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.