46. The Anthropological Society, 6th Jan. 1863.
After an absence of a year and a half, Burton, as the result of his wife's solicitation at the Foreign Office, obtained four months' leave. He reached England in December 1862 and spent Christmas with her at Wardour Castle, the seat of her kinsman, Lord Arundell. His mind ran continually on the Gold Coast and its treasures. "If you will make me Governor of the Gold Coast," he wrote to Lord Russell, "I will send home a million a year," but in reply, Russell, with eyes unbewitched [200] observed caustically that gold was getting too common. Burton's comment was an explosion that terrorised everyone near him. He then amused himself by compiling a pamphlet on West African proverbs, one of which, picked up in the Yorubas country, ran, oddly enough: "Anger draweth arrows from the quiver: good words draw kolas from the bag."
The principal event of this holiday was the foundation, with the assistance of Dr. James Hunt, of the Anthropological Society of London (6th January 1863). The number who met was eleven. Says Burton, "Each had his own doubts and hopes and fears touching the vitality of the new-born. Still, we knew that our case was good.... We all felt the weight of a great want. As a traveller and a writer of travels I have found it impossible to publish those questions of social economy and those physiological observations, always interesting to our common humanity, and at times so valuable." The Memoirs of the Anthropological Society, [201] met this difficulty. Burton was the first president, and in two years the Society, which met at No. 4, St. Martin's Place, had 500 members. "These rooms," Burton afterwards commented, "now offer a refuge to destitute truth. There any man, monogenist, polygenist, eugenestic or dysgenestic, may state the truth as far as is in him." The history of the Society may be summed up in a few words. In 1871 it united with the Enthnological Society and formed the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain. In 1873 certain members of the old society, including Burton, founded the London Anthropological Society, and issued a periodical called Anthropologia, of which Burton wrote in 1885, "My motive was to supply travellers with an organ which would rescue their observations from the outer darkness of manuscript and print their curious information on social and sexual matters out of place in the popular book intended for the Nipptisch, and indeed better kept from public view. But hardly had we begun when 'Respectability,' that whited sepulchre full of all uncleanness, rose up against us. 'Propriety' cried us down with her brazen, blatant voice, and the weak-kneed brethren fell away. [202] Yet the organ was much wanted and is wanted still." [203] Soon after the founding of the Society Burton, accompanied by his wife, took a trip to Madeira and then proceeded to Teneriffe, where they parted, he going on to Fernando Po and she returning to England; but during the next few years she made several journeys to Teneriffe, where, by arrangement, they periodically met.