MISCELLANEOUS TRAITS OF CHARACTER AND OPINIONS.
I am afraid all this "gup," as Richard would call it, will be
considered rather light and frivolous about places so well known, but I
want to give every word my husband has said about his life, and where I
think he has forgotten anything, I like to put it in afterwards. I am
afraid of its reading in a jerky style, for a friend, who one day sat
in a corner when we were collaborating on one of his big tables, wrote
the following specimen of us as we were beginning our work:--
"BURTONS--HUSBAND AND WIFE.
"_He._ Bless (_sic_) you, I say hold your tongue! Who wants _your_
opinion?
"_She_ (in a smaller voice). Oh, it is all very well, but you know you
are like an iron machine, and I do all the wit and sparkle.[1]
"_He._ Oh, I dare say--the sparkle of a superannuated glow-worm.
(Then both roared with laughter, and writing is suspended for several
minutes.)
"_She._ Now then, go on, old iron-works, and have the first say."
(This is really the way most of our works, when collaborating, have
been written.)
But I have a greater object than this. I want to prove to the world,
that, though he was far from the sphere suited to his immense talent
and services, which he had richly earned from the Governments that
threw him away, his life was as happy as it could be made _under the
circumstances_. It was not the being chained to a hard barren rock,
as is generally represented. If the Governments had shown their
appreciation of his services, had placed him where he ought to have
been placed, I believe I may say he would not have had a sorrow in the
world. It is true that the climate was bad--all our climates were--but
once gout had laid hold of him, it pursued him in _every_ climate, good
and bad, and he suffered much. Indeed, it was one of our pet jokes that
we were so inured to bad climates that we were generally ill in good
ones.
I do not forgive the Governments for this, and less the Conservative,
for which he worked so hard; but they were merciful about "leave." He
did not owe to them a penny of the money that enabled him to do what
he liked, go where he would, have what he liked, and have the best of
loving care, both wifely and medical, all his last years. He had to
give half his pay to his Vice-Consul when absent, and so it suited all
round, but it galled him to have to ask for leave, and if they could
make no better use of him, they should at least have let him go on full
pay in 1886, when he had served them forty-four years, and felt his
breaking-up coming on. The only comfort I find in the blow dealt him,
about not getting Marocco, is, that I fear shortly after he would have
become unequal for the post, and I know that quite latterly he was not
able for more than he did.
He only made four attempts to better his official life after his career
was broken by recall from Damascus, and they were at the latter end of
his life. One was to be made a K.C.B., in 1878; the second in 1880, to
be appointed Commissioner for the Slave-trade in the Red Sea--that was
ten years before his death; one to succeed Sir John Drummond-Hay in
Marocco, 1885--when that was refused him, in his heart he threw up the
Service, though necessity kept him on; and in 1886 his last appeal was
to be allowed to retire on his full pension.
There seems to have been all along, during my husband's life, an
impression that he was always craving for Government honours, and
complaining of neglect. This is absolutely untrue. He was too proud,
too manly, too philosophic. He was profoundly silent on the subject. It
was I who did it, I who asked, I who made interest, and left no stone
unturned to get him advanced to his proper deserts, not from a mean
vanity, nor selfish ambition, but because I saw all these long years,
with deep pain, what all the world knows and acknowledges _now_, his
true merits and great work; the true hero, abandoned and forgotten,
so surely as Gordon was, silently eating his heart out by a foreign
fireside, with a craving for England and his fellow-men as strong as
Byron's. I alone am to blame, if blame there is; and in those days
the Press backed me. What harm would it have done the Service, or the
Foreign Office, to have given him his last four crippled years, with
his pension? This reproach has been thrown in our teeth by successful
people who ought to have had better taste.
[Sidenote: _Miscellaneous Traits of Character and Opinions_.]
As I said before, a man presents different characters to his wife, to
_his_ family, to _her_ family, to his lover, to his men-friends, to his
boon-companions, to the public. Now I have often, in the early days of
my married life, watched with great interest and astonishment things
that in after life I became quite used to. My husband, whose character
naturally quite expanded with me in the privacy of our domestic life,
became quite another man the moment anybody else entered the room. He
was very natural with my immediate family, my father and mother, my
brothers and sisters, and one or two of my uncles, so that they would
describe him very much in the same terms that I do. With his own family
he was, again, quite a different man, so that they saw him in another
light. With the few friends--and you could count them on the fingers
of one hand--with whom he chose to be _really_ intimate, he expanded
to a certain amount; to all those he really liked he was a first-rate
and staunch friend. With his boon-companions he was the centre of
attraction. He would sit in the middle of them, and by his gaiety,
brilliant conversation, and sound knowledge, fascinate the whole room,
but to the world in general he seemed to wear a mask. He would throw
out his quills like a porcupine, and somebody remarked they seemed to
become harder every year.
When we were staying with my father, of whom he was particularly fond,
he would always sit by him at meals. My father kept very open house,
and intimates used to flock in at meal-times. Sometimes, when he would
be in a full flow of spirits and gaiety, some outsider would walk in.
He would stop suddenly, and his face become like a mask, and my father
at first used to ask me, "What is the matter? Is Dick offended? Doesn't
he like So-and-so?" and I said, "Oh no; that is his usual habit when a
stranger comes in, and he will be like that until he knows him; and if
he does not like him he will be always like that to him, and if he is
nice he will thaw." He seemed to have a horror of any one seeing the
inside of him, and if he was caught saying or doing anything good, he
would actually blush, and hide it as if he had been caught committing a
crime.
In married life we quite agreed about most things, and one was that
complete liberty took off all the galling chain, popularly attributed
by men to the monotony, dreary respectability, and conventionality
of the usual British home circle, which frightens so many men from
entering into matrimony, and which forms the antidote to the cosiness,
companionship, and security of home, to two people who understand
each other; consequently, whenever he showed a tendency to wander,
and to go without me, though I was overjoyed when I was told I might
go, I never restricted him. I provided every imaginable comfort for
him; I transacted all his business at home, so that he might feel that
he had left his second self, that nothing would go amiss when he was
away. When he returned, he got a warm and joyous welcome, and was asked
no questions. He told me what he liked, at his own sweet will, and I
knew that he always returned to me with pleasure. He smoked where he
liked, he brought whoever he liked into the house, his friends were
always welcome, and he knew he need never be ashamed or afraid to ask
anybody in to lunch or dinner; in short, his home was his own, and it
was comfortable. On my part, I never wanted to go away from him for an
hour; but when he sent me, as he often did, on various business for
him, I went. But I am glad to think, now that he has gone, that after
my business was terminated, no amount of pleasure or engagements, or a
need to rest, ever held me back one hour when I might have been with
him. I was always on board, or in the train, two hours after the work,
whatever it was, was done, but I am equally sure that if I had said
to him, "Jemmy, I am hipped, or I am bored, or I want a change," he
would have told me to pack up my things and to go off for a week or a
fortnight to Paris or London, or anywhere else I liked.
Richard was a most moral and refined man at home in his domestic life.
He was not only the best husband that ever lived, but the pleasantest
man to live with, and the easiest. He was too large-minded for all
the usual small worries and Grundified conventions that form the
cab-shafts of domestic life in civilization. He was a man with whom it
was possible to combine, to keep up all the little refinements of the
honeymoon, which tends to preserve affection and respect, and a halo
of romance, which we kept up for thirty years, which is to civilized
European life, just what putting one's self on a lower rank than one's
husband in Moslem life is in the East--it preserves respect to both man
and woman; whilst anything immoral, or cruel, or dishonest called forth
his anger and severity.
He was a man who, if he had not practised great self-control, _could_
have had a very violent temper; but he had it so completely under
him, that I have very seldom seen him in a rage, except, as I say, at
anything cruel or unjust, ungentlemanly or immoral. With regard to
domestic temper, it is a consolation to me to say that we never had
a quarrel in our lives, nor even cross words, although occasionally
women-friends worked hard to that effect. I always hold it as a
rule that it is the most ungenerous thing a woman can be guilty of
to "nag" a man, because, if he is a gentleman, he is at an utter
disadvantage--he can't strike her. I have often seen women nagging at
their husbands till I have wondered why they did not knock them down
and jump upon them. When we married, I made a promise to myself that
I would never do this, and if I ever saw him a little put out about
anything, and felt myself getting irritable, I used to go out of the
room on some excuse till it had passed, and then come back, and by that
time we would begin to chaff about it, and it was all gone. I remember
once slamming the door when I went out, and I heard him roaring with
laughter.
He never had any mean jealousy, as a little man would have had. If I
got any praise he was glad, and when he knew that I had striven my
heart out in somebody's service, or for some good, and that I got
slighted, as I often did, or a still worse return, he used to be
furious, and I always used to have to pretend that I liked it to keep
him quiet. In some few cases, let us say in the service of the poor, or
in the protection of animals, I was more frequently seen than he was,
and some ignorant person would say, "Look, my dear, that is the kind
lady's husband;" and he used to roar with laughing, and say, "What a
capital joke for me to be known only as 'Lady B.'s husband'!" Then we
used to laugh, and I used to pretend to be delighted with my importance.
I am glad to say there was only _one_ will in the house, and that was
_his_. He was master and mistress both, but, like all great men, he
gave _carte blanche_ for all little things; but if he once put his foot
down, and had he chosen to say black was white, white I knew it had to
be. I like that. I was only too lucky to have met my master; I hate a
house where the woman is at the helm. Then, like all great men, he was
open to reason, and if, after having agreed to his views, I said later
on, "I am going to do what you wish, but, before it is too late, what
would you think of such a plan?" he would reflect a moment, and if my
idea was really good, he would at once say: "Why, of course, I never
thought of it; do what you say." But if his way was best, he would say,
"No, I have decided."
His kindness of heart, and consideration for other people's feelings,
nobody will ever know. In public life, and with his dependents, he
was severe, but very just. He was always touched by any show of
confidence and trust, and I must say he met it everywhere. He was
adored by servants, by children, by animals, and by all people under
him--soldiers, sailors, and tribes. When any British subjects were
put into prison, and he ascertained that it was unjust or harsh
(for instance, as the old man of ninety imprisoned a whole winter
at Damascus, deep snow on the ground, in a narrow cell with scarce
bread and water enough to keep him alive, for owing a Jew sixteen
shillings which he could not pay, and these things are numerous), he
used to go down once a week to the prisons, and let them out on his
own responsibility, and let their accusers fight him instead of them.
Hence, often complaints to the Home Government against him from the
rich and powerful. Once a British sailor in Trieste was put in prison
for some drunken lark; he had good-naturedly treated a native soldier
to a drink, and when Jack had had enough, the native stole his watch.
Jack, naturally, immediately knocked him down and took it from him, so
he was locked up. The next day Richard got a very dirty-looking note,
on which was written outside, "The Council." The seal was Jack's dirty
thumb. Inside was--
"BURTIN,
"i ham him trobel, kum and let me haout.
"TIM TROUNCER."
Richard was delighted, and immediately went off and got the sailor
out, and got the authorities to put the native soldier in his place.
I simply give this as an illustration of the manner in which he was
trusted and loved.
His mode of study was as follows:--
In _early_ life he studied everything till he had passed in it, whether
it was medicine, law, theology, or any other branch. In after life
he kept his knowledge on a steady platform, studying up all things
together to a certain point at so much a day, "raising the platform"
(as he called it) equally. He never passed a day without reading up
something in one of his twenty-nine languages; hence he spoke them all
without difficulty, never mixing them. He then read a good deal, and
took notes, and cut any useful and interesting paragraphs from about
ten English and four local papers. He used to examine into the meaning
and the etymology of words as he went on, with all their bearings and
different spellings; he never read hurriedly, passing anything over.
He wrote for a certain time in the day at several different tables--a
table to each work. He kept himself up in all the passing events of the
day, wrote his journal, copied anything that struck him, and at night
he always "cooled his head" with a novel. If he were sick he would
go to bed for several days--went on the starvation system, banished
all business from his mind, and had piles of novels on chairs by his
bed. One day he would get up quite well and go to work again. The most
remarkable thing about him was, that every man who spoke to him found,
that his one specialty was Richard's specialty. It seemed as if there
was nothing that he did not know; and as for hidden things, he seemed
to guess them by intuition as if he were a magician.
People will wonder if I tell them of a quality quite unsuspected on the
exterior. The older he grew, the greater dislike he had for women who
went wrong. He was always civil to them, especially in his own house,
but there was a coldness in his manner to them, in contrast to people
who were innocent, and he seemed to detect them by instinct. He used to
tell me that he inherited this from his father, who in his old age was
exactly the same, and if any lady known to have _affaires gallantes_
was coming, that he used to turn round to his mother and say, "Mind,
Martha! I won't have that adulteress put by me." He was also very
indignant if any lady was insulted. He especially disliked a man who
boasted of favours received, or let one know in any way about it--he
always said such a one was no Englishman; and when he heard that any
woman had lost her reputation through being simply kind to anybody,
he took her part. He said, "Those are not even the men who 'kiss and
tell,' but the men who 'tell and have not kissed.' A man when he really
has any affair with a woman, if he is a man, is deadly silent about
it." In his journals he has mapped and classified his men into three
sorts as regarding their conduct with women:--
"1. The English gentleman who kisses and does not tell.
"2. The snob who kisses and tells, or if he does not actually tell, he
insinuates with a smile and a gesture.
"3. Is the lying coward who tells and does not kiss, has never been
allowed the chance of kissing, who has a snub to avenge, or who
blackmails for money; who forge their own love-letters, and read them
not only to their friends, but at cafés and clubs.
"The two last classes were more or less unknown in England till the
introduction of so much foreign blood and foreign contact. It never
would have occurred to the pure-blooded Englishman. Unfortunately,
when men debase themselves by asking ladies for money (there is always
something generous in a woman to a man--not to her own sex), they pity
them, and are kind to them, and give it to them, instead of doing what
they ought to do--ringing the bell and having the man turned out of
the house. I have seen more innocent women lose a spotless reputation
by those acts of kindness, than others by an illicit love with an
English gentleman. When I see a man trying to prove that a woman
drinks, or that she is out of her mind, or hysterical, or a liar,
if he tells it to me once I may forget it, but if he tells it to me
twice I know that that man has got something serious to hide, and that
that woman knows his secret. If the man is effeminate, or deformed,
or vain, morbid, or craving for notice and sympathy, be sure it is
his own state he describes, and not the woman he runs down, who has
snubbed him and knows what he wants to hide."
Of critics and reviewers he wrote as follows:--
"They no longer review books; when they are incompetent they review
the author, and if the author's politics and religion do not happen
to agree with the office of that paper, it admits scurrilous and
personal paragraphs on the authors themselves, bringing up a sort of
_dossier_ of the author, which would be considered even disgraceful in
a trial in a criminal court. Thirty years ago this would never have
been allowed. This may amuse the writer, it may excite the reader, but
I protest against it. Nothing can be less profitable to an author or
a reader than a long tirade of peevish, petulant, personal comment,
and unanswerable sneer. This is only used by people who can shelter
themselves under an anonymous signature, or a _Critique manqué_, and
is quite the mark of a pretender in literature and critical art, and
which seldom disfigures the style of a true or able critic."
Much as he disliked unjust or coarse criticism, he delighted in playful
bits of chaff like the following from the writer of the _feuilleton_ in
the _Queen_, the lady's newspaper and Court chronicle. He had simply
written to the _Morning Post_ a little chaff, telling truly what he had
seen at a private Davenport _séance_.
"Oh, R. F. B.! Oh, R. F. B.!
How can you such a ninny be?
Why peril a good name and fame
By playing into tricksters' game?
Why, when all other dodges fail,
Apply your aid to prop a tale
Not half so true as 'Gammer Gurton,'
With such a name as R. F. Burton?"
"Gaiety," in speaking of _Echo_, said--
"The _Echo_ is just a bit wild,
Its par is indeed a hard hitter;
In fact, it is not drawn mild,
It is a matter of Burton and bitter."
Anent the "Arabian Nights," a young girl says--
"What did he say to you, dear aunt?
That's what I want to know.
What did he say to you, dear aunt?
That man at Waterloo!
"An Arabian old man, a Nights old man,
As Burton, as Burton can be;
Will you ask my papa to tell my mamma
The exact words and tell them to me?"
There was another capital chaff on his "Lusiads," but I cannot find it.
With regard to flowers, he would go out and bring one little wild
flower and put it in a glass of water on his table--sometimes a single
leaf. If anybody gave him a bouquet, or brought hothouse or garden
flowers and put them under his nose, he would turn away with disgust;
and people will no doubt laugh when I tell them that it was a peculiar
form of asceticism which ran like a thread (one amongst many) through
his life. He learnt singing, but he found his own voice so disagreeable
in song he would not go on with it, whilst his speaking voice never had
its equal--so soft and deep and attractive, that every one would stop
to listen as if it were a sweet-toned bell.
In music he had the finest ear, so that a false note was an agony to
him; and he could fully appreciate all Eastern music and gypsy music
that would sound tuneless to an English ear, and only loved the minor
key. He would go to an opera to hear a new _prima donna_, but he could
not abide amateur music, and at evenings at home, if anybody proposed
a little music, and a girl got up and nervously warbled a ballad about
banks and butterflies, he used to put his hand to his stomach and walk
out of the room. He did not allow me to cultivate much music, but if
I sang melancholy music in a minor key, in a soft low voice, he would
throw open the door even while he was at work.
He was intensely simple in his tastes. I used to busy myself greatly,
Martha-like, about making his room extremely comfortable; but the
moment I put anything pretty in it, it used to be put in the passage.
He liked large plain deal tables, about six feet long and three or four
feet broad, with no table-cloth. He would tie a red bandanna on the
leg for a penwiper. He liked hard wooden writing-chairs, and to have a
great many of these tables--one for each separate work; a small iron
bedstead, with iron wove mattress, no sheets, but plenty of English
white soft warm blankets. He would have no night-light; but would
never have blinds nor shutters drawn, that he might see daylight as
soon as possible, and the last of the twilight. His bookshelves were
all of plain deal, and each category upon which he was working, was
kept separate. He would not have his books and papers touched, and
preferred dust and cobwebs to their being moved. His three private
rooms contained only books, swords, pistols, and guns, scientific
instruments, a few medicines, and plenty of clothes. He loved his old
clothes. He would order rows of greatcoats and ulsters, and then go out
in a little thin coat to keep himself hardy.
He had a great love for boots, and sometimes had as many as a hundred
pairs in the house. I used to implore to be allowed to give his old
hats away to the cabmen, and he only laughed immensely at my getting
so ashamed of them; but he always had loads of new clothes, and wore
the old ones for preference. There was one rather amusing story about
a fencing-shoe. He lost one, and he went and asked his bootmaker if he
would make him another. He said, "No; he would make him a pair." He
took this shoe all over the world, and every bootmaker he saw he asked
him to make the odd shoe; but nobody ever would. At last we found out
that there is a superstition amongst bootmakers that if they make one
boot they die. He tried it for eighteen years and never succeeded, and
I have the odd shoe now in remembrance.
He never would keep two of anything. If he had two things of a sort he
gave one away, and if he became attached to any particular thing he
would give it away--another asceticism--nor would he indulge in any
perfume except good eau de Cologne.
With regard to food, he was very fond of what some people would call
common things; but no man understood better how to order a dinner, or
what to order, and how to enjoy it, especially in Paris. He used to
say that French cooking and English materials and a good cellar ought
to keep any man alive for a hundred years; but when he could not get
these luxuries he preferred, not the demi-semi sort of table with
sham _entrées_, but whatever food of the country the natives ate. For
instance, in West Africa on the coast, everything was turtle, which
abounds. In Brazil it was _fejão_ and _farinha_, which _fejoada_ was
brown beans, covered with a very savoury sauce, and coarse flour (the
two mixed up together are delicious); and also a kind of hot-pot, which
was kept continually going. In Damascus and all Eastern places it would
be _kous-kous_, of which he never tired, and _kabábs_; and in Trieste,
_risotto_ (a savoury rice dish with lumps of meat thrown about in it),
_polenta_ (yellow meal made something like a pudding with little birds
in it), _ravioli_ (Genoese paste), and so on.
But, in fact, in each place that we went to, he used native dishes,
native wine, and native smoke, cigars or otherwise, because, as
he argued, they were adapted to the climate. So when we came to a
pretentious hotel, and he asked for common things--let us say the
little black olives--the proprietor would say, "Oh dear, no, Sir; we
don't keep such common things as that;" and he used to say, "Then
send out sharp and get them." He loved _bácalá_ (dried codfish) and
_sauerkraut_, but they have both such a horrid smell that I bargained
to have them on Saturday, the day _after_ my reception day (Friday).
One thing he could not bear, and that was honey. As some people know
that there is a cat in a room, he also could not sit in the room with
honey, and knew even if it was kept in the most secret drawer or
cupboard. Sometimes after a dinner or lunch I have said to him, "What
made you look so uncomfortable?" And he would say, "There was honey in
the room, and I thought they would think I was mad if I asked to have
it removed; but I felt quite faint."
His great treat of all was a sucking-pig, three weeks old, roasted
well with the crackle, stuffing, and apple-sauce; and this was always
ordered on our wedding-day and on his birthday.
With regard to what he drank, from the time of Richard's attacks of
gout, he stuck steadily to three ounces a day of whisky-and-water
during the twenty-four hours. His favourite wine was port--he used to
call it the "prince of wines;" but he was not allowed it during the
last three years and a half. Champagne he cared but little for. I was
so sorry that he could not add, being no longer living, his testimony
to Dr. Broadbent, when the discussion was on in the papers about drink
in 1891; but I can do it for him now, and confirm it too. In all bad
climates--West Africa, India, and elsewhere--when an epidemic such
as cholera or yellow fever comes on, the first men to die are the
water-drinkers, and when the first virulence has polished them off,
it clears off the drunkards, and the only persons left living are the
moderate drinkers. This is a positive fact, and anybody who gainsays
it, has had no practical experience in very bad climates.
Our days used to be passed as follows:--
Of course, I am not speaking now of the last three and a half years
that he was sick and I broken down. In his days of health and strength
he suffered from insomnia, and he could not get more than two or three
hours' sleep. For the first twenty-two years of my married life, I made
our early tea at any time from three to half-past five, according to
the seasons (and if I happened to go to a ball I did not find it worth
while to go to bed); we had tea, bread and butter, and fruit. Now, if
it was a home day, we would set to work first on our journals, then on
the correspondence, and then to our literature. I did the greater part
of his correspondence by dictation or directions, and then copied for
him or wrote _with_ him and _for_ him. At eleven or twelve, according
to the seasons, we had a regular _déjeuner_ (lunch), answering to the
continental fashion. He would then go to the Consulate or we went
for a long walk, or I would do visits or shopping, or look after the
Societies of which I was President--it might be for the poor or the
animals. If it were summer, we would take an hour's swim; if it were
winter, an hour at the fencing school. In our declining days, in the
summer time, we had an hour's _siesta_ before beginning new work. At
four o'clock a sit-down tea of bread and butter and fruit and jam, at
which most of our intimates and our Staff would flock in; and then we
would return to our literature till evening dinner, either in garden or
house. After dinner we smoked and read, went to bed about ten, and read
ourselves to sleep.
Sometimes we were invited out, or invited friends, and this was varied
by long excursions, riding, driving, walking, or boating. We generally
knew every stick and stone for fifty miles round the place we lived in,
and, of course, larger travels or camp life varied again from this.
Camp life for me would begin two hours before dawn, when I would see
the horses watered, fed, groomed, and saddled, and somebody else the
striking of the tents, the packing and loading of the baggage animals.
At dawn we started, and we rode until the sun was impossibly hot. We
then called a halt, got shade if we could, loosened the girths, watered
our beasts and ourselves if possible, fed them and ourselves if we
could, and in all cases rested. After about a couple of hours we went
on again till sunset. We then bivouacked for the night. If we were
amongst any tribes, his diwan was spread, _chibouks_ and lemonade were
prepared, and he sat in state and received chiefs or notables. I used
to walk off with the horses, and went through the whole detail again of
changing saddle and bridle for clothing and halter, cooling, watering,
feeding, clothing, picketing, and then back to the tent to join the
party in a humble and unostentatious manner as would become a young
man, _if I were posing as such_--say a son or a dependant.
Once the visits were over we had supper, and to bed, and to-morrow _da
capo_.
During our last three and a half years we were both broken down, though
I am still alive to tell the tale, and we had to forget what we _used_
to do, and train down to what we _could_ do; but I look back with
comfort and pride on the reflection that during our thirty years of
married life we never lost a minute, and that it was all occupied in
trying to "soar," and not to "drop." The word always in his mouth was
"work, work, work," and his motto always, "Excelsior!"
He had another peculiarity on which he rather prided himself. In his
latter years about most things he was excessively open--in fact,
I used to be rather surprised and sometimes worried at the way in
which he talked quite openly of his plans before utter strangers, and
corresponded freely about literature with people he had never seen,
and I often think that he came to a great deal of harm that way, that
untrue people were apt to trade upon it; and, on the other hand, on
the things he really felt most, he prided himself on his secrecy, and
was very fond of _hiding things_. I used to tell him he was a regular
magpie, because in the end he hid them so well that he used to have to
come and call me to try and find them.
He used to trust me with the whole of the money, and I rendered him a
monthly account, and it amused him immensely to pretend to people that
I never allowed him any money, but sent him out with half a crown.
Sometimes, when he made a small literary profit, he would hide it
away, and it used invariably to get stolen. Once he put away £18 after
this fashion, and our cook in our absence let some boy-friend of hers
come in to play with the weapons; the boy poked his nose into all the
drawers and found it, and stole it, and after that he did not hide any
more.
He never knew how much he had, if he had debts or anything. I managed
all that, and used to show him once a month a total of what was spent
and what there was to go on with. He liked money for what it would
bring, but he was very generous; he never gave it a thought, and he
spent it as fast as he got it. He gave freely. He was born to be rich,
and he liked to be thought rich. His own motto which he composed for
himself was, "HONOUR, NOT HONOURS;" and his chaff motto for
young ladies' albums, and which he would never explain to them, was as
follows:--
"Sháwir hunna wa Khálif hunna."
"Consult them (_fem._) and (do contrary) to them."
It is very curious the ignorance with which he was occasionally met.
An educated man from Vienna asked him one day if he had ever been to
Africa, and an educated Englishwoman, after living nearly eighteen
years with him in Trieste, asked him the same question, and was not
aware that he had ever written a book. I think that gives people some
idea of his modesty.
He had a great objection _personally_ to cremation, although he
thought it a clean and healthy thing; but he said with his usual joke
at a serious thing, "I do not want to burn before I have got to;"
and secondly, "When a fellow has been quartered for seven years or
more close to a Hindú _smáshán_, or burning-ground, it reminds him so
painfully of the unpleasant smell of roast Hindú" (which pervaded his
quarters when he was a struggling ensign or lieutenant). He used to
carry a stick, which it was a pain to lift, to exercise the muscles of
his arms; his Damascus pipe held a quarter of a pound of tobacco; his
elephant-guns, with which he used to trot about Africa, of twenty-four
pounds, which carried a four-ounce ball, I can only just lift; and, on
the other hand, and later on in life, he would buy such diminutive
things that they were almost more fit for a doll's house than for a man.
His handwriting, as everybody knows, was so small as to be almost
invisible, and he used jokingly to say that the printers struck work
when one of his manuscripts went in. _They_ used to make hideous
mistakes, and _he_ used to abuse them in what he jokingly called
"langwidge" all down the margins, and one day a firm sent up a foreman
to say that the men declined to go on if they were abused in that
manner. I was sent to interview the man, and we both laughed so much
we could hardly speak, but he said he would go back and try to pacify
them. Richard used always to say that a wee writing, as if done with a
pin, betokened a big, strong man; a bold, dashing hand, as if written
with the poker, was always a tiny, golden-haired, baby-faced woman.
Sometimes, when people annoyed Richard in little ways, I would say,
"Never mind; why do you take notice of such little things?" and he
invariably answered, "I am like an elephant's trunk; I can pick up a
needle and root up a tree."
In his latter days, though his eyes were as soft and as brilliant and
youthful as they could be, he only required spectacles just at the very
end to read his own writing or small print, and the oculist found that
he had two quite different eyes, which had been complained of in Madame
Gutmansthal's picture, showing what a true artist she was. The right
required No. 50 convex, and the left eye 14 convex. He turned to me and
said, "I always told you that I was a dual man, and I believe that that
particular mania when I am delirious is perfectly correct."
DESCRIPTION OF RICHARD IN EGYPT.
Cutting from the _Argonaut_.
[Sidenote: _Descriptions from Other Sources_.]
Edwin de Leon, for many years Consul-General of the United States in
Egypt, thus writes of the late Sir Richard Burton:--
"Richard Burton was self-reliant, self-sustained, seeking no support
from heaven or earth, substituting self-will for faith and strenuous
effort for Divine assistance; endowed by nature with a frame of
iron and muscles of steel, he was an athlete who might have figured
in the arena in Greek or Roman times. Audacious in speech and act,
and fond of shocking the prejudices of those with whom he talked,
he was the expounder of the most outrageous paradoxes possible to
conceive. He was eminently a social animal; loved the pleasures of
the table, and would talk with a friend all night in preference to
going to bed, and in the Chaucerian style. Yet, with women, I never
knew him even hint an indelicacy; for the charm of his conversation
was to them very great, he had so much to tell. In his earlier days
he was a strikingly handsome man, and even since his face had been
scarred and furrowed by wounds and trials, there yet lingered on that
expressive countenance the 'faded splendour wan' which had survived
his youth. Among his personal habits was that of carrying in his hand
an iron walking-stick, as heavy as a gun, to keep his muscles properly
exercised, and a blow from his fist was like a kick from a horse. Mind
and muscle with him were equally strong propellers, and the animal
nature as vigorous as the intellectual. He had the faculty of making
staunch friends and bitter enemies, and many of each. Burton had a
curious characteristic which he shared with Lord Byron--that of loving
to paint himself much blacker than he really was, and to affect vices,
much as most men affect virtues, and with the same insincerity. In one
of his shipwreck stories, after describing how they all suffered from
the pangs of hunger, and the wolfish glances they began to cast on
each other from time to time as the days wore on and no relief came,
dropping his voice to a mysterious whisper, almost under his breath he
added, 'The cabin-boy was young and fat, and looked very tender, and
on him, more than on any other, such looks were cast, until----' Here
he paused, looked around at the strained and startled faces of his
auditors, in which horror was depicted, and then abruptly concluded,
as though dismissing a disagreeable memory, 'But these are not stories
to be told at a cheerful dinner-party, in a Christian country, and
I had best say no more. Let us turn to some more cheerful subject.'
Of course he was pressed to continue and complete his story, but
stubbornly refused; leaving his hearers in a most unsatisfactory state
of mind as to the _dénouement_ of the unfinished narrative."
DESCRIPTION OF RICHARD IN HIS STUDY AT TRIESTE.
Cutting from _Life_.
"Though standing nearly six feet high, he did not look a tall man, his
broad shoulders, deep chest, and splendidly developed limbs deceiving
the eye as to his real height. His hands and feet were small. His
hair was of the deepest black, and was always worn close-cropped. In
the East he went with his head clean shaven, covered with a fez and
a white cap underneath it. As a talker he was unrivalled. His voice
was soft and musical, contrasting strangely with the commanding tones
which one would fancy necessary for him whose life so often depended
on the power of his tongue over uncivilized men. His laugh was like
the rattle of a pebble thrown across a frozen pond. While the best of
ordinary men never aspire to know more than something of everything,
and everything of something, he might almost without exaggeration be
said to know everything of everything. He was an especial favourite of
young men, who would literally sit at his feet as he talked. To all
he was the kindest and truest of friends, and the brightest and most
uncomplaining of companions in spite of his many disappointments.
"His literary work was always a labour of love with him, and those in
the next room would often hear a hearty laugh burst from him as he
lighted on the quaint conceit of some Oriental chronicler."
He was a man dearly loved by all Eastern races, by children and
servants, and animals; he never made a mistake about character, and
often when I have been quite delighted with people he has warned me
against them, and forbidden me to have anything to do with them. I have
never known him wrong in his estimate.
He had a wonderful prescience of things and events, even of those
things of which he knew the least. I might quote a little common
instance of so trite a thing as the "Argentines." I had some money in
Argentines--not much, only a few hundreds--and one day without any
rhyme or reason he ordered me to take them out. I thought to myself
that if a first-rate lawyer and a first-rate broker put them in, that
it must be right, and that Richard, being anything but a business
man, could not possibly know anything about it, so I did not write
the letter. Six months later he gave me a call; I went into his room.
"Did you ever write that letter that I desired you to write, taking
your money out of the Argentines?" "No, Jemmy," I said; "you know you
know nothing about business, and it is a good percentage." He said
very sternly, "Go and bring your pen and paper directly, and sit down
here, and write it before me, and I will post it myself." He dictated
to me a most imperative letter to my lawyer, desiring him to withdraw
the money the moment he received the letter, without stopping to
write back any questions. It was done, and my lawyer wrote me back
a very aggrieved letter at my want of confidence in the judgment of
his broker, and bitterly complained that I had lost £14. I gave it to
Richard, who was delighted. A fortnight later the smash came. To show
how kind-hearted he is, he called me and said laughingly, "I forbid you
to write and taunt your lawyer; I know it is an awful temptation." He
was so extremely punctiliously conscientious in his conduct to other
people, so full of kindnesses and consideration for the feelings and
peculiarities of other people.
I know that he is appreciated already, but not yet understood. His
nobility of nature and chivalry belonged to the Knights of the Middle
Ages. His science, erudition, and broad views belong to sixty years
hence; his misfortune was not belonging to his Time, and hence the many
failures during his life.
[1] This was a little bit of "chaff," because he was so afraid of
saying too much about himself, that he often made it heavy with
knowledge and science, and suppressed what was interesting as to his
own share in the matter quoted.--I. B.