He never knew how much he had, if he had debts or anything. I managed all that, and used to show him once a month a total of what was spent and what there was to go on with. He liked money for what it would bring, but he was very generous; he never gave it a thought, and he spent it as fast as he got it. He gave freely. He was born to be rich, and he liked to be thought rich. His own motto which he composed for himself was, "Honour, not Honours;" and his chaff motto for young ladies' albums, and which he would never explain to them, was as follows:—
| "Sháwir hunna | wa Khálif | hunna." |
| "Consult them (fem.) | and (do contrary) | to them." |
It is very curious the ignorance with which he was occasionally met. An educated man from Vienna asked him one day if he had ever been to Africa, and an educated Englishwoman, after living nearly eighteen years with him in Trieste, asked him the same question, and was not aware that he had ever written a book. I think that gives people some idea of his modesty.
He had a great objection personally to cremation, although he thought it a clean and healthy thing; but he said with his usual joke at a serious thing, "I do not want to burn before I have got to;" and secondly, "When a fellow has been quartered for seven years or more close to a Hindú smáshán, or burning-ground, it reminds him so painfully of the unpleasant smell of roast Hindú" (which pervaded his quarters when he was a struggling ensign or lieutenant). He used to carry a stick, which it was a pain to lift, to exercise the muscles of his arms; his Damascus pipe held a quarter of a pound of tobacco; his elephant-guns, with which he used to trot about Africa, of twenty-four pounds, which carried a four-ounce ball, I can only just lift; and, on the other hand, and later on in life, he would buy such diminutive things that they were almost more fit for a doll's house than for a man.
His handwriting, as everybody knows, was so small as to be almost invisible, and he used jokingly to say that the printers struck work when one of his manuscripts went in. They used to make hideous mistakes, and he used to abuse them in what he jokingly called "langwidge" all down the margins, and one day a firm sent up a foreman to say that the men declined to go on if they were abused in that manner. I was sent to interview the man, and we both laughed so much we could hardly speak, but he said he would go back and try to pacify them. Richard used always to say that a wee writing, as if done with a pin, betokened a big, strong man; a bold, dashing hand, as if written with the poker, was always a tiny, golden-haired, baby-faced woman.
Sometimes, when people annoyed Richard in little ways, I would say, "Never mind; why do you take notice of such little things?" and he invariably answered, "I am like an elephant's trunk; I can pick up a needle and root up a tree."
In his latter days, though his eyes were as soft and as brilliant and youthful as they could be, he only required spectacles just at the very end to read his own writing or small print, and the oculist found that he had two quite different eyes, which had been complained of in Madame Gutmansthal's picture, showing what a true artist she was. The right required No. 50 convex, and the left eye 14 convex. He turned to me and said, "I always told you that I was a dual man, and I believe that that particular mania when I am delirious is perfectly correct."
Description of Richard in Egypt.
Cutting from the Argonaut.
Descriptions from Other Sources.
Edwin de Leon, for many years Consul-General of the United States in Egypt, thus writes of the late Sir Richard Burton:—
"Richard Burton was self-reliant, self-sustained, seeking no support from heaven or earth, substituting self-will for faith and strenuous effort for Divine assistance; endowed by nature with a frame of iron and muscles of steel, he was an athlete who might have figured in the arena in Greek or Roman times. Audacious in speech and act, and fond of shocking the prejudices of those with whom he talked, he was the expounder of the most outrageous paradoxes possible to conceive. He was eminently a social animal; loved the pleasures of the table, and would talk with a friend all night in preference to going to bed, and in the Chaucerian style. Yet, with women, I never knew him even hint an indelicacy; for the charm of his conversation was to them very great, he had so much to tell. In his earlier days he was a strikingly handsome man, and even since his face had been scarred and furrowed by wounds and trials, there yet lingered on that expressive countenance the 'faded splendour wan' which had survived his youth. Among his personal habits was that of carrying in his hand an iron walking-stick, as heavy as a gun, to keep his muscles properly exercised, and a blow from his fist was like a kick from a horse. Mind and muscle with him were equally strong propellers, and the animal nature as vigorous as the intellectual. He had the faculty of making staunch friends and bitter enemies, and many of each. Burton had a curious characteristic which he shared with Lord Byron—that of loving to paint himself much blacker than he really was, and to affect vices, much as most men affect virtues, and with the same insincerity. In one of his shipwreck stories, after describing how they all suffered from the pangs of hunger, and the wolfish glances they began to cast on each other from time to time as the days wore on and no relief came, dropping his voice to a mysterious whisper, almost under his breath he added, 'The cabin-boy was young and fat, and looked very tender, and on him, more than on any other, such looks were cast, until——' Here he paused, looked around at the strained and startled faces of his auditors, in which horror was depicted, and then abruptly concluded, as though dismissing a disagreeable memory, 'But these are not stories to be told at a cheerful dinner-party, in a Christian country, and I had best say no more. Let us turn to some more cheerful subject.' Of course he was pressed to continue and complete his story, but stubbornly refused; leaving his hearers in a most unsatisfactory state of mind as to the dénouement of the unfinished narrative."
Description of Richard in his Study at Trieste.
Cutting from Life.
"Though standing nearly six feet high, he did not look a tall man, his broad shoulders, deep chest, and splendidly developed limbs deceiving the eye as to his real height. His hands and feet were small. His hair was of the deepest black, and was always worn close-cropped. In the East he went with his head clean shaven, covered with a fez and a white cap underneath it. As a talker he was unrivalled. His voice was soft and musical, contrasting strangely with the commanding tones which one would fancy necessary for him whose life so often depended on the power of his tongue over uncivilized men. His laugh was like the rattle of a pebble thrown across a frozen pond. While the best of ordinary men never aspire to know more than something of everything, and everything of something, he might almost without exaggeration be said to know everything of everything. He was an especial favourite of young men, who would literally sit at his feet as he talked. To all he was the kindest and truest of friends, and the brightest and most uncomplaining of companions in spite of his many disappointments.
"His literary work was always a labour of love with him, and those in the next room would often hear a hearty laugh burst from him as he lighted on the quaint conceit of some Oriental chronicler."
He was a man dearly loved by all Eastern races, by children and servants, and animals; he never made a mistake about character, and often when I have been quite delighted with people he has warned me against them, and forbidden me to have anything to do with them. I have never known him wrong in his estimate.
He had a wonderful prescience of things and events, even of those things of which he knew the least. I might quote a little common instance of so trite a thing as the "Argentines." I had some money in Argentines—not much, only a few hundreds—and one day without any rhyme or reason he ordered me to take them out. I thought to myself that if a first-rate lawyer and a first-rate broker put them in, that it must be right, and that Richard, being anything but a business man, could not possibly know anything about it, so I did not write the letter. Six months later he gave me a call; I went into his room. "Did you ever write that letter that I desired you to write, taking your money out of the Argentines?" "No, Jemmy," I said; "you know you know nothing about business, and it is a good percentage." He said very sternly, "Go and bring your pen and paper directly, and sit down here, and write it before me, and I will post it myself." He dictated to me a most imperative letter to my lawyer, desiring him to withdraw the money the moment he received the letter, without stopping to write back any questions. It was done, and my lawyer wrote me back a very aggrieved letter at my want of confidence in the judgment of his broker, and bitterly complained that I had lost £14. I gave it to Richard, who was delighted. A fortnight later the smash came. To show how kind-hearted he is, he called me and said laughingly, "I forbid you to write and taunt your lawyer; I know it is an awful temptation." He was so extremely punctiliously conscientious in his conduct to other people, so full of kindnesses and consideration for the feelings and peculiarities of other people.