110. "I am an Old English Catholic."
In England, whatever objections Protestants may make to Roman Catholic services, they admit that everything is done decently and in order. The laxity, however, in the Italian churches is, or was until recently, beyond belief, and every traveller brought home some queer tale. Mrs. Burton, who prided herself on being "an old English Catholic," was frequently distressed by these irregularities, and she never hesitated to reprove the offending priests. One day a priest who had called at Burton's house was requested to conduct a brief service in Mrs. Burton's private chapel. But the way in which he went through the various ceremonies so displeased Mrs. Burton that she called out to him, "Stop! stop! pardon me, I am an old English Catholic—and therefore particular. You are not doing it right—Stand aside, please, and let me show you." So the astonished priest stood aside, and Mrs. Burton went through all the gesticulations, genuflexions, etcetera, in the most approved style. Burton, who was standing by, regarded the scene with suppressed amusement. When all was over, he touched the priest on the shoulder and said gravely and slowly, pointing to Mrs. Burton: "Do you know who this is? It is my wife. And you know she will some day die—We all must die—And she will be judged—we must all be judged—and there's a very long and black list against her. But when the sentence is being pronounced she will jump up and say: 'Stop! stop! please pardon my interruption, but I am an old English Catholic.'"
To one house, the hostess of which was one of the most fashionable women in London, Burton, no matter how much pressed, had never been prevailed upon to go. He disliked the lady and that was enough. "Here's an invitation for all of us to Lady ——'s," said Mrs. Burton to him one day in honied tones. "Now, Dick, darling, this time you must go just for Lisa's sake. It's a shame she should lose so excellent a chance of going into good society. Other people go, why shouldn't we? Eh, darling?"
"What won't people do," growled Burton, "for the sake of a dinner!"
Eventually, however, after an explosion, and he'd be asterisked if he would, and might the lady herself be asterisked, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, "Dick Darling" was coaxed over, and he, Mrs. Burton and Lisa at the appointed time sallied forth in all the glory of war paint, and in due course were ushered into the detested house.
As he approached the hostess she looked steadily at him through her lorgnon, and then, turning to a companion, said with a drawl: "Isn't it horrid, my dear! Every Dick, Tom and Harry's here to-night."
"That's what comes of being amiable," said Burton to his wife, when they got home again—and he'd be asterisked, and might everybody else be asterisked, if he'd enter that asterisked house again. Then the humour of it all appealed to him; and his anger dissolved into the usual hearty laughter.
One very marked feature of Burton's character was that, like his father, he always endeavoured to do and say what he thought was right, quite regardless of appearances and consequences. And we may give one anecdote to illustrate our meaning.
On one occasion [379] he and another Englishman who was known by Burton to have degraded himself unspeakably, were the guests at a country house. "Allow me, Captain Burton," said the host, "to introduce you to the other principal guest of the evening, Mr. ——" Looking Mr. —— in the face, Burton said: "When I am in Persia I am a Persian, when in India a Hindu, but when in England I am an English gentleman," and then he turned his back on Mr. ——and left him. As Mr. ——'s record was not at the time generally known, those who were present at the scene merely shrugged their shoulders and said: "Only another of Burton's eccentricities." A few months, later, however, Mr. —-'s record received publicity, and Burton's conduct and words were understood.
One of Burton's lady relations being about to marry a gentleman who was not only needy but also brainless, somebody asked him what he thought of the bridegroom-elect.
"Not much," replied Burton, drily, "he has no furniture inside or out."
To "old maids" Burton was almost invariably cruel. He found something in them that roused all the most devilish rancours in his nature; and he used to tell them tales till the poor ladies did not know where to tuck their heads. When reproved afterwards by Mrs. Burton, he would say: "Yaas, yaas, no doubt; but they shouldn't be old maids; besides, it's no good telling the truth, for nobody ever believes you." He did, however, once refer complimentarily to a maiden lady—a certain Saint Apollonia who leaped into a fire prepared for her by the heathen Alexandrians. He called her "This admirable old maid." Her chief virtue in his eyes, however, seems to have been not her fidelity to her principles, but the fact that she got rid of herself, and so made one old maid fewer.
"What shall we do with our old maids?" he would ask, and then answer the question himself—"Oh, enlist them. With a little training they would make first-rate soldiers." He was also prejudiced against saints, and said of one, "I presume she was so called because of the enormity of her crimes."
Although Mrs. Burton often reproved her husband for his barbed and irritating remarks, her own tongue had, incontestibly, a very beautiful edge on it. Witness her reply to Mrs. X., who declared that when she met Burton she was inexpressibly shocked by his Chaucerian conversation and Canopic wit.
"I can quite believe," commented Mrs. Burton, sweetly, "that on occasions when no lady was present Richard's conversation might have been startling."
How tasteful is this anecdote, as they say in The Nights, "and how enjoyable and delectable."