136. The Summing Up.

The reader will notice from these citations:

(1) That, as we have already said, and as Burton himself partly admitted, Burton's translation is largely a paraphrase of Payne's. This is particularly noticeable in the latter half of the Nights. He takes hundreds—nay thousands—of sentences and phrases from Payne, often without altering a single word. [464] If it be urged that Burton was quite capable of translating the Nights without drawing upon the work of another, we must say that we deeply regret that he allowed the opportunity to pass, for he had a certain rugged strength of style, as the best passages in his Mecca and other books show. In order to ensure originality he ought to have translated every sentence before looking to see how Payne put it, but the temptation was too great for a very busy man—a man with a hundred irons in the fire—and he fell. [465]

(2) That, where there are differences, Payne's translation is invariably the clearer, finer and more stately of the two. Payne is concise, Burton diffuse. [466]

(3) That although Burton is occasionally happy and makes a pat couplet, like the one beginning "Kisras and Caesars," nevertheless Payne alone writes poetry, Burton's verse being quite unworthy of so honourable a name. Not being, like Payne, a poet and a lord of language; and, as he admits, in his notes, not being an initiate in the methods of Arabic Prosody, Burton shirked the isometrical rendering of the verse. Consequently we find him constantly annexing Payne's poetry bodily, sometimes with acknowledgement, oftener without. Thus in Night 867 he takes half a page. Not only does he fail to reproduce agreeably the poetry of the Nights, but he shows himself incapable of properly appreciating it. Notice, for example, his remark on the lovely poem of the Fakir at the end of the story of "Abu Al-Hasan and Abu Ja'afer the Leper," the two versions of which we gave on a preceding page. Burton calls it "sad doggerel," and, as he translates it, so it is. But Payne's version, with its musical subtleties and choice phrases, such as "The thought of God to him his very housemate is," is a delight to the ear and an enchantment of the sense. Mr. Payne in his Terminal Essay singles out the original as one of the finest pieces of devotional verse in the Nights; and worthy of Vaughan or Christina Rossetti. The gigantic nature of Payne's achievement will be realised when we mention that The Arabian Nights contains the equivalent of some twenty thousand decasyllabic lines of poetry, that is to say more than there are in Milton's Paradise Lost, and that he has rendered faithfully the whole of this enormous mass in accordance with the intricate metrical scheme of the original, and in felicitous and beautiful language.

(4) That Burton, who was well read in the old English poets, also introduces beautiful words. This habit, however, is more noticeable in other passages where we come upon cilice, [467] egromancy, [468] verdurous, [469] vergier, [470] rondure, [471] purfled, [472] &c. Often he uses these words with excellent effect, as, for example, "egromancy," [473] in the sentence: "Nor will the egromancy be dispelled till he fall from the horse;" but unfortunately he is picturesque at all costs. Thus he constantly puts "purfled" where he means "embroidered" or "sown," and in the "Tale of the Fisherman and the Jinni," he uses incorrectly the pretty word "cucurbit" [474] to express a brass pot; and many other instances might be quoted. His lapses, indeed, indicate that he had no real sense of the value of words. He uses them because they are pretty, forgetting that no word is attractive except in its proper place, just as colours in painting owe their value to their place in the general colour scheme. He took most of his beautiful words from our old writers, and a few like ensorcelled [475] from previous translators. Unfortunately, too, he spoils his version by the introduction of antique words that are ugly, uncouth, indigestible and yet useless. What, for example, does the modern Englishman make of this, taken from the "Tale of the Wolf and the Fox," "Follow not frowardness, for the wise forbid it; and it were most manifest frowardness to leave me in this pit draining the agony of death and dight to look upon mine own doom, whereas it lieth in thy power to deliver me from my stowre?" [476] Or this: "O rare! an but swevens [477] prove true," from "Kamar-al-Zalam II." Or this "Sore pains to gar me dree," from "The Tale of King Omar," or scores of others that could easily be quoted. [478]

Burton, alas! was also unscrupulous enough to include one tale which, he admitted to Mr. Kirby, does not appear in any redaction of the Nights, namely that about the misfortune that happened to Abu Hassan on his Wedding day. [479] "But," he added, "it is too good to be omitted." Of course the tale does not appear in Payne. To the treatment meted by each translator to the coarsenesses of the Nights we have already referred. Payne, while omitting nothing, renders such passages in literary language, whereas Burton speaks out with the bluntness and coarseness of an Urquhart.

In his letter to Mr. Payne, 22nd October 1884, he says of Mr. Payne's translation, "The Nights are by no means literal but very readable which is the thing." He then refers to Mr. Payne's rendering of a certain passage in the "Story of Sindbad and the Old Man of the Sea," by which it appears that the complaint of want of literality refers, as usual, solely to the presentable rendering of the offensive passages. "I translate," he says **********. "People will look fierce, but ce n'est pas mon affaire." The great value of Burton's translation is that it is the work of a man who had travelled in all the countries in which the scenes are laid; who had spent years in India, Egypt, Syria, Turkey and the Barbary States, and had visited Mecca; who was intimately acquainted with the manners and customs of the people of those countries, and who brought to bear upon his work the experience of a lifetime. He is so thoroughly at home all the while. Still, it is in his annotations and not in his text that he really excells. The enormous value of these no one would now attempt to minimize.

All over the world, as Sir Walter Besant says, "we have English merchants, garrisons, consuls, clergymen, lawyers, physicians, engineers, living among strange people, yet practically ignorant of their manners and thoughts..... it wants more than a knowledge of the tongue to become really acquainted with a people." These English merchants, garrisons, consults and others are strangers in a strange land. It is so very rare that a really unprejudiced man comes from a foreign country to tell us what its people are like, that when such a man does appear we give him our rapt attention. He may tell us much that will shock us, but that cannot be helped.



Chapter XXIX. Burton's Notes



137. Burton's Notes.

These Notes, indeed, are the great speciality of Burton's edition of the Nights. They are upon all manner of subjects—from the necklace of the Pleiades to circumcision; from necromancy to the characteristics of certain Abyssinian women; from devilish rites and ceremonies to precious stones as prophylactics. They deal not only with matters to which the word erotic is generally applied, but also with unnatural practices. There are notes geographical, astrological, geomantic, bibliographical, ethnological, anthropomorphitical; but the pornographic, one need hardly say, hugely predominate. Burton's knowledge was encyclopaedic. Like Kerimeddin [480] he had drunk the Second Phial of the Queen of the Serpents. He was more inquisitive than Vathek. To be sure, he would sometimes ask himself what was the good of it all or what indeed, was the good of anything; and then he would relate the rebuke he once received from an indolent Spaniard whom he had found lying on his back smoking a cigarette. "I was studying the thermometer," said Burton, and I remarked, "'The glass is unusually high.' 'When I'm hot, it's hot,' commented the Spaniard, lazily, 'and when I'm cold it's cold. What more do I want to know?'" Burton, as we have seen, had for a long time devoted himself particularly to the study of vice and to everything that was bizarre and unnatural: eunuchs, pederasts, hermaphrodites, idiots, Augustus-the-Strongs, monstrosities. During his travels he never drank anything but green tea, and if Le Fanu's ideas [481] in In a Glass Darkly are to be respected, this habit is partly responsible for his extraordinary bias. He deals with subjects that are discussed in no other book. He had seen many lands, and, like Hafiz, could say:

"Plunder I bore from far and near, From every harvest gleaned an ear;"

and blighted ears some of them were. No other man could have written these notes; no other man, even if possessed of Burton's knowledge, would have dared to publish them. Practically they are a work in themselves. That they were really necessary for the elucidation of the text we would not for a moment contend. At times they fulfil this office, but more often than not the text is merely a peg upon which to hang a mass of curious learning such as few other men have ever dreamt of. The voluminous note on circumcision [482] is an instance in point. There is no doubt that he obtained his idea of esoteric annotation from Gibbon, who, though he used the Latin medium, is in this respect the true father of Burton. We will give specimens of the annotations, taken haphazard—merely premising that the most characteristic of them—those at which the saints in heaven knit their brows—necessarily in a work of this kind exclude themselves from citations:

"Laughter. 'Sweetness of her smile'(Abu al Husn and Tawaddud). Arab writers often mention the smile of beauty, but rarely, after European fashion, the laugh, which they look upon as undignified. A Moslem will say 'Don't guffaw (kahkahah) in that way; leave giggling and grinning to monkeys and Christians.' The Spaniards, a grave people, remark that Christ never laughed." [483]

"Swan-maidens. 'And became three maidens' (Story of Janshah). [484] We go much too far for an explanation of the legend; a high bred girl is so much like a swan [485] in many points that the idea readily suggests itself. And it is also aided by the old Egyptian (and Platonic) belief in pre-existence, and by the Rabbinic and Buddhistic doctrine of Ante-Natal sin, to say nothing of metempsychosis. (Josephus' Antiq., xvii., 153)."

"The Firedrake. 'I am the Haunter of this place' (Ma'aruf the Cobbler). [486] Arab, Amir=one who inhabiteth. Ruins and impure places are the favourite homes of the Jinn."

"Sticking Coins on the Face. 'Sticks the gold dinar' (Ali Nur al-Din). [487] It is the custom for fast youths in Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere to stick small gold pieces, mere spangles of metal, on the brows, cheeks and lips of the singing and dancing girls, and the perspiration and mask of cosmetics make them adhere for a time, till fresh movement shakes them off."

"Fillets hung on trees. 'Over the grave was a tall tree, on which hung fillets of red and green' (Otbah and Rayya). [488] Lane and many others are puzzled about the use of these articles. In many cases they are suspended to trees in order to transfer sickness from the body to the tree and to whoever shall touch it. The Sawahili people term such articles a Keti (seat or vehicle) for the mysterious haunter of the tree, who prefers occupying it to the patient's person. Briefly the custom, still popular throughout Arabia, is African and Fetish."

The value of the notes depends, of course, upon the fact that they are the result of personal observation. In his knowledge of Eastern peoples, languages and customs Burton stands alone. He is first and there is no second. His defence of his notes will be found in the last volume of his Supplemental Nights. We may quote a few sentences to show the drift of it. He says "The England of our day would fain bring up both sexes and keep all ages in profound ignorance of sexual and intersexual relations; and the consequences of that imbecility are particularly cruel and afflicting. How often do we hear women in Society lamenting that they have absolutely no knowledge of their own physiology.... Shall we ever understand that ignorance is not innocence. What an absurdum is a veteran officer who has spent a quarter of a century in the East without knowing that all Moslem women are circumcised, and without a notion of how female circumcision is effected," and then he goes on to ridicule what the "modern Englishwoman and her Anglo-American sister have become under the working of a mock modesty which too often acts cloak to real devergondage; and how Respectability unmakes what Nature made." [489]

Mr. Payne's edition contains notes, but they were intended simply to elucidate the text. Though succinct, they are sufficient for the general reader. Here and there, however, we come upon a more elaborate note, such as that upon the tuning of the lute (Vol. viii., 179), where Mr. Payne's musical knowledge enables him to elucidate an obscure technical point. He also identified (giving proper chapter and verse references), collated, and where needful corrected all the Koranic citations with which the text swarms, a task which demanded great labour and an intimate knowledge of the Koran. The appropriate general information bearing on the work he gave in a succinct and artistic form in his elaborate Terminal Essay—a masterpiece of English—in which he condensed the result of erudition and research such as might have furnished forth several folio volumes.



138. The Terminal Essay.

Finally there is the Terminal Essay, in which Burton deals at great length not only with the origin and history of the Nights and matters erotic, but also with unnatural practices. This essay, with the exception of the pornographic portions, will be found, by those who take the trouble to make comparisons, to be under large obligations to Mr. Payne's Terminal Essay, the general lines and scheme of which it follows closely. Even Mr. Payne's special phrases such as "sectaries of the god Wunsch," [490] are freely used, and without acknowledgement. The portions on sexual matters, however, are entirely original. Burton argues that the "naive indecencies of the text of The Arabian Nights are rather gaudisserie than prurience." "It is," he says, "a coarseness of language, not of idea.... Such throughout the East is the language of every man, woman and child, from prince to peasant." "But," he continues, "there is another element in the Nights, and that is one of absolute obscenity, utterly repugnant to English readers, even the least prudish." Still, upon this subject he offers details, because it does not enter into his plan "to ignore any theme which is interesting to the Orientalist and the Anthropologist. To assert that such lore is unnecessary is to state, as every traveller knows, an absurdum."

That these notes and the Terminal Essay were written in the interests of Oriental and Anthropological students may be granted, but that they were written solely in the interests of these students no one would for a moment contend. Burton simply revelled in all studies of the kind. Whatever was knowledge he wanted to know; and we may add whatever wasn't knowledge. He was insatiable. He was like the little boy who, seeing the ocean for the first time, cried, "I want to drink it all up." And Burton would have drunk it all. He would have swallowed down not only all the waters that were under the firmament but also all the creatures, palatable and unpalatable—especially the unpalatable—that sported therein.



139. Final Summing up.

To sum up finally: (1) Both translations are complete, they are the only complete translations in English, and the world owes a deep debt of gratitude to both Payne and Burton.

(2) According to Arabists, Payne's Translation is the more accurate of the two. [491]

(3) Burton's translation is largely a paraphrase of Payne's.

(4) Persons who are in love with the beauty of restraint as regards ornament, and hold to the doctrine which Flaubert so well understood and practised, and Pater so persistently preached will consider Payne's translation incomparably the finer.

(5) Burton's translation is for those who, caring nothing for this doctrine, revel in rococo work, a style flamboyant at all costs, and in lawless splendours; and do not mind running against expressions that are far too blunt for the majority of people.

(6) Payne's rendering of the metrical portions is poetry; Burton's scarcely verse.

(7) Burton's Terminal Essay, with the exception of the pornographic sections, is largely indebted to Payne's.

(8) The distinctive features of Burton's work are his notes and the pornographic sections of his Terminal Essay—the whole consisting of an amazing mass of esoteric learning, the result of a lifetime's study. Many of the notes have little, if any, connection with the text, and they really form an independent work.

Burton himself says: "Mr. Payne's admirable version appeals to the Orientalist and the Stylist, not to the many-headed; and mine to the anthropologist and student of Eastern manners and customs." Burton's Arabian Nights has been well summed up as "a monument of knowledge and audacity." [492]

Having finished his task Burton straightway commenced the translation of a number of other Arabic tales which he eventually published as Supplemental Nights [493] in six volumes, the first two of which correspond with Mr. Payne's three volumes entitled Tales from the Arabic.



140. Mr. Swinburne on Burton.

Congratulations rained in on Burton from all quarters; but the letters that gave him most pleasure were those from Mr. Ernest A. Floyer and Mr. A. C. Swinburne, whose glowing sonnet:

"To Richard F. Burton On his Translation of the Arabian Nights"

is well known. "Thanks to Burton's hand," exclaims the poet magnificently:

"All that glorious Orient glows Defiant of the dusk. Our twilight land Trembles; but all the heaven is all one rose, Whence laughing love dissolves her frosts and snows."

In his Poems and Ballads, 3rd Series, 1889, Mr. Swinburne pays yet another tribute to the genius of his friend. Its dedication runs:—"Inscribed to Richard F. Burton. In redemption of an old pledge and in recognition of a friendship which I must always count among the highest honours of my life."

If private persons accorded the work a hearty reception, a large section of the press greeted it with no les cordiality. "No previous editor," said The Standard, "had a tithe of Captain Burton's acquaintance with the manners and customs of the Moslem East. Apart from the language, the general tone of the Nights is exceptionally high and pure. The devotional fervour... often rises to the boiling point of fanaticism, and the pathos is sweet and deep, genuine and tender, simple and true.... In no other work is Eastern life so vividly pourtrayed. This work, illuminated with notes so full of learning, should give the nation an opportunity for wiping away that reproach of neglect which Captain Burton seems to feel more keenly than he cares to express." The St. James's Gazette called it "One of the most important translations to which a great English scholar has ever devoted himself."

Then rose a cry "Indecency, indecency! Filth, filth!" It was said, to use an Arabian Nights expression, that he had hauled up all the dead donkeys in the sea. The principal attack came from The Edinburgh Review (July 1886). "Mr. Payne's translation," says the writer, "is not only a fine piece of English, it is also, save where the exigencies of rhyme compelled a degree of looseness, remarkably literal.... Mr. Payne translates everything, and when a sentence is objectionable in Arabic, he makes it equally objectionable in English, or, rather, more so, since to the Arabs a rude freedom of speech is natural, while to us it is not." Then the reviewer turns to Burton, only, however, to empty out all the vials of his indignation—quite forgetting that the work was intended only for "curious students of Moslem manners," and not for the general public, from whom, indeed, its price alone debarred it. [494] He says: "It is bad enough in the text of the tales to find that Captain Burton is not content with plainly calling a spade a spade, but will have it styled a dirty shovel; but in his notes he goes far beyond this, and the varied collection of abominations which he brings forward with such gusto is a disgrace and a shame to printed literature.... The different versions, however, have each its proper destination—Galland for the nursery, Lane for the library, Payne for the study and Burton for the sewers." [495]

Burton's spirited reply will be found in the last volume of his Supplemental Nights. Put compendiously, his argument is: "I had knowledge of certain subjects such as no other man possessed. Why should it die with me? Facts are facts, whether men are acquainted with them or not." "But," he says, "I had another object while making the notes a Repertory of Eastern knowledge in its esoteric form. Having failed to free the Anthropological Society [496] from the fetters of mauvaise honte and the mock-modesty which compels travellers and ethnographical students to keep silence concerning one side of human nature (and that side the most interesting to mankind) I proposed to supply the want in these pages.... While Pharisee and Philistine may be or may pretend to be 'shocked' and 'horrified' by my pages, the sound commonsense of a public, which is slowly but surely emancipating itself from the prudish and prurient reticences and the immodest and immoral modesties of the early 19th century, will in good time do me, I am convinced, full and ample justice."

In order to be quite ready, should prosecution ensue, Burton compiled what he called The Black Book, which consisted of specimens, of, to use his own expression, the "turpiloquium" of the Bible and Shakespeare. It was never required for its original purpose, but he worked some portions into the Terminal Essay to The Arabian Nights. [497] And here it may be said that when Burton attacks the Bible and Christianity he is inconsistent and requires to be defended against himself. The Bible, as we have seen was one of the three books that he constantly carried about with him, and few men could have had greater admiration for its more splendid passages. We know, too, that the sincere Christian had his respect. But his Terminal Essay and these notes appeared at a moment when the outcry was raised against his Arabian Nights; consequently, when he fires off with "There is no more immoral work than the Old Testament," the argument must be regarded as simply one of Tu quoque. Instead of attacking the Bible writers as he did, he should, to have been consistent, have excused them, as he excused the characters in The Arabian Nights, with: "Theirs is a coarseness of language, not of idea, &c., &c.... Such throughout the East is the language of every man, woman and child," [498] and so on. The suggestion, for example, that Ezekiel and Hosea are demoralizing because of certain expressions is too absurd for refutation. The bloodshed of the Bible horrified him; but he refused to believe that the "enormities" inflicted by the Jews on neighbouring nations were sanctioned by the Almighty. [499] "The murderous vow of Jephthah," David's inhuman treatment of the Moabites, and other events of the same category goaded him to fury.

If he attacks Christianity, nevertheless, his diatribe is not against its great Founder, but against the abuses that crept into the church even in the lifetime of His earliest followers; and again, not so much against Christianity in general as against Roman Catholicism. Still, even after making every allowance, his article is mainly a glorification of the crescent at the expense of the cross.



Chapter XXX. 21st November 1885-5th June 1886 K. C. M. G.



Bibliography:

74. Six Months at Abbazia. 1888. 75. Lady Burton's Edition of the Arabian Nights. 1888.



141. In Morocco, 21st November 1885.

On October 28th the Burtons went down to Hatfield, where there was a large party, but Lord Salisbury devoted himself chiefly to Burton. After they had discussed the Eastern Question, Lord Salisbury said to Burton "Now go to your room, where you will be quiet, and draw up a complete programme for Egypt."

Burton retired, but in two or three minutes returned with a paper which he handed to Lord Salisbury.

"You've soon done it," said his Lordship, and on unfolding the paper he found the single word "Annex."

"If I were to write for a month," commented Burton, on noticing Lord Salisbury's disappointment, "I could not say more."

However, being further pressed, he elaborated his very simple programme. [500] The policy he advocated was a wise and humane one; and had it been instantly adopted, untold trouble for us and much oppression of the miserable natives would have been avoided. Since then we have practically followed his recommendations, and the present prosperous state of Egypt is the result.

On 21st November 1885, Burton left England for Tangier, which he reached on the 30th, and early in January he wrote to the Morning Post a letter on the Home Rule question, which he thought might be settled by the adoption of a Diet System similar to that which obtained in Austro-Hungary. On January 15th he wants to know how Mr. Payne's translation of Boccaccio [501] is proceeding and continues: "I look forward to Vol. i. with lively pleasure. You will be glad to hear that to-day I finished my translation and to-morrow begin with the Terminal Essay, so that happen what may subscribers are safe. Tangier is beastly but not bad for work.... It is a place of absolute rascality, and large fortunes are made by selling European protections—a regular Augean stable."

Mrs. Burton and Lisa left England at the end of January, and Burton met them at Gibraltar.



142. K.C.M.G., 5th February 1886.

When the first volume of The Arabian Nights appeared Burton was sixty-four. So far his life had been a long series of disappointments. His labours as an explorer had met with no adequate recognition, the Damascus Consulship could be remembered only with bitterness, his numerous books had sold badly. Every stone which for forty years he had rolled up proved to be only a Sisyphus stone. He was neglected, while every year inferior men—not to be mentioned in the same breath with him—were advanced to high honours. Small wonder that such treatment should have soured him or that—a vehement man by nature—he should often have given way to paroxysms of anger. Still he kept on working. Then all of a sudden the transplendent sun sailed from its clouds and poured upon him its genial beams. He had at last found the golden Chersonese. His pockets, so long cobwebbed, now bulged with money. Publishers, who had been coy, now fought for him. All the world—or nearly all—sang his praises. [502] Lastly came the K.C.M.G., an honour that was conferred upon him owing in large measure to the noble persistency of the Standard newspaper, which in season and out of season "recalled to the recollection of those with whom lay the bestowal of ribbons and crosses the unworthy neglect with which he had been so long treated."

Lady Burton thus describes the reception of the news. "On the 5th of February 1886, a very extraordinary thing happened [503]—it was a telegram addressed 'Sir Richard Burton!' He tossed it over to me and said, 'Some fellow is playing me a practical joke, or else it is not for me. I shall not open it, so you may as well ring the bell and give it back again.' 'Oh no,' I said, 'I shall open it if you don't.'"

It was from Lord Salisbury, conveying in the kindest terms that the queen had made him K.C.M.G. in reward for his services. He looked very serious and quite uncomfortable, and said, "Oh, I shall not accept it." [504] His wife told him, however, that it ought to be accepted because it was a certain sign that the Government intended to give him a better appointment. So he took it as a handsel.



143. Burton at 65.

Having accompanied Sir Richard Burton to the meridian of his fame, we may fitly pause a moment and ask what manner of a man he was at this moment. Though sixty-five, and subject to gout, he was still strong and upright. He had still the old duskened features, dark, piercing eyes, and penthouse brows, but the long and pendulous Chinaman moustaches had shrunk till they scarcely covered his mouth. The "devil's jaw" could boast only a small tuft of hair. There were wrinkles in "the angel's forehead." If meddlesome Time had also furrowed his cheeks, nevertheless the most conspicuous mark there was still the scar of that great gash received in the ding-dong fight at Berbera. His hair, which should have been grizzled, he kept dark, Oriental fashion, with dye, and brushed forward. Another curious habit was that of altering his appearance. In the course of a few months he would have long hair, short hair, big moustache, small moustache, long beard, short beard, no beard. Everyone marked his curious, feline laugh, "made between his teeth." The change in the world's treatment of him, and in his circumstances, is noticeable to his countenance. In photographs taken previous to 1886 his look betrays the man who feels that he has been treated neglectfully by an ungrateful world for which he had made enormous sacrifices. Indeed, looking at the matter merely from a pecuniary standpoint, he must have spent at least L20,000 of his own money in his various explorations. He is at once injured, rancorous, sullen, dangerous. All these pictures exhibit a scowl. In some the scowl is very pronounced, and in one he looks not unlike a professional prize-fighter. They betray a mind jaundiced, but defiant. A restless, fiery soul, his temper, never of the best, had grown daily more gnarled and perverse. Woe betide the imprudent human who crossed him! What chance had anybody against a man who had the command of all the forcible words in twenty-eight languages! His peremptory voice everywhere ensured obedience. To all save his dearest friends he was proud and haughty. Then came the gold shower. There was actually a plethora of money. The world, so long irreconcilable, had acknowledged his merits, and the whole man softened. The angelical character of the forehead gradually spread downwards, and in time tempered even the ferocity of the terrible jaw. It was the same man, but on better terms with himself and everybody else. We see him sitting or strolling in his garden with quite a jaunty air—and when there is a cigar in his mouth, the shadow of which modifies still more the characteristics of that truculent region, it is hard to believe that we are looking at the same man. He has a youthful vigour, an autumnal green. In one photograph Lady Burton, devoted as ever to her husband, is seen nestling at his side and leaning her head against his shoulder. She had grown uncomfortably stout and her tight-fitting dress was hard put to it to bear the strain. Her glorious hair was now grown gray and thin, and it was generally hidden by a not very becoming big yellowish wig with curls, which made her look like a magnified Marie Antoinette.

Burton's chief pleasure in his garden was feeding the birds. They used to wait for him in flocks on an almond tree, and became "quite imperious in their manners if he did not attend to them properly." He loved the sparrow especially, for Catullus' sake.

His gigantic personality impressed all who met him. Conversation with him reduced the world from a sphere to a spherule. It shrank steadily—he had traversed so much of it, and he talked about out-of-the-way places so familiarly. As of old, when friends stayed with him he never wanted to go to bed, and they, too, listening to his learned, animated and piquant talk, were quite content to outwatch the Bear. As an anthropologist his knowledge was truly amazing. "He was also a first-rate surgeon and had read all the regular books." [505] People called him, for the vastness of his knowledge, the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He looked to the past and the future. To the past, for no one was more keenly interested in archaeology. He delighted to wander on forlorn moors among what Shelley calls "dismal cirques of Druid stones." To the future, for he continued to study spiritualism, and to gaze into crystals. He longed to make himself master of the "darkling secrets of Eternity." [506] Both he and Lady Burton were, to use Milton's expression, "struck with superstition as with a planet." She says: "From Arab or gipsy he got.... his mysticism, his superstition (I am superstitious enough, God knows, but he was far more so), his divination." [507] Some of it, however, was derived from his friendship in early days with the painter-astrologer Varley. If a horse stopped for no ascertained reason or if a house martin fell they wondered what it portended. They disliked the bodeful chirp of the bat, the screech of the owl. Even the old superstition that the first object seen in the morning—a crow, a cripple, &c.—determines the fortunes of the day, had his respect. "At an hour," he comments, "when the senses are most impressionable the aspect of unpleasant spectacles has a double effect." [508] He was disturbed by the "drivel of dreams," and if he did not himself search for the philosopher's stone he knew many men who were so engaged (he tells us there were a hundred in London alone) and he evidently sympathised with them.

Fear of man was a feeling unknown to him, and he despised it in others. "Of ten men," he used to say, quoting an Osmanli proverb, "nine are women." Behind his bed hung a map of Africa, and over that a motto in Arabic which meant:

"All things pass."

This saying he used to observe, was always a consolation to him.

If he had been eager for money, it was only for what money would buy. He wanted it because it would enable him to do greater work. "I was often stopped, in my expeditions," he told Dr. Baker, "for the want of a hundred pounds." He was always writing: in the house, in the desert, in a storm, up a tree, at dinner, in bed, ill or well, fresh or tired,—indeed, he used to say that he never was tired. There was nothing histrionic about him, and he never posed, except "before fools and savages." He was frank, straightforward, and outspoken, and his face was an index of his mind. Every thought was visible just "as through a crystal case the figured hours are seen." He was always Burton, never by any chance any one else. As. Mr. A. C. Swinburne said of him: "He rode life's lists as a god might ride." Of English Literature and especially of poetry he was an omnivorous reader. He expressed warm admiration for Chaucer, "jolly old Walter Mapes," Butler's Hudibras, and Byron, especially Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, with its allusions to his beloved Tasso, Ariosto and Boccaccio. Surely, however, he ought not to have tried to set us against that tender line of Byron's,

"They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died," [509]

by pointing out that the accent of Arqua is rightly on the second syllable, and by remarking: "Why will not poets mind their quantities in lieu of stultifying their lines by childish ignorance." [510] Then, too, he savagely attacked Tennyson for his "rasher of bacon line"—"the good Haroun Alraschid," [511] Raschid being properly accented on the last syllable. Of traveller authors, he preferred "the accurate Burckhardt." He read with delight Boswell's Johnson, Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands, Renan's Life of Jesus, Gibbon, whom he calls "our great historian" [512] and the poems of Coleridge. At Cowper he never lost an opportunity of girding, both on account of his Slave Ballads [513] and the line:

"God made the country and man made the town." [514]

"Cowper," he comments, "had evidently never seen a region untouched by the human hand." It goes without saying that he loved "his great namesake," as he calls him, "Robert Burton, of melancholy and merry, of facete and juvenile memory." Of contemporary work he enjoyed most the poems of D. G. Rossetti, Mr. Swinburne, Mr. John Payne and FitzGerald's Rubaiyat, and we find him praising Mr. Edmund Gosse's lyrics. Of novelists Dickens was his favourite. He called Darwin "our British Aristotle." Eothen [515] was "that book of books." He never forgave Carlyle for denouncing The Arabian Nights as "downright lies" and "unwholesome literature;" Miss Martineau, as an old maid, was, of course, also out of court. If she had written Shakespeare, it would have been all the same. He enjoyed a pen and ink fight, even as in those old Richmond School days he had delighted in fisticuffs. "Peace and quiet are not in my way." And as long as he got his adversary down he was still not very particular what method he employed.

Unlike so many of his fellow-countrymen, he was a lover or art, and had visited all the galleries in Europe. "If anyone," he used to say, "thinks the English have the artistic eye, let him stand in the noblest site in Europe, Trafalgar Square, and look around." On another occasion he described the square as "the nation's last phase of artistic bathos." The facade of the National Gallery was his continual butt.

A fine handwriting, he said, bespoke the man of audacity and determination; and his own might have been done with a pin. Then he used to split his words as if they were Arabic; writing, for example, "con tradict" for contradict. When young ladies teased him to put something in their albums he generally wrote:

"Shawir hunna wa khalif hunna,"

which may be translated:

"Ask their advice, ye men of wit And always do the opposite."

Another of his favourite sayings against women was the Persian couplet:

"Agar nek budi zan u Ray-i-Zan Zan-ra Ma-zan nam budi, na Zan," [516]

which may be rendered:

"If good were in woman, of course it were meeter To say when we think of her, Beat not, not Beat her."

Zan meaning "woman" and also "beat," and ma-zan "beat not."

There was in Burton, as in most great men, a touch of the Don Quixote, derived, no doubt, in his case, from his father. He was generous and magnanimous, and all who knew him personally spoke of him with affection. He was oftenest referred to as "a dear chap." Arbuthnot regarded him as a paladin, with no faults whatever. When younger he had, as we have noticed, never undervalued a good dinner, but as he advanced in years, everything—food, sleep, exercise—had to give way before work.



144. More Anecdotes.

For silver he had a conspicuous weakness. "Every person," he used to say, "has some metal that influences him, and mine is silver." He would have every possible article about him of that metal—walking-stick knobs, standishes, modern cups, ancient goblets—all of gleamy silver. Had he been able to build an Aladdin's palace it would have been all of silver. He even regarded it as a prophylactic against certain diseases. If his eyes got tired through reading he would lie on his back with a florin over each. When the gout troubled him, silver coins had to be bound to his feet; and the household must have been very thankful for this supposed panacea, for when in pain, Burton, never a placid creature, had tremendous outbursts of anger. One of these scenes, which occurred at an hotel, is thus described by a witness. "The dinner had been ordered at six. At half-past the hour it was not ready. The waiter was summoned. He made excuse. "Mille tonnerres! Ventrebleu!" roared Burton with a volley of unutterable language which he only could translate. The waiter literally flew before the storm, looking back at the witness with "Mais, mon Dieu, l'Anglais!" The dinner quickly arrived, and with the soup, Burton recovered his equanimity, though inveighing against all waiters, and the Triestine in particular." [517]

Another anecdote of this period reveals Burton doing a little smuggling. One day, we are told, Lady Burton invited the consular chaplain to accompany her to the quay. Stopping her cab just in front of the Custom House, she induced her companion to talk to the Custom house officer while she herself went on board a vessel to see about a case of wine for her husband. Presently a porter came with the case and some loose bottles, the later being placed by the chaplain's orders in the bottom of the carriage. No sooner had this been done than Lady Burton followed, and stepping into the cab bade the coachman drive off. Up to this moment the chaplain had kept watch, smoking a cigar, at the window of the carriage. The officer seeing a case being placed in the carriage was about to make inquiry just as the coachman whipped up the horse. Lady Burton smilingly saluted the officer from the window and thus allayed his suspicions. He returned her nod with a military salute, and was soon invisible. The speed, however, was too much for the loose bottles, and the duty was paid in kind, as the wine flowed freely at the bottom of the cab, while Burton pretended to rate his wife for exposing him to the charge of smuggling and damaging the reputation of the chaplain. [518]

At Trieste Burton was always popular. The people appreciated his genius and sympathised with his grievances, and he could truly say of them in the words of his prototype, Ovid:

"They wish, good souls, to keep me, yet I know They wish me gone, because I want to go." [519]

Not that he pleased everyone. Far from it, and hereby hangs a delectable anecdote. Some Englishman at Trieste, who took umbrage on account of the colossal muddle Burton made with his accounts and the frequency of his absence, wrote to the Foreign Office something to this effect. "As Sir Richard Burton is nearly always away from his post and the Vice-Consul has to do the greater portion of the work, why on earth don't you get rid of Sir Richard and let the Vice-Consul take his place? I wonder the Foreign Office can put up with him at all."

To which came the following graceful reply. "Dear Sir,—We look upon the consulship of Trieste as a gift to Sir Richard Burton for his services to the nation, and we must decline to interfere with him in any way." [520]



Chapter XXXI. Burton's Religion



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]



Chapter XXXII. 5th June 1886-15th April 1888, Burton and Social Questions: Anecdotes



147. The Population Question.

In social questions Burton took a keen interest. Indeed he was in many respects a man far in advance of his age. In denouncing various evils he betrays the earnestness of a Carlyle, and when propounding plans for the abolition of the Slave Trade in "that Devil's Walk and Purlieu," East Africa, Saul becomes one of the prophets. That he was no saint we should have known if he himself had not told us; but he had, as he believed, his special work to do in the world and he did it with all his might. Though a whirlwind of a man, he had, as we have seen, the tenderest of hearts, he thought with sorrow of the sufferings of the poor, and he often said to his wife: "When I get my pension we'll spend the rest of our lives in helping the submerged tenth." Although sympathising warmly with the efforts of General Booth and other men who were trying to grapple with social evils, he could see, nevertheless, that they touched only the fringe of the difficulty. He was, broadly speaking, what is now known as a Neo-Mathusian, that is to say, he held that no man had a right to bring into the world a larger number of children than he could support with comfort, that the poor ought to be advised to limit their families, and that persons suffering from certain terrible diseases ought not to be allowed to marry, or at any rate to have children.

Himself a man of splendid physique, Burton wanted to see every man in England physically healthy and strong. He considered it abominable that infant monstrosities or children born blind should be allowed to live, and held that showmen and others who exhibit monstrosities should be promptly jailed. "Indeed," he says, "it is a question if civilisation may not be compelled to revive the law of Lycurgus, which forbade a child, male or female, to be brought up without the approbation of public officers appointed ad hoc. One of the curses of the 19th century is the increased skill of the midwife and the physician, who are now able to preserve worthless lives and to bring up semi-abortions whose only effect upon the breed is increased degeneracy." [534] He thought with Edward FitzGerald and many another sympathiser with the poor, that it is the height of folly for a labouring man living in a cottage with only two small bedrooms and earning twelve shillings a week to burden himself with a family of from ten to a dozen. Three or four children he considered enough for anybody. At the same time he perceived that the Neo-Malthusian system might be abused—that is to say, rich persons who could well afford to bring up respectable-sized families might be tempted to restrict the number to one or two. [535] Consequently, in the Terminal Essay to the Arabian Nights, we find him recommending the study of an Arabic work, Kitab al Bah not only to the anthropologist but also to the million. He says, "The conscientious study would be useful to humanity by teaching the use and unteaching the abuse of the Malthusian system, [536] whereby the family is duly limited to the necessities of society." At the present time—with the diminishing birth-rate and when the subject is discussed freely in every upper and middle class home in England—these ideas cause no wonderment; but in those days they were novel.



148. New Projects.

We left the Burtons, it will be remembered, at Gibraltar. After a short stay there, they crossed over to Morocco in a cattle tug. Neither of them liked Tangiers, still, if the Consulate had been conferred upon Sir Richard, it would have given them great happiness. They were, however, doomed to disappointment. Lord Salisbury's short-lived administration of 1886 had been succeeded by a Liberal Government with Lord Rosebery as Premier; and Tangiers was given to Mr. (afterwards Sir) W. Kirby Green. [537] The Burtons were back in Trieste at the end of March.

The success of The Arabian Nights, which was owing entirely to its anthropological and pornographic notes, was for Sir Richard Burton both good and bad. It was good because it removed for the remainder of his life all pecuniary anxieties; it was bad because it led him to devote himself exclusively to subjects which certainly should not occupy exclusively the attention of any man. Henceforth every translation was to be annotated from a certain point of view. [538] One can but regret this perversity, for the old Roman and other authors have unpleasantnesses enough without accentuating them. Thus in reading some sweet poem of Catullus, spoilt by perhaps a single objectionable line, we do not want our attention drawn particularly to the blemish. Unfortunately, Sir Richard now made this kind of work his speciality, and it would be idle—or rather it would be untrue—to deny that he now chose certain books for translation, not on account of their beautiful poetry and noble thoughts, but because they lent themselves to pungent annotation. Indeed, his passion for this sort of literature had become a monomania. [539] He insisted, however, and he certainly believed, that he was advancing the interests of science; nor could any argument turn him. We wish we could say that it was chiefly for their beauties that he now set himself to translate Catullus, Ausonius, [540] and Apuleius. He did appreciate their beauties; the poets and the classic prose writers were to him as the milk of paradise; and some of his annotations would have illuminated the best passages, but the majority of them were avowedly to be consecrate to the worst. Having in The Arabian Nights given the world the fruits of his enquiries in Eastern lands, and said his say, he might with advantage have let the subject rest. He had certainly nothing new to tell us about the manners and customs of the Romans. Then again, for the translating of so delicate, so musical and so gracious a poet as Catullus he was absolutely and entirely unqualified. However, to Catullus he now turned. Sirmio and Rome succeeded to Baghdad and Damascus; jinni and ghoul fled before hoofed satyrs and old Silenus shaking his green stick of lilies. As we shall see, however, he did not begin the translation in earnest till January 1890. [541]



149. Mr. A. G. Ellis and Professor Blumhardt. 5th June 1886-5th April 1887.

On June 5th the Burtons and their "Magpie Trunk" again left Trieste and travelled via Innsbruck, Zurich, Bale and Boulogne to England. After a short stay at Folkestone with Lady Stisted and her daughter, they went on to London, whence Burton memorialized the vice-chancellor and the curators of the Bodleian Library for the loan of the Wortley Montagu manuscripts of the Arabian Nights. Not a private loan, but a temporary transference to the India Office under the charge of Dr. R. Rost. On November 1st came a refusal, and Burton, at great inconvenience to himself, had to go to Oxford. "The Bodleian," he says, "is the model of what a reading library should not be, and the contrast of its treasures with their mean and miserable surroundings is a scandal." He did not know in which he suffered most, the Bodleian, the Radcliffe or the Rotunda. Finally, however, the difficulty was got over by having the required pages photographed.

He now wrote to the Government and begged to be allowed, at the age of sixty-six, to retire on full pension. His great services to the country and to learning were set down, but though fifty persons of importance in the political and literary world supported the application, it was refused. It is, however, only just to the Government to say that henceforward Burton was allowed "leave" whenever he wanted it. An easier post than that at Trieste it would have been impossible to imagine, still, he was in a measure tied, and the Government missed an opportunity of doing a graceful act to one of its most distinguished servants, and to one of the most brilliant of Englishmen.

Then followed a holiday in Scotland, where the Burtons were the guests of Mr. (now Sir) Alexander Baird of Urie. Back in London, they lunched at different times with F. F. Arbuthnot, G. A. Sala, A. C. Swinburne, and "dear old Larkin"—now 85—in whose house at Alexandria, Burton had stayed just before his Mecca journey. It was apparently during this visit that Burton gave to his cousin St. George Burton a seal showing on one side the Burton crest, on another the Burton Arms, and on the third a man's face and a hand with thumb to the nose and fingers spread out. "Use it," said Burton, "when you write to a d——-d snob." And he conveyed the belief that it would be used pretty often.

On 16th September 1886, writing to Mr. Kirby [542] from "United Service Club," Pall Mall, Burton says, "We here have been enjoying splendid weather, and a really fine day in England (I have seen only two since May) is worth a week anywhere else.... You will find your volumes [543] sent to you regularly. No. 1 caused big sensation. A wonderful leader about it in Standard (Mrs. Gamp, of all people!) followed by abuse in Pall Mall. I have come upon a young woman friend greedily reading it in open drawing-room, and when I warned another against it, she answered: 'Very well, Billy [her husband] has a copy, and I shall read it at once.'"

Later Burton's curiosity was aroused by the news that Mr. A. G. Ellis, of the British Museum, had shown Mr. Kirby an edition of Alaeddin in Malay. [544] "Let me know," he says, "when you go to see Mr. Ellis. I especially want to accompany you, and must get that Malay version of Alaeddin. Lord Stanley of Alderley could translate it."

It was about this time that Burton decided to make a new and lavishly annotated translation of The Scented Garden. To the Kama Shastra edition of 1886 we have already referred, and we shall deal fully with the whole subject in a later chapter.

On October 6th the Burtons heard Mr. Heron Allen lecture on palmistry at Hampstead. For some weeks Burton was prostrated again by his old enemy, the gout, but Lord Stanley of Alderley, F. F. Arbuthnot, and other friends went and sat with him, so the illness had its compensations. A visit to Mr. John Payne, made, as usual, at tea time, is next recorded, and there was to have been another visit, but Burton, who was anxious to get to Folkestone to see his sister, had to omit it.

On January 10th 1887, he writes to Mr. Payne as follows:

"That last cup of tea came to grief, I ran away from London abruptly, feeling a hippishness gradually creep over my brain; longing to see a sight of the sun and so forth. We shall cross over next Thursday (if the weather prove decent) and rush up to Paris, where I shall have some few days' work in the Bibliotheque Nationale. Thence to Cannes, the Riviera, &c. At the end of my 5th Vol. (Supplemental) I shall walk in to Edin[burgh] Review. [545] ... I hope you like Vol. x. and its notices of your work. I always speak of it in the same terms, always with the same appreciation and admiration."

On January 13th 1887, the Burtons reached Paris, where Sir Richard had the pleasure of meeting Herr Zotenberg, discoverer of the Arabic originals of Alaeddin and Zayn al Asnam; and thence they proceeded to Cannes, where the state of Burton's health gave his wife great uneasiness. She says, "I saw him dripping his pen anywhere except into the ink. When he tried to say something he did not find his words." An awful fit of "epileptiform convulsions," the result of suppressed gout, followed, and the local doctors who were called in came to the conclusion that Burton could not recover. They thought it better, however, that their opinion should be conveyed to him by a perfect stranger, so they deputed Dr. Grenfell Baker, a young man who was then staying at Cannes, to perform the painful duty.

Dr. Baker entered the sick room and broke the news to Burton as best he could.

"Then you suppose I am going to die?" said Burton.

"The medical men who have been holding a consultation are of that opinion."

Shrugging his shoulders, Burton said, "Ah, well!—sit down," and then he told Dr. Baker a story out of The Arabian Nights. Dr. Baker remained a fortnight, and then Sir Richard, who decided to have a travelling medical attendant, sent to England for Dr. Ralph Leslie, who a little later joined him at Trieste.

To his circle of friends Burton now added Mr. A. G. Ellis, already referred to, Professor James F. Blumhardt, of the British Museum, and Professor Cecil Bendall, of University College, London. [546] His first communication with Mr. Ellis seems to have been a post-card dated Trieste, 8th May 1887. He says "The Perfumed Garden is not yet out nor will it be for six months. My old version is to be had at —-'s, Coventry Street, Haymarket. The Supplemental Nights you can procure from the agent, ——-, Farleigh Road, Stoke Newington."

As we have seen, Burton's first and second supplemental volumes of the Nights correspond with Mr. Payne's three volumes of Tales from the Arabic. He also wished to include the eight famous Galland Tales:—"Zayn Al-Asnam," "Alaeddin," "Khudadad and his Brothers," "The Kaliph's Night Adventure," "Ali Baba," "Ali Khwajah and the Merchant of Baghdad," "Prince Ahmad and the Fairy Peri-Banu," and "The Two Sisters who Envied their Cadette;" but the only Oriental text he could find was a Hindustani version of Galland's tales "Orientalised and divested of their inordinate Gallicism." As Burton was at this time prostrated by illness, Professor Blumhardt kindly undertook "to English the Hindustani for him. While the volume was going forward, however, M. Zotenberg, of Paris, discovered a MS. copy of The Nights containing the Arabic originals of 'Zayn Al-Asnam' and 'Alaeddin,' and Burton, thanks to the courtesy of Zotenberg, was able to make use of it."



150. Dr. Leslie and Dr. Baker: Anecdotes. April 1887.

From June 19th to 22nd there were rejoicings at Trieste on account of Queen Victoria's Jubilee. At the banquet, which took place at the Jager, Sir Richard occupied the chair, and he and the Rev. C. F. Thorndike, the chaplain, made speeches. During the summer Sir Richard's health continued to cause grave anxiety, but he was well enough by July 15th to set out for the usual summer holiday. Accompanied by Lady Burton, Dr. Leslie and Lisa, he first visited Adelsburg, and then Sauerbrunn, where he got relief by drinking daily a cup of very hot water. In a letter to Mr. Ellis written from Sauerbrunn, 14th September 1887, Burton refers to Professor Blumhardt's contribution to his Supplementary Nights, and finishes: "Salute for me Mr. Bendall and tell him how happy I shall be to see him at Trieste if he pass through that very foul part."

After the Burtons' return to Trieste (at the end of September) Dr. Leslie obtained another post, and Dr. Baker was invited to take his place.

Dr. Baker consented to do so, only on the condition that Sir Richard would not dispute his medical orders. This, Dr. Baker explained to me, was a very necessary stipulation, for Sir Richard now looked upon the time spent over his meals as so many half-hours wasted. He never ate his food properly, but used to raven it up like an animal in order to get back quickly to his books. So a treaty was made, and Dr. Baker remained a member of the household the rest of Burton's life.

To this period belong the following unpublished anecdotes. Of Burton's interest in Ancient Etruria and especially in the archaeological discoveries at Bologna [547] we have already spoken. Once when he and Dr. Baker were visiting Bologna they took a long walk outside the town and quite lost their bearings. Noticing a working man seated on the roadside, Burton asked him in French the way back. In reply the man "only made a stupid noise in his throat." Burton next tried him with the Bolognese [548] dialect, upon which the man blurted out, "Je don't know savez." Sir Richard then spoke in English, and the man finding there was no further necessity for Parisian, explained in his own tongue that he was an English sailor who had somehow got stranded in that part.

To Burton's delight in shocking people we have already alluded. Nor did age sober him. He would tell to open-mouthed hearers stories of his hair-breadth escapes, and how some native plotted against his life. "Another moment," he would say, "and I should have been a dead man, but I was too quick for my gentleman. I turned round with my sword and sliced him up like a lemon." Dr. Baker, who had heard many tales about the Austrians and duelling, was exercised in his mind as to what ought to be done if he were "called out." "Now," said Burton, "this is one of the things in life worthy of remembrance. Never attack a man, but if he attacks you, kill him." Sometimes the crusted tale about the Arab murder would come up again. "Is it true, Sir Richard," a young curate once innocently inquired, "that you shot a man near Mecca?" "Sir," replied Burton, tossing his head haughtily, "I'm proud to say that I have committed every sin in the Decalogue."

In after years Dr. Baker was often asked for reminiscences of Burton. "Can you remember any of his sayings?" enquired one interlocutor. "Yes," replied Dr. Baker. "He once said, 'Priests, politicians and publishers will find the gate of Heaven extremely narrow.'" "I'm sorry for that," followed the interlocutor, "for I've just been elected M.P. for the —— Division of Yorkshire."

For Mrs. Lynn Linton, the novelist, whom he described as a "sweet, womanly woman," Burton had a sincere regard, but he used to say that though she was an angel in the drawing-room, she was a raging, blood-thirsty tigress on the platform. One day, while Sir Richard, Mrs. Linton and Dr. Baker were chatting together, a lady to whom Mrs. Linton was a stranger joined the group and said "Sir Richard, why don't you leave off writing those heavy books on Bologna and other archaeological subjects, and do something lighter? Couldn't you write some trash—novels, I mean?" Sir Richard look sideways at Mrs. Linton, and kept his countenance as well as he could. On another occasion when Sir Richard, Lady Burton, Dr. Baker and an aged Cambridge Professor were chatting together, Burton unconsciously glided into Latin—in which he asked the professor a question. The old man began a laboured reply in the same language—and then, stopping suddenly, said, "If you don't mind, Sir Richard, we'll continue the conversation in English."

Believing that Burton was overworking himself, Dr. Baker recommended him to order "a little rubbish in the shape of novels," from London, and so rest his brain for an hour just before bedtime. Burton demurred, but the novels were ultimately sent for, they duly arrived, and Burton went through a course of "chou-chou," as he called it. After a while, however, he gave up what he had never taken to kindly, and henceforward he nightly "rested his brain," by reading books in the modern Greek dialects.



151. Three Months at Abbazia. 1st Dec. 1887-5th March 1888.

On the 1st of December 1887, in order to avoid the fearful boras of Trieste, and to shelter in the supposed mild climate of "the Austrian Riviera," Burton, accompanied, as always, by his wife, Dr. Baker, and Lisa, went to stay at Abbazia. The subscriptions for his Supplemental Nights were now pouring in, and they put him in great jollity. Jingling his money in his pockets, he said to Dr. Baker, "I've always been poor, and now we'll enjoy ourselves." Henceforth he spent his money like a dissipated school-boy at a statute fair. Special trains, the best rooms in the best hotels, anything, everything he fancied—and yet all the while he worked at his books "like a navvy." Abbazia was a disappointment. Snow fell for two months on end, and all that time they were mewed up in their hotel. Burton found the society agreeable, however, and he read German with the Catholic priest. Most of his time was spent in finishing the Supplemental Nights, and Lady Burton was busy preparing for the press and expurgated edition of her husband's work which, it was hoped, would take its place on the drawing-room table. Mr. Justin Huntly McCarthy, son of the novelist, gave her considerably assistance, and the work appeared in 1888. Mr. Kirby's notes were to have been appended to Lady Burton's edition of the Nights as well as to Sir Richard's, but ultimately the idea was abandoned. "My wife and I agreed," writes Burton, "that the whole of your notes would be far too learned for her public," [549] so only a portion was used. Lady Burton's work consisted of six volumes corresponding with Burton's first ten, from which 215 pages were omitted.

Owing to the stagnation of Abbazia, and the martyrdom which he endured from the gout, Burton was very glad to get back to Trieste, which was reached on March 5th. When his pain was acute he could not refrain from groaning, and at such times, Lady Burton, kneeling by his bedside, use to say "Offer it up, offer it up"—meaning that prayer alone would bring relief.

To Mr. Payne, 14th March 1888, Burton writes, "I have been moving since yours of March 5th reached me, and unable to answer you.... Delighted to hear that in spite of cramp, [550] Vo. V. [551] is finished, and shall look forward to the secret [552] being revealed. You are quite right never to say a word about it. There is nothing I abhor so much as a man intrusting me with a secret."

On March 19th, Sir Richard finished his last volume of the Supplemental Nights, and in May he was visited at Trieste by his old friend, F. F. Arbuthnot.

On the 15th of April (1888) occurred the death of Matthew Arnold, who had for some years enjoyed a Civil List pension of L250 a year; and the event had scarcely been announced before Lady Burton, without consulting her husband, [553] telegraphed to the Government to "give Burton Arnold's pension." This step, characteristic as it was indiscreet, naturally did not effect its purpose.



Chapter XXXIII. 19th March 1888-15th October 1888, The Last Visit to England "The Supplemental Nights"



Bibliography:

76. 1st Vol. Supplemental Nights, 1st December 1886. 6th Vol. 1st August 1888.



152. Meeting with Mr. Swinburne and others, 18th July 1888-15th October 1888.

Burton's health continuing weak, he again endeavoured to induce the Government to release him from his duties. Instead of that, they gave him what he calls "an informal sick certificate," and from the following letter to his sister (26th May 1888) we may judge that it was not given gracefully.

"Yesterday," he says, "I got my leave accompanied by some disagreeable expressions which will be of use to me when retiring. We leave Trieste in June and travel leisurely over the St. Gothard and expect to be in England about the 10th.... The meteorologists declare that the heat is going to equal the cold. Folky [554] folk are like their neighbours, poor devils who howl for excitement—want of anything better to do. The dreadful dull life of England accounts for many British madnesses. Do you think of the Crystal Palace this year? We have an old friend, Aird, formerly the Consul here, who has taken up his abode somewhere in Sydenham. I don't want cold water bandages, the prospect of leave makes me sleep quite well. With love and kisses to both, [555] Your affectionate brother, R. F. B."

Burton and his wife reached Folkestone on July 18th. Next day they went on to London, where they had the pleasure of meeting again Commander Cameron, Mr. Henry Irving, M. Du Chaillu, Mr. A. C. Swinburne, and Mr. Theodore Watts[-Dunton]. What Burton was to Mr. Swinburne is summed up in the phrase—"the light that on earth was he." [556]



153. H. W. Ashbee.

His principal place of resort, however, during this visit was the house of Mr. H. W. Ashbee, 54, Bedford Square, where he met not only Mr. Ashbee, but also Dr. Steingass, Mr. Arbuthnot, Sir Charles Wingfield and Mr. John Payne, all of whom were interested, in different ways, in matters Oriental. Ashbee, who wrote under the name of Pisanus Fraxi (Bee of an ash), was a curiously matter-of-fact, stoutish, stolid, affable man, with a Maupassantian taste for low life, its humours and laxities. He was familiar with it everywhere, from the sordid purlieus of Whitechapel to the bazaars of Tunis and Algiers, and related Haroun Al-Raschid-like adventures with imperturbably, impassive face, and in the language that a business man uses when recounting the common transactions of a day. This unconcernedness never failed to provoke laughter, even from those who administered rebukes to him. Of art and literature he had absolutely no idea, but he was an enthusiastic bibliophile, and his library, which included a unique collection or rare and curious books, had been built up at enormous expense. Somebody having described him as "not a bad old chap," Mr. Payne added characteristically, "And he had a favourite cat, which says something for him."



154. A Bacon Causerie.

The serenity of these gatherings, whether at Mr. Ashbee's or at Mr. Arbuthnot's, was never ruffled unless somebody happened to introduce politics or the Shakespere-Bacon Question. Arbuthnot the Liberal was content to strike out with his back against the wall, so to speak, when attacked by the Conservative Burton, Ashbee and Payne; but Arbuthnot the Baconian frequently took the offensive. He would go out of his way in order to drag in this subject. He could not leave it out of his Life of Balzac even. These controversies generally resolved themselves into a duel between Mr. Arbuthnot and Mr. Payne—Burton, who loved a fight between any persons and for any reasons, looking on approvingly. Mr. Ashbee and Dr. Steingass were inclined to side with Mr. Payne. On one of these occasions Mr. Payne said impatiently that he could not understand "any sensible man taking the slightest interest in the sickening controversy," and then he pointed out one by one the elements that in his opinion made the Baconian theory ridiculous.

"But," followed Mr. Arbuthnot, "Shakespere had no education, and no person without an extremely good education could have written the play erroneously published under the name of William Shakespere."

"If," retorted Mr. Payne, "Shakespere had been without education, do you think the fact would have escaped the notice of such bitter and unscrupulous enemies as Nash, Greene, and others, who hated him for his towering superiority?"

Upon Mr. Arbuthnot admitting that he studies Shakespere merely from a "curio" point of view, and that for the poetry he cared nothing, Mr. Payne replied by quoting Schopenhauer: "A man who is insensible to poetry, be he who he may, must be a barbarian."

Burton, who regarded himself as a poet, approved of the sentiment; Dr. Steingass, who wrote execrable verses in English which neither rhymed nor scanned, though they were intended to do both, was no less satisfied; Mr. Ashbee, who looked at matters solely from a bibliographical point of view, dissented; and Mr. Arbuthnot sweetly changed the conversation to Balzac; with the result, however, of another tempest, for on this subject Burton, who summed up Balzac as "a great repertory of morbid anatomy," could never see eye to eye with Balzac's most enthusiastic English disciple.

At Oxford, Burton met Professor Sayce, and did more literary work "under great difficulties" at the Bodleian, though he escaped all the evil effects; but against its wretched accommodation for students and its antediluvian methods he never ceased to inveigh. Early in August he was at Ramsgate and had the amusement of mixing with a Bank Holiday crowd. But he was amazingly restless, and wanted to be continually in motion. No place pleased him more than a day or two.



155. The Gypsy, August 1888.

Among the deal tables in Burton's rooms at Trieste was one devoted to a work on the Gypsies, a race concerning whom, as we have seen, he had long been curious. He had first proposed to himself to write on the subject when he was in Sind, where he had made investigations concerning the affinity between the Jats and the Gypsies; and now with abundance of leisure he set about the work in earnest. But it was never finished, and the fragment which was published in 1898 [557] contains, Mr. Watts-Dunton [558] assures me, many errors. Burton's idea was to describe the Gypsy in all lands. Perhaps he is happiest in his account of the Spanish Gypsy woman. "Their women," he says, "sell poultry and old rags.... and find in interpreting dreams, in philter selling, and in fortune-telling the most lucrative industries. They sing, and play various instruments, accompanying the music with the most voluptuous and licentious dances and attitudes; but woe to the man who would obtain from these Bayaderes any boon beyond their provocative exhibition. From the Indus to Gibraltar, the contrast of obscenity in language and in songs with corporal chastity has ever been a distinctive characteristic.... Gypsy marriages, like those of the high caste Hindus, entail ruinous expense; the revelry lasts three days, the 'Gentile' is freely invited, and the profusion of meats and drinks often makes the bridgegroom a debtor for life. The Spanish Gypsies are remarkable for beauty in early youth; for magnificent eyes and hair, regular features, light and well-knit figures. Their locks, like the Hindus, are lamp black, and without a sign of wave: [559] and they preserve the characteristic eye. I have often remarked its fixity and brilliance, which flashes like phosphoric light, the gleam which in some eyes denotes madness. I have also noticed the 'far-off look' which seems to gaze at something beyond you and the alternation from the fixed stare to a glazing or filming of the pupil." [560]

This peculiarity of the gypsy's eyes, Burton had himself, for which reason alone, some writers, as we have already observed, have claimed him for the tribe. But he shared other peculiarities with them. For example, there was his extraordinary restlessness—a restlessness which prevented him from every settling long in any one place. Then, like the gypsies, he had an intense horror of a corpse—even of pictures of corpses. Though brave to temerity he avoided churchyards, and feared "the phosphorescence of the dead." Many of his letters testify to his keen interest in the race. For example, he tells Mr. J. Pincherle, author of a Romani version of Solomon's Song, [561] the whole story of his wife and Hagar Burton. In 1888 he joined the newly-founded "Gypsy Lore Society," and in a letter to Mr. David MacRitchie (13th May 1888) he says in reference to the Society's Journal: "Very glad to see that you write 'Gypsy.' I would not subscribe to 'Gipsy.'" In later letters he expresses his appreciation of Mr. MacRitchie's article "The Gypsies of India," and wishes the Society "God speed," while in that of 13th August 1888, he laments the trifling results that followed his own and Arbuthnot's efforts in behalf of Orientalism. "We [The Gypsy Lore Society]" he says, "must advance slowly and depend for success upon our work pleasing the public. Of course, all of us must do our best to secure new members, and by Xmas I hope that we shall find ourselves on the right road. Mr. Pincherle writes to me hopefully about his practical studies of Gypsy life in Trieste. As regards Orientalism in England generally I simply despair of it. Every year the study is more wanted and we do less. It is the same with anthropology, so cultivated in France, so stolidly neglected in England. I am perfectly ashamed of our wretched "Institution" in Hanover Square when compared with the palace in Paris. However, this must come to an end some day."

On 13th August 1888, Burton writes to Mr. A. G. Ellis from "The Langham," Portland Place, and sends him the Preface to the last Supplemental Volume with the request that he would run his eye over it. "You live," he continues, "in a magazine of learning where references are so easy, and to us outsiders so difficult. Excuse this practical proof that need has no law." On September 26th he sent a short note to Mr. Payne. "Arbuthnot," he said, "will be in town on Tuesday October 2nd. What do you say to meeting him at the Langham 7 p.m. table d'hote hour?.... It will be our last chance of meeting."

Sir Richard and Lady Burton, Dr. Baker, Arbuthnot, and Payne dined together on the evening appointed; and on October 15th Burton left London, to which he was never to return alive.



156. The Supplemental Nights. 1st December 1886-1st August 1888.

The translation of the Supplemental Nights, that is to say, the collection of more or less interesting Arabian tales not included in the Nights proper, was now completed. The first volume had appeared in 1886, the last was to be issued in 1888. Although containing old favourites such as "Alaeddin," "Zayn Al Asnam," "Ali Baba," and the "Story of the Three Princes," the supplemental volumes are altogether inferior to the Nights proper. Then, too, many of the tales are mere variants of the versions in the more important work. Burton's first two supplemental volumes are from the Breslau text, and, as we said, cover the same ground as Mr. Payne's Tales from the Arabic. In both he followed Mr. Payne closely, as will be seen from his notes (such as "Here I follow Mr. Payne, who has skilfully fine-drawn the holes in the original text") [562] which, frequent as they are, should have been multiplied one hundred-fold to express anything like the real obligation he owed to Mr. Payne's translation. "I am amazed," he once said to Mr. Payne, "at the way in which you have accomplished what I (in common with Lane and other Arabists) considered an impossibility in the elucidation and general re-creation from chaos of the incredibly corrupt and garbled Breslau Text. I confess that I could not have made it out without your previous version. It is astonishing how you men of books get to the bottom of things which are sealed to men of practical experience like me." And he expressed himself similarly at other times. Of course, the secret was the literary faculty and intuition which in Burton were wanting.

Burton's Third Volume [563] consists of the tales in Galland's edition which are not in the Nights proper. All of them, with the exception of "Alaeddin" and "Zayn Al Asnam," are reproductions, as we said, from a Hindustani translation of the French text—the Arabic originals of the tales being still (1905) undiscovered.

His Fourth and Fifth Volumes [564] are from the Wortley-Montague Text. His sixth and last [565] contains the Chavis and Cazotte Text—the manuscript of which is reputed to have been brought to France by a Syrian priest named Shawish (Frenchlifted into Chavis), who collaborated with a French litterateur named Cazotte. The work appeared in 1788. "These tales," says Mr. Payne, "seem to me very inferior, in style, conduct, and diction, to those of 'the old Arabian Nights,' whilst I think 'Chavis and Cazotte's continuation' utterly unworthy of republication whether in part or 'in its entirety.' It is evident that Shawish (who was an adventurer of more than doubtful character) must in many instances have utterly misled his French coadjutor (who had no knowledge of Arabic), as to the meaning of the original."—Preface to Alaeddin, &c., xv., note. Mr. Payne adds, "I confess I think the tales, even in the original Arabic, little better than rubbish, and am indeed inclined to believe they must have been, at least in part, manufactured by Shawish." [566]



157. Comparison.

Burton's supplementary volume containing "Alaeddin" and "Zayn Al Asnam," appeared, as we have seen, in 1887; and in 1889 Mr. Payne issued a Translation from Zotenberg's text. When dealing with the Nights proper we gave the reader an opportunity of comparing Burton's translation with Payne's which preceded it. We now purpose placing in juxtaposition two passages from their supplemental volumes, and we cannot do better than choose from either "Alaeddin" or "Zayn Al Asnam," as in the case of both the order is reversed, Burton's translation having preceded Payne's. Let us decide on the latter. Any passage would do, but we will take that describing the finding of the ninth image:

Payne Burton

Then he set out and Then he set out nor gave not over journeying ceased travelling till such till he came to Bassora, time as he reached Bassorah, and entering his palace, when he entered saluted his mother and his palace; and after told her all that had saluting his mother, he befallen him; whereupon apprized her of all things quoth she to him "Arise, that had befallen him. O my son, so thou mayst She replied, "Arise, O see this ninth image, for my son, that we may look that I am exceedingly upon the Ninth statue, rejoiced at its presence with for I rejoice with extreme us. So they both joy at its being in our descended into the underground possession." So both hall wherein were descended into the pavilion the eight images, and where stood the eight found there a great marvel; images of precious gems, to wit, instead of the and here they found a ninth image, they beheld mighty marvel. 'Twas the young lady resembling this: In lieu of seeing the the sun in her loveliness. Ninth Statue upon the The prince knew her golden throne, they found when he saw her, and seated thereon the young she said to him, "Marvel lady whose beauty suggested not to find me here in the sun. Zayn place of that which thou al-Asnam knew her at soughtest; me thinketh first sight and presently thou wilt not repent thee she addressed him saying, an thou take me in the "Marvel not for that stead of the ninth image." here thou findest me "No, by Allah, Oh my in place of that wherefor beloved!" replied Zein thou askedst; and I ul Asnam. "For that thou deem that thou shalt not art the end of my seeking, regret nor repent when and I would not exchange thou acceptest me instead thee for all the jewels in of that thou soughtest." the world. Didst thou Said he, "No, verily, but know the grief which thou art the end of every possessed me for thy wish of me nor would separation, thou whom I I exchange thee for all the took from thy parents gems of the universe. by fraud and brought thee Would thou knew what to the King of the Jinn!" was the sorrow which