This year, 1864, Richard edited and annotated Marcy's "Prairie Traveller" for the Anthropological Review.
Apart from the sad circumstance of Speke's death, we had a very delightful winter. We went to Uncle Gerard's at Garswood, to Lady Egerton of Tatton's, to Lady Stanley of Alderley's (in the present dowager's time), when the now Dowager Lady Airlie and Lady Amberly and all the family were then at home, where we met an immense quantity of distinguished people, and notably Professor Jowett. Then we went to Lady Margaret Beaumont's at Bretton Park, and to Lord Fitzwilliam's; and all these had large house-parties.
Winwoode Reade—We go to Ireland.
This year we became very intimate with Winwood Reade. We went over to Ireland, where we spent a delightful two months. We took an Irish car, and drove by degrees over all the most interesting and prettiest parts of Ireland, at the rate of so many miles a day, stopping where it was most interesting. I had an Irish maid with me, whose chief delight was to see Richard and me clinging on to the car as it flew round the corners, while she sat as cool and calm as possible, with her hands in her muff. "Ye devil," Richard said to her, "I believe you were born on a car; I will pay you out for laughing at me." Some days afterwards, she dropped her muff. There was a great deal of snow on the ground, so Richard said to her very kindly, "Don't get down, Kiernan; I will get your muff for you." He stopped the car, got down, pretended to be very busy with his boot, but in reality he was filling her muff with snow. When he gave it back to her she gave a little screech. "Ah," he said, with glistening eyes, "you'll laugh at me for clinging on the car like a monkey on a scraper again."
We were asked to numbers of country-houses on the way—to the Bellews', Gormanstons', and Lord Drogheda's; and we had the pleasure of making acquaintance with Lady Rachel Butler and Lord James, who were very kind to us. Dublin was immensely hospitable, and at that time very gay. One of our interesting events was making acquaintance with Mr. Lentaigne, the great convict philanthropist. His mania was to reform his convicts, and make his friends take them for service, if nobody else would. He was the man to whom Lord Carlisle said, "Why, Lentaigne, you will wake up some morning, and find you are the only spoon in the house." He took us to see the prisons and the reformatories, and he implored of me to take out with me a convict woman of about thirty-four, who had been fifteen years in prison. I said, "Well, Mr. Lentaigne, what did she do?" "Poor girl! the sweetest creature—she murdered her baby when she was sixteen." "Well," I answered, "I would do anything to oblige you, but I dare say I shall often be quite alone with her, and at thirty-four she might like larger game."
Richard was veritably, though born of prosaic parents, a child of romance. He had English, Irish, Scotch, and French blood in his veins, and, it has often been suggested (though never proved), a drop of Oriental or gypsy blood from some far-off ancestor. His Scottish, North England, and Border blood came out in all posts of trust and responsibility, in steadiness and coolness in the hour of danger, in uprightness and integrity, and the honour of a gentleman. Of Irish blood he showed nothing excepting fight, but the two foreign strains were strong. From Arab or gypsy he got his fluency of languages, his wild and daring spirit, his Agnosticism, his melancholy pathos, his mysticism, his superstition (I am superstitious enough, God knows, but he was far more so), his divination, his magician-like foresight into events, his insight, or reading men through like a pane of glass, his restless wandering, his poetry. From a very strong strain of Bourbon blood (Richard showed "race" from the top of his head to the sole of his feet) which the Burtons inherit—that is, my Burtons—he got his fencing, knowledge of arms, his ready wit and repartee, his boyish gaiety of character as alternately opposed to his melancholy, and, lastly, but not least, his Catholicism as opposed to the mysticism of the East, which is not in the least like the Agnosticism of the West. But it was not a fixed thing like my Catholicism; it ran silently threaded through his life, alternately with his mysticism, like the refrain of an opera.
He was proud of his Scottish and North England blood, he liked his Rob Roy descent, and also his Bourbon blood, and he used to laugh heartily when, sometimes, I was half-vexed at something and used to chaff him by saying, "You dirty Frenchman!"
Richard was a regular gamin; his keen sense of humour, his ready wit, were always present. He adored shocking dense people and seeing their funny faces and stolid belief, and never cared about what harm it would do him in a worldly sense. I have frequently sat at the dinner-table of such people, praying him by signs not to go on, but he was in a very ecstasy of glee; he said it was so funny always to be believed when you were chaffing, and so curious never to be believed when you were telling the truth. He had a sort of schoolboy bravado about these things that in his high spirits lasted him all the seventy years of his life.