WITH NUMEROUS PORTRAITS, ILLUSTRATIONS, AND MAPS.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, LD.
1893.
RICHARD BURTON IN HIS TENT IN AFRICA.
[CONSECRATION.]
TO MY EARTHLY MASTER,
WHO IS WAITING FOR ME ON HEAVEN'S FRONTIERS.
Whilst waiting to rejoin you, I leave as a message to the World we inhabited, the record of the Life into which both our lives were fused. Would that I could write as well as I can love, and do you that justice, that honour, which you deserve! I will do my best, and then I will leave it to more brilliant pens, whose wielders will feel less—and write better.
Meet me soon—I wait the signal!
ISABEL BURTON.
[FOREWORD.]
"No man can write a man down except himself."
In speaking of my husband, I shall not call him "Sir Richard," or "Burton," as many wives would; nor yet by the pet name I used for him at home, which for some reason which I cannot explain was "Jemmy;" nor yet what he was generally called at home, and what his friends called him, "Dick;" but I will call him Richard in speaking of him, and "I" where he speaks on his own account, as he does in his private journals. I always thought and told him that he destroyed much of the interest of his works by hardly ever alluding to himself, and now that I mention it, people may remark it, that in writing he seldom uses the pronoun I. I have therefore drawn, not from his books, but from his private journals. It was one of his asceticisms, an act of humility, which the world passed by, and probably only thought one of his eccentricities. In his works he would generally speak of himself as the Ensign, the Traveller, the Explorer, the Consul, and so on, so that I often think that people who are not earnest readers never understood who it was that did this, thought that, or saw the other. If I make him speak plainly for himself, as he does in his private journals, but never to the public, it will give twenty times the interest in relating events; so I shall throughout let him speak for himself where I can.
In early January, 1876, Richard and I were on our way to India for a six months' trip to visit the old haunts. We divided our intended journey into two lots. We cut India down the middle, the long way on the map, from north to south, and took the western side, leaving the eastern side for a trip which was deferred, alas! for our old age and retirement. We utilized the voyage out (which occupied thirty-three days in an Austrian Lloyd, used as a Haj, or pilgrim-ship), and also the voyage back, in the part of the following pages which refers to his early life, he dictating and I writing.
In 1887, when my husband was beginning to be a real invalid, he lent some of these notes to Mr. Hitchman (who asked leave to write his biography), Richard promising not to tread upon his heels by his own Autobiography till he should be free from service in 1891. It will not, I think, do any harm to the reading public to reproduce it with more detail, because only seven hundred people got Mr. Hitchman's, who did not by any means use the whole of the material before he returned it, and what I give is the original just as Richard dictated it, and it is more needful, because it deals with a part of his life that was only known to himself, to me only by dictation; because everything that he wrote of himself is infinitely precious, and because to leave to the public a sketch of an early Richard Burton is desirable, otherwise readers would be obliged to purchase Mr. Hitchman's, as well as this work, in order to make a perfect whole.
I must take warning, however, that when Mr. Hitchman's book came out, part of the Press found this account of my husband's boyhood and youth charming, and another part of the Press said that I was too candid, and did nothing to gloss over the faults and foibles of the youthful Burtons; they doubted the accuracy of my information—I was informed that my style was too rough-and-ready, and of many others of my shortcomings. In short, I was considered rather as writing against my own husband, whilst both sides of the Press in their reviews assumed that I wrote it; this charmed Richard, and he would not let me refute. Not one word was mine—it was only dictation, and peremptory dictation when I objected to certain self-accusations. I beg leave to state that I did not write one single word; I could not, for I did not know it—and all that the family objected to, or considered exaggerated, will not be repeated here. Before entering on these pages, I must warn the reader not to expect the goody-goody boy nor yet the precocious vicious youth of 1893. It is the recital of a high-spirited lad of the old school, full of animal spirits and manly notions, a lively sense of fun and humour, reckless of the consequences of playing tricks, but without a vestige of vice in the meaner or lower forms—a lad, in short, who would be a gentleman and a man of the world in his teens, and who, from his foreign travel, had seen more of life than boys do brought up at home.
I do not begin this work—the last important work of my life—without fear and trembling. If I can perform this sacred duty—this labour of love—well,—I shall be glad indeed, but I begin it with unfeigned humility. I have never needed any one to point out to me that my husband was on a pedestal far above me, or anybody else in the world. I have known it from 1850 to 1893, from a young girl to an old widow, i.e. for forty-three years. I feel that I cannot do justice to his scientific life, that I may miss points in travel that would have been more brilliantly treated by a clever man. My only comfort is, that his travels and services are already more or less known to the public, and that other books will be written about them. But if I am so unfortunate as to disappoint the public in this way, there is one thing that I feel I am fit for, and that is to lift the veil as to the inner man. He was misunderstood and unappreciated by the world at large, during his life. No one ever thought of looking for the real man beneath the cultivated mask that generally hid all feelings and belief—but now the world is beginning to know what it has lost. The old, old, sad story.
He shall tell his own tale till 1861, the first forty years, annotated by me. Whilst dictating to me I sometimes remarked, "Oh, do you think it would be well to write this?" and the answer always was, "Yes! I do not see the use of writing a biography at all, unless it is the exact truth, a very photograph of the man or woman in question." On this principle he taught me to write quite openly in the unconventional and personal style—being the only way to make a biography interesting, which we now class as the Marie Bashkirtcheff style. As you will see, he always makes the worst of himself, and offers no excuse. As a lad he does not know what to do to show his manliness, and all that a boy should, ought, and does think brave and honourable, be it wild or not, all that he does.
What appals me is, that the task is one of such magnitude—the enormous quantity of his books and writings that I have to look through, and, out of eighty or more publications, to ascertain what has seen the light and what has not, because it is impossible to carry the work of forty-eight years in one's head; and, again, the immense quantity of subjects he has studied and written upon, some in only a fragmentary state, is wonderful. My wish would be to produce this life, speaking only of him—and afterwards to reproduce everything he has written that has not been published. I propose putting all the heavier matter, such as pamphlets, essays, letters, correspondence, and the résumé of his works—that is, what portion shows his labours and works for the benefit of the human race—into two after-volumes, to be called "Labours and Wisdom of Richard Burton." After his biography I shall renew his "Arabian Nights" with his Forewords, Terminal Essay, and Biography of the book in such form that it can be copyrighted—it is now protected by my copyright. His "Catullus" and "Pentamerone" are now more or less in the Press, to be followed by degrees by all his unpublished works. His hitherto published works I shall bring out as a Uniform Library, so that not a word will be lost that he ever wrote for the public. Fortunately, I have kept all his books classified as he kept them himself, with a catalogue, and have separate shelves ticketed and numbered; for example, "Sword," "Gypsy," "Pentamerone," "Camoens," and so on.
If I were sure of life, I should have wished for six months to look through and sort our papers and materials before I began this work, because I have five rooms full. Our books, about eight thousand, only got housed in March, 1892, and they are sorted—but not the papers and correspondence; but I fancy that the public would rather have a spontaneous work sooner, than wait longer. If I live I shall always go on with them. I have no leisure to think of style or of polish, or to select the best language, the best English,—no time to shine as an authoress. I must just think aloud, so as not to keep the public waiting.
From the time of my husband's becoming a real invalid—February, 1887—whilst my constant thoughts reviewed the dread To Come—the catastrophe of his death—and the subsequent suffering, I have been totally incapable, except writing his letters or attending to his business, of doing any good literary work until July, 1892, a period of five years, which was not improved by four attacks of influenza.
Richard was such a many-sided man, that he will have appeared different to every set of people who knew him. He was as a diamond with so many facets. The tender, the true, the brilliant, the scientific,—and to those who deserved it, the cynical, the hard, the severe. Loads of books will be written about him, and every one will be different; and though perhaps it is an unseemly boast, I venture to feel sure that mine will be the truest one, for I have no interest to serve, no notoriety to gain, belong to no party, have nothing to sway me, except the desire to let the world understand what it once possessed, what it has lost. With many it will mean I. With me it means HIM.
When this biography is out, the public will, theoretically, but not practically, know him as well as I can make them, and all of his friends will be able after that to put forth a work representing that particular facet of his character which he turned on to them, or which they drew from him. He was so great, so world-wide, he could turn a fresh facet and sympathy on to each world. I always think that a man is one character to his wife at his fireside corner, another man to his own family, another man to her family, a fourth to a mistress or an amourette—if he have one,—a fifth to his men friends, a sixth to his boon companions, and a seventh to his public, and so on ad infinitum; but I think the wife, if they are happy and love each other, gets the pearl out of the seven oyster-shells.
I fear that this work will be too long. I cannot help it. When I embarked on it I had no conception of the scope: it was a labour of love. I thought I could fly over it; but I have found that the more I worked, the more it grew, and that the end receded from me like the mirage in the desert. I only aim at giving a simple, true recital without comment, and at fairness on all questions of whatever sort. I am very personal, because I believe the public like it. I want to give Richard as I knew him at home. I apologize in advance to my readers if I am sometimes obliged to mention myself oftener than they and I care about; but they will understand that our lives were so interwoven, so bound together, that I should very often spoil a good story or an anecdote or a dialogue were I to leave myself out. It would be an affectation that would spoil my work.
I am rather disheartened by being told by a literary friend that the present British public likes its reading "in sips." How can I give a life of seventy years, every moment of which was employed in a remarkable way, "in sips"? It is impossible. Though I must not detail much from his books, I want to convey to the public, at least, what they were about; striking points of travel, his schemes, wise warnings, advice, and plans for the benefit of England—then what about "sips"? It must not be dry, it must not be heavy, nor tedious, nor voluminous; so it shall be personal, full of traits of character, sentiments and opinions, brightened with cheerful anecdotes, and the more serious part shall go into the before-mentioned two volumes, the "Labours and Wisdom of Richard Burton."
I am not putting in many letters, because he generally said such personal things, that few would like them to be shown. His business letters would not interest. To economize time he used to get expressly made for him the smallest possible pieces of paper, into which he used to cram the greatest amount of news—telegram form. He only wrote much in detail, if he had any literary business to transact.
One of my greatest difficulties, which I scarcely know how to express, is, that which I think the most interesting, and which most of my intimates think well worth exploring; it is that of showing the dual man with, as it were, two natures in one person, diametrically opposed to each other, of which he was himself perfectly conscious. I had a party of literary friends to dinner one night, and I put my manuscript on the table before them after dinner, and I begged them each to take a part and look over it. Feeling as I do that the general public never understood him, and that his mantle after death seemed to descend upon my shoulders, that everything I say seems to be misunderstood, and that, in some few eyes, I can do nothing right, I said at the end of the evening, "If I endeavour to explain, will it not be throwing pearls to swine?" (not that I meant, dear readers, to compare you to swine—it is but an expression of thought well understood). And the answer was, "Oh, Lady Burton, do give the world the ins and outs of this remarkable and interesting character, and let the swine take care of themselves." "If you leave out by order" (said one) "religion and politics, the two touchstones of the British public, you leave out the great part of a man." "Mind you gloss over nothing to please anybody" (said a second). I think they are right—one set of people see one side, and another see another side, and neither of the two will comprehend (like St. Thomas) anything that they have not seen and felt; or, to quote one of Richard's favourite mottoes from St. Augustine, "Let them laugh at me for speaking of things which they do not understand, and I must pity them, whilst they laugh at me." So I must remain an unfortunate buffer amidst a cyclone of opinions. I can only avoid controversies and opinions of my own, and quote his and his actions.
These words are forced from me, because I have received my orders, if not exactly from the public, from a few of the friends who profess to know him best. I am ordered to describe Richard as a sort of Didérot (a disciple of Voltaire's), who wrote "that the world would never be quiet till the last king was strangled with the bowels of the last priest,"—whereas there was no one whom Richard delighted more to honour than a worthy King, or an honest straightforward Priest.
There are people who are ready to stone me, if I will not describe Richard as being absolutely without belief in anything; yet I really cannot oblige them, without being absolutely untruthful. He was a spade-truth man, and he honestly used to say that he examined every religion, and picked out its pearl to practise it. He did not scoff at them, he was perfectly sincere and honest in what he said; nor did he change, but he grew. He always said, and innumerable people could come forward, if they had the courage—I could name some—to say that they have heard him declare, that at the end of all things there were only two points to stand upon—NOTHING and CATHOLICISM; and many could, if they would, come forward and say, that when they asked him what religion he was, he answered Catholic.
He never was, what is called here and now in England, an Agnostic; he was a Master-Sufi, he practised Tasáwwuf or Sufi-ism, which combines the poetry and prose of religion, and is mystic. The Sufi is a profound student of the different branches of language and metaphysics, is gifted with a musical ear, indulges in luxuriant imagery and description. They have a simple sense—a double entendre understood amongst themselves—God in Nature,—Nature in God—a mystical affection for a Higher Life, dead to excitement, hope, fear, etc. He was fond of quoting Sayyid Mohammad Hosayn's motto, "It is better to restore one dead heart to Eternal Life, than Life to a thousand dead bodies."
I have seen him receive gratuitous copies of an Agnostic paper in England, and I remember one in particular—I do not know who wrote it,—it was very long, and all the verses ended with "Curse God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." I can see him now reading it—and stroking his long moustache, and muttering, "Poor devil! Vulgar beast!" He was quite satisfied, as his friends say, that we are not gifted with the senses to understand the origin of the Mysteries by which we are surrounded, and in this nobody agrees more thoroughly than I do. He likewise said he believed there was a God, but that he could not define Him; neither can I, neither can you, but I do not want to. Great minds tower above and see into little ones, but the little minds never climb sufficiently high to see into the Great Minds, and never did Lord Beaconsfield say a truer thing, speaking of religion than when he said, "Sensible men never tell." As I want to make this work both valuable and interesting, I am not going into the unknown or the unknowable, only into what he knew—what I know; therefore I shall freely quote his early training, his politics, his Mohammedanism, his Sufi-ism, his Brahminical thread, his Spiritualism, and all the religions which he studied, and nobody can give me a sensible reason why I should leave out the Catholicism, except to point the Spanish proverb, "that no one pelts a tree, unless it has fruit on it," but were I to do so, the biography would be incomplete.
Let us suppose a person residing inside a house, and another person looking at the house from the opposite side of the street; you would not be unjust enough to expect the person on the outside to describe minutely its inner chambers and everything that was in it, because he would have to take it on trust from the person who resided inside, but you would take the report of the man living outside as to the exterior of the house. That is exactly the same as my writing my husband's history. Do you want an edition of the inside or an edition of the outside? If you do not want the truth, if you order me to describe a Darwin, a Spencer, a John Stuart Mill, I can do it; but it will not be the home-Richard, the fireside-Richard whom I knew, the two perfectly distinct Richards in one person; it will be the man as he was at lunch, at dinner, or when friends came in, or when he dined out, or when he paid visits; and if the world—or, let us say, a small portion of the world,—is so unjust and silly as to wish for untrue history, it must get somebody else to write it. To me there are only two courses: I must either tell the truth, and lay open the "inner life" of the man, by a faithful photograph, or I must let it alone, and leave his friends to misrepresent him, according to their lights.
It has been threatened to me that if I speak the truth I am to reap the whirlwind, because others, who claim to know my husband well, see him quite in a different light. (I know many people intimately, but I am quite incompetent to write their lives—I am only fit to do that for the man with whom I lived night and day for thirty years; there are three other people who could each write a small section of his life, and after those nobody; I do not accept the so-called general term "friend.") I shall be very happy indeed to answer anybody who attacks me, who is brave enough to put his or her name; but during the two years I have been in England I have hardly had anything but anonymous communications and paragraphs signed under the brave names of "Agnostic," or "One who knows," so I have no man or woman to deal with, but empty air, which is beneath my contempt. This is a very old game, perhaps even more ancient than "Prophesy, O Christ, who it was that struck Thee!" but it is cowardly and un-English—that is, if England "stands where she did." I would also remind you of the good old Arab proverb, that "a thousand curses never tore a shirt."
I would have you remember that I gain nothing by trying to describe my husband as belonging to any particular religion. If I would describe him as an English Agnostic—the last new popular word—the small band of people who call themselves his intimate friends, and who think to honour him by injuring me, would be perfectly satisfied. I should have all their sympathy, and my name would be at rest, both in Society and in the Press. I have no interest to serve in saying he was a Catholic more than anything else; I have no bigotry on the question at all. If he did something Catholic I shall say it, and if he did something Mohammedan or Agnostic I shall equally say it.
It is also a curious fact, that the people who are most vexed with me on this score, are men who, before their wives, mothers, sisters, are good Protestants, and who go twice to the Protestant church on Sundays, but who are quite scandalized that my husband should be allowed a religion, and are furious because I will not allow that Richard Burton was their Captain. No, thank you! it is not good enough: he was not, never was like any of you—nor can I see what it can possibly be to you what faith, or no faith, Richard Burton chose to die in, and why you threaten me if I speak the truth! We only knew two things—the beautiful mysticism of the East, which, until I lived here, I thought was Agnosticism, and I find it is not; and calm, liberal-minded Roman Catholicism. The difference between you and Richard is—you, I mean, who admired my husband—that you are not going anywhere,—according to your own Creed you have nowhere to go to,—whilst he had a God and a continuation, and said he would wait for me; he is only gone a long journey, and presently I shall join him; we shall take up where we left off, and we shall be very much happier even than we have been here.
Of the thousands that have written to me since his death, everybody writes, "What a marvellous brain your husband had! How modest about his learning and everything concerning himself! He was a man never understood by the world." It is no wonder he was not understood by the World; his friends hindered it, and when one who knew him thoroughly, offers to make him understood, it is resented.
The Press has recently circulated a paragraph saying that "I am not the fittest person to write my husband's life." After I have finished these two volumes, it will interest me very much to read those of the competent person, who will be so kind as to step to the front,—with a name, please, not anonymously,—and to learn all the things I do not know.
He, she, or it, will write what he said and wrote; I write what he thought and did.
ISABEL BURTON.
29th May, 1893.
Note.—I must beg the reader to note, that a word often has several different spellings, and my husband used to give them a turn all round. Indeed, I may say that during the latter years of his life he adopted quite a different spelling, which he judged to be correcter. In many cases it is caused by the English way of spelling a thing, and the real native way of spelling the same. For English Meeanee, native way Miani. The battle of Dabba (English) is spelt Dubba, Dubbah, by the natives. Fulailee river (English) is spelt Phuleli (native). Mecca and Medina have sometimes an h at the end of them. Karrachee is Karáchi. Sind is spelt Sind, Sindh, Scind, Scinde; and what the Anglo-Indians call Bóbagees are really Babárchis, and so on. I therefore beg that the spelling may not be criticized. In quoting letters, I write as the author does, since I must not change other people's spelling.—I. B.
[Transcriber's Note.—The page headings of the original edition have been converted into sidenotes in this digital edition. Typographical and other obvious errors have also been corrected, but the variations in the spelling of proper names, etc., mentioned above remain.]