The Life of Sir Richard Burton Part 32

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 succ.u.mb 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 3,500,000 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 h.e.l.l, 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 ma.s.ses 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 a.s.surance 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sage 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 G.o.ddess, 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 pa.s.sed 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 inexact.i.tude--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 x.x.xII. 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 cla.s.s 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 p.o.r.nographic 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 n.o.ble thoughts, but because they lent themselves to pungent annotation. Indeed, his pa.s.sion 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 cla.s.sic prose writers were to him as the milk of paradise; and some of his annotations would have illuminated the best pa.s.sages, 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 ma.n.u.scripts 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 sn.o.b." 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.