But especially strong were the melancholy, tender, sad hours of the man, full of sensitiveness to pathos in all he said, or did, or wrote. The one paid too much for the other, if I may so express it.
Richard and Sir Bernard Burke.
Talking of the Bourbon blood and his gaminerie, during this visit to Ireland we were in Dublin, where we had the pleasure of knowing Sir Bernard and Lady Burke, and Richard and he were talking in his study over his genealogy and this Louis XIV. descent. He said, "I want this to be made quite clear." Sir Bernard said, "I wonder, Captain Burton, that you, who have such good Northern and Scottish blood in your veins, and are connected with so many of the best families, should trouble about what can only be a morganatic descent at best." I can see him now, carelessly leaning against the bookcase with his hands in his pockets, with his amused face on, looking at the earnest countenance of Sir Bernard and saying, "Why! I would rather be the bastard of a King, than the son of an honest man," and his hearty laugh at the shocked expression and "Oh! Captain Burton," which he had been waiting for.
One of the amusing things, and interesting as well, was going to Gerald's Cross by rail, and when we arrived, there was only one car. There was another gentleman and ourselves, and as we had telegraphed for the car, it was ours. Still we did not like to leave him without anything. So we asked him if we could give him a lift. He asked us where we were going, and we told him. So he said, "Well, you pass my house, so I shall be grateful." As we drove along for about half an hour between Gerald's Cross and Cashel, he told us that he was Bianconi, the first inventor of outside Irish cars, that his house was called Longfield, and the whole of his most interesting history. His house was a nice little residence in a garden with a lawn and trees in front, and he insisted upon taking us into it, and giving us afternoon tea, after which we drove on.
We visited Tuam, which we both thought a dreadful place; but the name of Burton was big there, on account of the Bishop and the Dean, Richard's grandfather and uncle, and hundreds of the poor crowded round us for bakshish (presents). Richard had still some old aunts there, who came to dine with us, his grandfather's daughters. They had a large tract of land here, but Richard's father had made it over to the aunts, and I was very glad of it, as I should have been very sorry to have had to stop there. We were delighted with the fishing population of Lough Corrib, a cross between Spanish and Irish, who have nothing in common with the town; they are called Claddhah, pronounced Clather. We stopped long at the Armagh Cathedral, looking for Drelincourt tombs, of which there are plenty belonging to Richard's people. From Drogheda we went to see the Halls of Tara, the site of the Palace of the Kings, the Stone of Destiny, and then to the site of the Battle of the Boyne, afterwards to Maynooth College, where the boys cheered Richard. Then we proceeded to Blarney and kissed the stone; near Cork to see Captain and Mrs. Lane Fox, now General and Mrs. Pitt-Rivers; and also to Killarney, and thought it very pretty but very small. We enjoyed much hospitality at the Castle during our stay. During all our car-driving our little horse used to have a middle-of-the-day feed, with a pint of whisky and water, and she came in at the end of the time in better condition, and looking in every way better, and twice as frisky as when she started.
On the 17th of May the Polytechnic in London opened with an account of Richard's travels in Mecca, and a dissolving view of Richard's picture in uniform. It was arranged by Mr. Pepper of "Pepper's Ghost," and a quantity of little green pamphlets with the lecture were sold at the door. On the 22nd of May we dined with George Augustus Sala, previous to his going to Algiers, and also with poor Blakeley of the Guns, in his and Mrs. Blakeley's pretty little home; he died so sadly afterwards.
Richard was now transferred to Santos, São Paulo, Brazil.
Farewell Dinner to Captain R. F. Burton.
The Anthropological Farewell Dinner.
"On Tuesday, April 4th, 1865, there was celebrated an event in London of such importance to anthropological science as to deserve an especial record in these pages. On this day the Anthropological Society of London celebrated the election into their society of five hundred Fellows, by giving a public dinner to Captain Richard F. Burton, their senior vice-president. The Right Honourable Lord Stanley, M.P., F.R.S., F.A.S.L., took the chair, and was supported on the right by Captain Burton. [Here follows one hundred and twenty distinguished names.]
Lord Derby's Speech as Chairman.
"The noble Chairman, Lord Derby, in proposing 'The health of Captain Burton,' said—I rise to propose a toast which will not require that I should bespeak for it a favourable consideration on your part. I intend to give you the health of the gentleman in whose honour we have met to-night. (Loud cheers.) I propose the health of one—your cheers have said it before me—of the most distinguished Explorers and Geographers of the present day. (Cheers.) I do not know what you feel, but as far as my limited experience in that way extends, for a man to sit and listen to his own eulogy is by no means an unmixed pleasure, and in Captain Burton's presence I shall say a great deal less about what he has done than I should take the liberty of doing if he were not here. (Cheers.) But no one can dispute this, that into a life of less than forty-five years Captain Burton has crowded more of study, more of hardship, and more of successful enterprise and adventure than would have sufficed to fill up the existence of half a dozen ordinary men. (Cheers.) If, instead of continuing his active career—as we hope he will for many years to come—it were to end to-morrow, he would still have done enough to entitle him to a conspicuous and permanent place in the annals of geographical discoverers. (Cheers.) I need not remind you, except in the briefest way, of the long course of his adventures and their results. His first important work, the 'History of the Races of Scinde,' will long continue to be useful to those whose studies lie in that direction, and those who, like myself, have travelled through that unhappy valley—through that young Egypt, which is about as like old Egypt as a British barrack is like an Egyptian pyramid—will recognize the fact that if there have been men who have described that country for utilitarian purposes more accurately and minutely, no man has described it with a more graphic pen. (Cheers.) With respect to his pilgrimage to Mecca, that, I believe, was part only of a much larger undertaking which local disturbances in the country prevented being carried out to the fullest extent. (Cheers.) I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that not more than two or three Englishmen would have been able to perform that feat. The only two parallels to it that I recollect in one generation are, the exploring journeys of Sir Henry Pottinger into Beloochistan, and the journey of M. Vambéry through the deserts of Central Asia. (Cheers.) I am speaking only by hearsay and report, but I take the fact to be this, that the ways of Europeans and Asiatics are so totally different—I do not mean in those important acts to which we all pay a certain amount of attention while we do them, but in those little trifling details of everyday life, that we do instinctively and without paying attention to them—the difference in these respects between the two races is so wide that the Englishman who would attempt to travel in the disguise of an Oriental ought to be almost Oriental in his habits if he hope to carry out that personation successfully. And if that be true of a journey of a few days, it is far more true of a journey extending over weeks and months, where you have to keep your secret, not merely from the casual observer, but from your own servants, your own friends, and your own travelling companions. To carry through an enterprise of that kind may well be a strain on the ingenuity of any man, and though, no doubt, danger does stimulate our faculties, still it does not take from the merit of a feat that it is performed under circumstances in which, in the event of detection, death is almost certain. (Cheers.) I shall say nothing in this brief review of that plucky though unsuccessful expedition to the Somali country, which so nearly deprived the Anthropological Society of one of its ablest members. But I cannot pass over so lightly the journey into Harar—the first attempt to penetrate Eastern Africa in that quarter. That journey really opened a wide district of country previously unknown to the attention of civilized man. It led the way indirectly to the Nile expeditions, which lasted from 1856 to 1859. With respect to the labours which were gone through in those expeditions, and the controversies which arose out of those labours, I do not require here to say anything except to make one passing remark. With regard to this disputed subject of the Nile, I may be permitted to say—though those who are experienced in geographical matters may treat me as a heretic—(a laugh)—I cannot help it if they do, for I speak by the light only of common sense—(renewed laughter, and cheers)—but it seems to me that there is a little delusion in this notion of searching for what we call the source of a river. Can you say of any river that it has a source? It has a mouth, that is certain—(cheers);—but it has a great many sources, and to my mind you might just as well talk of a plant as having only one root, or a man only one hair on his head, as of a river having a single source. Every river is fed from many sources, and it does not seem to me that the mere accident of hitting upon that which subsequent investigation may prove to be the largest of its many affluents is a matter about which there need be much controversy. The real test of the value of this kind of work is, what is the quantity of land previously unknown which the discoverer has gone through, and which he has opened up to the knowledge of civilized man? (Cheers.) Judged by that test, I do not hesitate to say that the African Expedition of 1856 has been the most important of our time; the only rival which I could assign to it being that separate expedition which was undertaken by Dr. Livingstone through the southern part of the continent. (Hear.) Where one man has made his way many will follow, and I do not think it is too sanguine an anticipation, negro chiefs and African fevers notwithstanding, to expect that within the lifetime of the present generation we may know as much of Africa, at least, of Africa north of the equator, and within fifteen degrees south of it, as we know now of South America. Well, gentlemen, no man returns from a long African travel with health entirely unimpaired, and our friend was no exception to the rule. But there are men to whom all effort is unpleasant, so there are men to whom all rest, all doing nothing, is about the hardest work to which they could be put, and Captain Burton recruited his health, as you all know, by a journey to the Mormon country, travelling thirty thousand miles by sea and land, and bringing back from that community—morally, I think, the most eccentric phenomenon of our days—a very curious and interesting, and, as far as I could judge, the most accurate description we have yet received. (Cheers.) Now, as to the last phase of the career which I am attempting to sketch—the embassy to Dahomè, the discovery of the Cameroon Mountains, and the travels along the African coast, I shall only remind you of it, because I am quite sure that the published accounts must be fresh in all your minds. I do not know what other people may think of these volumes, but to me they were a kind of revelation of negro life and character, enabling me to feel, which certainly I never felt before, that I could understand an African and barbarian court. As to any theories arising out of these journeys, as to any speculations which may be deduced from them, I do not comment upon these here. This is not the place nor the occasion to do it. All I will say about them is, that when a man with infinite labour, with infinite research, and at the imminent risk of his life, has gone to work to collect a series of facts, I think the least the public can do is to allow him a fair hearing when he puts his own interpretation upon those facts. (Loud cheers.) I will add this, that in matters which we all feel to be intensely interesting, and upon which we all know that our knowledge is imperfect, any man does us a service who helps us to arrange the facts which we have at our command, who stimulates inquiry and thought by teaching us to doubt instead of dogmatizing. I am quite aware that this is not in all places a popular theory. There are a great many people who, if you give them a new idea, receive it almost as if you had offered them personal violence. (Laughter.) It puts them out. They don't understand it—they are not used to it. I think that state of the public mind, which we must all acknowledge, is the very best defence for the existence of scientific societies such as that to which many of us belong. It is something for a man who has got a word to say, to know that there is a society where he will get a fair and considerate hearing; and, whether the judgment goes against him or not, at least he will be met by argument and not by abuse. I think Captain Burton has done good service to the State in various ways. He has extended our knowledge of the globe on which we live, and as we happen to be men, and not mere animals, that is a result which, though it may not have any immediate utilitarian result, we ought to value. (Cheers.) He has done his share in opening savage and barbarous countries to the enterprise of civilized man, and though I am not quite so sanguine as many good men have been as to the reclaiming of savage races, one has only to read his and all other travellers' accounts of African life in its primitive condition, to see that whether they gain much or not by European intercourse, at any rate they have nothing to lose. (Laughter.) But there is something more than that. In these days of peace and material prosperity (and both of them are exceedingly good things), there is another point of view in which such a career as that of our friend is singularly useful. It does as much as a successful campaign to keep up in the minds of the English people that spirit of adventure and of enterprise, that looking to reputation rather than money, to love of effort rather than to ease—the old native English feeling which has made this country what it has become, and which, we trust, will keep this country what it is to be—a feeling which, no doubt, the tendency of great wealth and material prosperity is to diminish; but a feeling which, if it were to disappear from among us, our wealth and our material prosperity would not be worth one year's purchase. (Cheers.) Gentlemen, I propose the health of Captain Burton, and my best wish for him is that he may do for himself what nobody else is likely to do for him, that by his future performance he may efface the memory of his earlier exploits. (Loud cheers.)
"The toast was drunk with three times three.
"Captain Burton, who, on rising, was greeted with loud and protracted cheering, said—My Lord Stanley, my lords and gentlemen, it falls to the lot of few men to experience a moment so full of gratified feeling as this, when I rise to return thanks for the honour you have done me on this, to me, most memorable occasion. I am proud to see my poor labours in the cause of discovery thus publicly recognized by the representative of England's future greatness. (Cheers.) The terms of praise which have fallen from your lordship's lips are far above my present deserts, yet I treasure them gratefully in my memory as coming from one so highly honoured, not only as a nobleman, but as a man. I am joyed when looking round me to see so many faces of friends who have met to give me God-speed—to see around me so many of England's first men, England's brains, in fact; men who have left their mark upon the age; men whose memories the world will not willingly let die. These are the proudest laurels a man can win, and I shall wear them in my heart of hearts that I may win more of them on my return.
"But, however gratifying this theme, I must bear in mind the occasion which thus agreeably brings us together. We meet to commemorate the fact that on March 14, 1865, that uncommonly lusty youth, our young Anthropological Society, attained the respectable dimensions of five hundred members. My lord and gentlemen, it is with no small pride that I recall to mind how, under the auspices of my distinguished and energetic friend Dr. James Hunt, our present president,—and long may he remain so,—I took the chair on the occasion of its nativity. The date was January 6, 1863. The number of those who met was eleven. Each had his own doubts and hopes, and fears touching the viability of the new-born. Still we knew that our cause was good; we persevered, we succeeded. (Cheers.)
"The fact is, we all felt the weight of the great want. As a traveller and a writer of travels during the last fifteen years, 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 now acts the good Samaritan to facts which the publisher and the drawing-room table proudly pass by. Secondly, there was no arena for the public discussion of opinions now deemed paradoxical, and known to be unpopular. The rooms of the Anthropological Society, No. 4, St. Martin's Place, now offer a refuge to destitute truth. There any man, monogenist or polygenist, eugenestic or dysgenestic, may state the truth as far as is in him. We may truly call these rooms
'Where, girt by friend or foe,
A man may say the thing he will.'All may always claim equally from us a ready hearing, and what as Englishmen we prize the most, a fair field and plenty of daylight. (Cheers.)
"And how well we succeeded—how well our wants have been supplied by the officers of our society, we may judge by this fact: During the last twenty days not less than thirty members have, I am informed by my friend Mr. Carter Blake, been added to the five hundred of last month. I confidently look forward to the day when, on returning from South America, I shall find a list of fifteen hundred names of our society. We may say vires acquirit eundo, which you will allow me to translate, 'We gain strength by our go,' in other words, our progress. This will give us weight to impress our profession and opinions upon the public. Already the learned of foreign nations have forgotten to pity us for inability to work off the grooves of tradition and habit. And we must succeed so long as we adhere to our principles of fair play and a hearing to every man. (Cheers.)
"I would now request your hearing for a few words of personal explanation, before leaving you for some years. I might confide it to each man separately, but I prefer the greatest possible publicity. It has come to my ears that some have charged me with want of generosity in publishing a book which seems to reflect upon the memory of poor Captain Speke. Without entering into details concerning a long and melancholy misunderstanding, I would here briefly state that my object has ever been, especially on this occasion, to distinguish between personal enmities and scientific differences. I did not consider myself bound to bury my opinions in Speke's grave; to me, living, they are of importance. I adhere to all I have stated respecting the Nile sources; but I must change the form of their expression. My own statement may, I believe, be considered to be moderate enough. In a hasty moment, I appended one more, which might have been omitted—as it shall from all future editions. I may conclude this painful controversial subject, by stating that Mr. Arthur Kinglake, of Weston-super-Mare, writes to me that a memorial bust of my lamented companion is to be placed this year in the shire-hall, Taunton, with other Somersetshire heroes, Blake and Locke. I have seen the bust in the studio of Mr. Papworth, and it is perfect. If you all approve, it would give me the greatest pleasure to propose a subscription for the purpose before we leave this room. (Cheers.)
"And now I have already trespassed long enough upon your patience. I will not excuse myself, because I am so soon to leave you. Nor will I say adieu, because I shall follow in mind all your careers; yours, my Lord Stanley, to that pinnacle of greatness for which Nature and Fate have destined you; and yours, gentlemen and friends, each of you, to the high and noble missions to which you are called. Accompanied by your good wishes, I go forth on mine with fresh hope, and with a vigour derived from the wholesome stimulus which you have administered to me this evening. My Lord Stanley, my lords and gentlemen, I thank you from my heart.
"[Here followed twenty-five speeches. Dr. Hunt, the President, concluded:] He should be very sorry if they were to separate on that occasion, when they had met to bid farewell to Captain Burton, without drinking the health of one on whom they all looked with respect and admiration—Mrs. Burton. (Loud cheers.) He felt it, therefore, to be their duty to join most heartily in drinking long health and prosperity to Mrs. Burton, and may she be long spared to take care of her husband when far away in South America. Those who paid homage to her paid homage also to him, whom they had met to honour, and the more they knew of him the more they respected him. (Loud cheers.)
"Captain Burton: I only hope in the name of Heaven that Mrs. Burton won't hear of this. (Laughter.)
"Dr. Hunt said that as Captain Burton refused to respond to the toast in a proper manner, he must return thanks for Mrs. Burton. She begged him to say that she had great difficulty in keeping her husband in order, but that she would do what she could to take care of him, and to make him as innocent a man as they believed him to be. (Loud laughter.)
"Lord Stanley then left, and the company soon afterwards separated."