145. Burton's Religion.
As regards religion, Burton had in early life, as we have seen, leaned
to Sufism; and this faith influenced him to the end. For a little
while he coquetted with Roman Catholicism; but the journey to Mecca
practically turned him into a Mohammedan. At the time of his marriage
he called himself an agnostic, and, as we have seen, he was always
something of a spiritualist. Lady Burton, charmingly mixing her
metaphors, [521] says "he examined every religion, and picked out its
pear to practise it." The state of his mind in 1880 is revealed by his
Kasidah. From that time to his death he was half Mohammedan and half
Agnostic. His wife pressed him in season and out of season to become
a Catholic, and, as we shall see, he did at last so far succumb to
her importunities as to sign a paper in which, to use Lady Burton's
expression, "he abjured the Protestant heresy," and put himself in
line with the Catholics. [522] But, as his opinions do not seem to
have changed one iota, this "profession of faith" could have had little
actual value. He listened to the prayers that his wife said with him
every night, and he distinctly approved of religion in other persons.
Thus, he praised the Princess of Wales [523] for hearing her children
say their "little prayers," [524] every night at her knee, and he is
credited with the remark: "A man without religion may be excused, but a
woman without religion is unthinkable." Priests, ceremonials, services,
all seemed to him only tinkling cymbals. He was always girding at
"scapularies and other sacred things." He delighted to compare Romanism
unfavourably with Mohammedanism. Thus he would say sarcastically,
"Moslems, like Catholics, pray for the dead; but as they do the praying
themselves instead of paying a priest to do it, their prayers, of
course, are of no avail." He also objected to the Church of Rome
because, to use his own words, "it has added a fourth person to the
Trinity." [525] He said he found "four great Protestant Sommites: (1)
St. Paul, who protested against St. Peter's Hebraism; (2) Mohammed,
who protested against the perversions of Christianity; (3) Luthur, who
protested against the rule of the Pope; (4) Sir Richard Burton, who
protested against the whole business." The way in which he used to
ridicule the Papal religion in his wife's presence often jarred on his
friends, who thought that however much he might disapprove of it, he
ought, for her sake, to have restrained his tongue. But he did not spare
other religious bodies either. He wanted to know, for instance, what the
clergy of the Church of England did for the L3,500,000 a year "wasted
on them," while he summed up the Nonconformists in the scornful phrase:
"Exeter Hall!" He considered anthropomorphism to explain satisfactorily
not only the swan maiden, and the other feathered ladies [526] of the
Nights, but also angel and devil. Both Arbuthnot and Payne regarded him
as a Mohammedan. Another friend described him as a "combination of an
Agnostic, a Theist and an Oriental mystic." Over and over again he said
to his cousin, St. George Burton, "The only real religion in the world
is that of Mohammed. Religions are climatic. The Protestant faith suits
England." Once he said "I should not care to go to Hell, for I should
meet all my relations there, nor to Heaven, because I should have to
avoid so many friends." Lady Burton, who prayed daily "that the windows
of her husband's soul might be opened," relied particularly on the
mediation of "Our Lady of Dale"--the Dale referred to being a
village near Ilkestone, Derbyshire, which once boasted a magnificent
Premonstratensian monastery, [527] and she paid for as many as a hundred
masses to be said consecutively in the little "Church of Our Lady and
St. Thomas," [528] at Ilkeston, in order to hasten that event. "Some
three months before Sir Richard's death," writes Mr. P. P. Cautley, the
Vice-Consul at Trieste, to me, "I was seated at Sir Richard's tea table
with our clergy man, and the talk turning on religion, Sir Richard
declared, 'I am an atheist, but I was brought up in the Church of
England, and that is officially my church.' [529] Perhaps, however, this
should be considered to prove, not that he was an atheist, but that he
could not resist the pleasure of shocking the clergyman."
146. Burton as a Writer.
On Burton as a writer we have already made some comments. One goes to
his books with confidence; in the assurance that whatever ever he saw
is put down. Nothing is hidden and there is no attempt to Munchausenize.
His besetting literary sin, as we said, was prolixity. Any one of his
books reduced to one-quarter, or better, one-sixth the size, and served
up artistically would have made a delightful work. As it is, they are
vast storehouses filled with undusted objects of interest and value,
mingled with heaps of mere lumber. His books laid one on the top of
another would make a pile eight feet high!
He is at his best when describing some daring adventure, when making a
confession of his own weaknesses, or in depicting scenery. Lieutenant
Cameron's tribute to his descriptive powers must not be passed by.
"Going over ground which he explored," says Cameron, "with his Lake
Regions of Central Africa in my hand, I was astonished at the acuteness
of his perception and the correctness of his descriptions." Stanley
spoke of his books in a similar strain.
Burton owed his success as a narrator in great measure to his habit of
transferring impressions to paper the moment he received them--a habit
to which he was led by reading a passage of Dr. Johnson's Journey to
the Western Islands. "An observer deeply impressed by any remarkable
spectacle," says Johnson, "does not suppose that the traces will soon
vanish from his mind, and having commonly no great convenience for
writing, defers the description to a time of more leisure and better
accommodation. He who has not made the experiment or is not accustomed
to require vigorous accuracy from himself, will scarcely believe how
much a few hours take from certainty of knowledge and distinctness of
imagery; how the succession of objects will be broken, how separate
parts will be confused, and how many practical features and
discriminations will be found compressed and conglobated into one gross
and general idea." [530] "Brave words," comments Burton, "somewhat
pompous and diffused, yet worthy to be written in letters of gold."
[531] Very many of Burton's books, pamphlets and articles in the
journals of the learned societies appeal solely to archaeologists, as,
for example Etruscan Bologna, [532] an account of the Etrurian people,
their sharp bottomed wells, the pebble tombs of the poor and the elegant
mausoleums of the wealthy with their figures of musicians and dancing
girls "in garments of the most graceful form, finest texture and
brilliant hues;" reminding us of the days when Veii fell, and its
goddess, who "was light and easily removed, as though she followed
willingly," as Livy, with his tongue in his cheek, says, was conveyed
to Rome; and of the later days when "Lars Porsena of Clusium" poured
southward his serried host, only, according to the Roman historians, to
meet with defeat and discomfiture.
Of Burton's carelessness and inaccuracies, we have already spoken. We
mentioned that to his dying day he was under a wrong impression as to
his birthplace, and that his account of his early years and his family
bristles with errors. Scores of his letters have passed through my
hands and nearly all are imperfectly dated. Fortunately, however, the
envelopes have in almost every case been preserved; so the postmark,
when legible, has filled the lacuna. At every turn in his life we are
reminded of his inexactitude--especially in autobiographical details.
And yet, too, like most inexact men, he was a rare stickler for certain
niceties. He would have defended the "h" in Meccah with his sword; and
the man who spelt "Gypsy" with an "i" for ever forfeited his respect.
Burton's works--just as was his own mind--are vast, encyclopaedic,
romantic and yet prosaic, unsystematic; but that is only repeating the
line of the old Greek poet:
"Like our own selves our work must ever be." [533]