eyes,
however, seems to have been not her fidelity to her principles, but the
fact that she got rid of herself, and so made one old maid fewer.
"What shall we do with our old maids?" he would ask, and then answer the
question himself--"Oh, enlist them. With a little training they would
make first-rate soldiers." He was also prejudiced against saints, and
said of one, "I presume she was so called because of the enormity of her
crimes."
Although Mrs. Burton often reproved her husband for his barbed and
irritating remarks, her own tongue had, incontestibly, a very beautiful
edge on it. Witness her reply to Mrs. X., who declared that when she met
Burton she was inexpressibly shocked by his Chaucerian conversation and
Canopic wit.
"I can quite believe," commented Mrs. Burton, sweetly, "that on
occasions when no lady was present Richard's conversation might have
been startling."
How tasteful is this anecdote, as they say in The Nights, "and how
enjoyable and delectable."
111. Burton begins his Translation, April 1884.
As we have already observed, Mr. Payne's 500 copies of the Thousand
Nights and a Night were promptly snapped up by the public and 1,500
persons had to endure disappointment. "You should at once," urged
Burton, "bring out a new edition." "I have pledged myself," replied Mr.
Payne, "not to reproduce the book in an unexpurgated form."
"Then," said Burton, "Let me publish a new edition in my own name and
account to you for the profits--it seems a pity to lose these 1,500
subscribers." This was a most generous and kind-hearted, but, from
a literary point of view, immoral proposition; and Mr. Payne at once
rejected it, declaring that he could not be a party to a breach of
faith with the subscribers in any shape or form. Mr. Payne's virtue
was, pecuniarily and otherwise, its punishment. Still, he has had the
pleasure of a clear conscience. Burton, however, being, as always, short
of money, felt deeply for these 1,500 disappointed subscribers, who were
holding out their nine-guinea cheques in vain; and he then said "Should
you object to my making an entirely new translation?" To which, of
course, Mr. Payne replied that he could have no objection whatever.
Burton then set to work in earnest. This was in April, 1884. As we
pointed out in Chapter xxii., Lady Burton's account of the inception and
progress of the work and Burton's own story in the Translator's Foreword
(which precedes his first volume) bristle with misstatements and
inaccuracies. He evidently wished it to be thought that his work was
well under weigh long before he had heard of Mr. Payne's undertaking,
for he says, "At length in the spring of 1879 the tedious process of
copying began and the book commenced to take finished form." Yet he told
Mr. Payne in 1881 that beyond notes and a syllabus of titles nothing had
been done; and in 1883 he says in a letter, "I find my translation is a
mere summary," that is to say, of the Boulac edition, which was the only
one familiar to him till he met Mr. Payne. He admits having made ample
use of the three principal versions that preceded his, namely, those of
Jonathan Scott, Lane and Payne, "the whole being blended by a callida
junctura into a homogeneous mass." But as a matter of fact his
obligations to Scott and Lane, both of whom left much of the Nights
untranslated, and whose versions of it were extremely clumsy and
incorrect, were infinitesimal; whereas, as we shall presently prove,
practically the whole of Burton is founded on the whole of Payne. We
trust, however, that it will continually be borne in mind that the warm
friendship which existed between Burton and Payne was never for a moment
interrupted. Each did the other services in different ways, and each for
different reasons respected and honoured the other. In a letter to Mr.
Payne of 12th August, 1884, Burton gave an idea of his plan. He says "I
am going in for notes where they did not suit your scheme and shall make
the book a perfect repertoire of Eastern knowledge in its most esoteric
form." A paper on these subjects which Burton offered to the British
Association was, we need scarcely say, courteously declined.
Writing to Payne on September 9th (1884) he says, "As you have been
chary of notes my version must by way of raison d'etre (amongst others)
abound in esoteric lore, such as female circumcision and excision, etc.
I answer all my friends that reading it will be a liberal education, and
assure them that with such a repertory of esotericism at their finger
ends they will know all the Scibile [380] requisite to salvation. My
conviction is that all the women in England will read it and half the
men will cut me."
112. The Battle over the Nights.
Although, as we have seen, Burton's service to Mr. Payne's translation
was almost too slight to be mentioned, Burton was to Mr. Payne in
another way a tower of strength. Professional spite, jealousy and other
causes had ranged against his Nights whole platoons of men of more or
less weight. Jealousy, folly and ignorance made common cause against
the new translation--the most formidable coterie being the group of
influential men who for various reasons made it their business to cry
up the commonplace translation of E. W. Lane, published in 1840,
and subsequently reprinted--a translation which bears to Payne's
the relation of a glow-worm to the meridian sun. The clique at first
prepared to make a professional attack on the work, but the appearance
of Volume i. proved it to be from a literary, artistic and philological
point of view quite unassailable. This tactic having failed, some
of these gentlemen, in their meanness, and we fear we must add,
malevolence, then tried to stir up the authorities to take action
against Mr. Payne on the ground of public morality. [381] Burton had
long been spoiling for a fight--and now was his opportunity. In season
and out of season he defended Payne. He fell upon the Lane-ites like
Samson upon the Philistines. He gloried in the hurly-burly. He wallowed,
as it were, in blood. Fortunately, too, at that time he had friends in
the Government--straightforward, commonsense men--who were above all
pettinesses. Lord Houghton, F. F. Arbuthnot, and others, also ranged
themselves on the same side and hit out manfully.
Before starting on the Palmer expedition, Burton, in a letter of October
29th, had written to Mr. Payne: "The more I read your translation the
more I like it. You have no need to fear the Lane clique; that is to
say, you can give them as good as they can give you. I am quite ready
to justify the moral point. Of course we must not attack Lane till he is
made the cheval de bataille against us. But peace and quiet are not in
my way, and if they want a fight, they can have it." The battle was
hot while it lasted, but it was soon over. The Lane-ites were cowed and
gradually subsided into silence. Mr. Payne took the matter more coolly
than Burton, but he, too, struck out when occasion required. For
example, among the enemy was a certain reverend Professor of Semitic
languages, who held advanced opinions on religious matters. He had
fought a good fight, had suffered persecution on that account, and is
honoured accordingly. "It is usual," observed Burton, "with the weak,
after being persecuted to become persecutors." [382] Mr. ----- had the
folly to put it about that Payne's translation was made not direct from
the Arabic but from German translations. How he came to make so amazing
a statement, seeing that at the time no important German translation of
the Nights existed, [383] it is difficult to say; but Mr. Payne sent him
the following words from the Nights, written in the Arabic character:
"I and thou and the slanderer, there shall be for us an awful day and a
place of standing up to judgment." [384] After this Mr. ----- sheathed
his sword and the Villon Society heard no more of him.
113. Completion of Mr. Payne's Translation.
Mr. Payne's first volume appeared as we have seen in 1882. The last
left the press in 1884. The work was dedicated to Burton, who writes,
"I cannot but feel proud that he has honoured me with the dedication
of 'The Book of the Thousand Nights and one Night.' ...He succeeds
admirably in the most difficult passages, and he often hits upon choice
and special terms and the exact vernacular equivalent of the foreign
word so happily and so picturesquely that all future translators must
perforce use the same expression under pain of falling far short."
Having finished the Nights, Mr. Payne commenced the translation of other
Eastern stories--which he published under the title of Tales from the
Arabic. [385]