Her sister and executrix, Mrs. Fitzgerald (to whom I should like to express my gratitude for the many facilities she has given me), thought fit to entrust me with the work of editing and preparing for publication the remaining MSS. In the exercise of the discretion she was good enough to vest in me, I determined to bring out first the three MSS. which make up this book.
The first part—The Jew—has a somewhat curious history. Burton collected most of the materials for writing it from 1869 to 1871, when he was Consul at Damascus. His intimate knowledge of Eastern races and languages, and his sympathy with Oriental habits and lines of thought, gave him exceptional facilities for ethnological studies of this kind. Disguised as a native, and unknown to any living soul except his wife, the British Consul mingled freely with the motley populations of Damascus, and inspected every quarter of the city—Muslim, Christian, and Jewish. His inquiries bore fruit in material, not only for this general essay on the Jew, but for an Appendix dealing with the alleged rite of Human Sacrifice among the Sephardím or Eastern Jews, and more especially the mysterious murder of Padre Tomaso at Damascus in 1840. There is little doubt that his inquiry into these subjects was one of the reasons which aroused the hostility of the Damascus Jews against him; and that hostility was a powerful factor, though by no means the only one, in his recall by Lord Granville in 1871.
Burton, however, had collected a mass of material before he left Damascus, and in 1873, the year after he had been appointed Consul at Trieste, he began to put it into shape for publication. It was his habit to collect for many years the material of a work, to mark, learn, and inwardly digest it, and then write it in a few months. This plan he pursued with The Jew, which, with the Appendix before mentioned, was finished and ready for publication towards the end of 1874.
In 1875 he came home from Trieste on leave, and brought the book with him, intending to publish it forthwith. But first he asked an influential friend, who was highly placed in the official world, to read the MS., and give him his opinion as to the expediency of publishing it. That opinion was adverse, owing to the anti-Semitic tendency of the book. Other friends also pointed out to Burton that, so long as he remained in the service of the Government of a country where the Jews enjoy unprecedented power and position, it would be unwise, to say the least of it, for him to make enemies of them. These arguments had weight with Burton, who was not as a rule influenced by anything but his own will, and for once he deemed discretion the better quality, and returned with his MS. to Trieste. There were other considerations too. His wife had just brought out her Inner Life of Syria, which was partly devoted to a defence of his action at Damascus in the matter of the Jews. It had met with a very favourable reception. His friends were also endeavouring to obtain for him a K.C.B. and the post of Tangier, Morocco—the one thing he stayed in the Consular Service in the hope of obtaining. So the time (1875) was not deemed a propitious one for making enemies.
Burton put his MS. on the shelf, and waited for the promotion which never came. It remained there until 1886, when Tangier, which was as good as promised to Burton, was given by Lord Rosebery to Sir William Kirby-Green. Then Burton took down the MS. on The Jew again, and had it recopied. But his wife, who was endeavouring to obtain permission for him to retire on full pension, pointed out to him that since it had waited so long it might as well wait until March, 1891, when, his term of service being finished, they would retire from official life and be free to publish what they liked. Moreover, they numbered many friends among the wealthy Jews of Trieste, and had no wish to wound their susceptibilities. Burton reluctantly agreed to this, but declared his determination of publishing the book as soon as he had retired from the Consular Service. Five months before the date of his retirement he died.
Lady Burton had The Jew next on her list for publication at the time of her death. In publishing it now, therefore, one is only carrying out her wishes and those of her husband. But in the exercise of the discretion given to me, I have thought it better to hold over for the present the Appendix on the alleged rite of Human Sacrifice among the Sephardím and the murder of Padre Tomaso. The only alternative was to publish it in a mutilated form; and as I hold strongly that no one has a right to mutilate the work of another writer, least of all of one who is dead, I prefer to withhold it until a more convenient season. I can do this with a clearer conscience, because the Appendix has no direct bearing on the other part of the book, and because the chapters on The Jew which are retained are by far the more important. The tone of even this portion is anti-Semitic; but I do not feel justified in going contrary to the wishes of the author and suppressing an interesting ethnological study merely to avoid the possibility of hurting the susceptibilities of the Hebrew community. It has been truly said, “Every nation gets the Jew it deserves,” and it may well be that the superstitions and cruelties of the Eastern Jews have been generated in them by long centuries of oppression and wrong. From these superstitions and cruelties the enlightened and highly favoured Jews in England naturally shrink with abhorrence and repudiation; but it does not therefore follow they have no existence among their less fortunate Eastern brethren.
The Gypsy has a far less eventful history, though the materials for its making were collected during a period of over thirty years, and were gathered for the most part by personal research, in Asia mainly, and also in Africa, South America, and Europe. Burton’s interest in the Gypsies was lifelong; and when he was a lieutenant in the Bombay Army and quartered in Sindh, he began his investigations concerning the affinity between the Jats and the Gypsies. During his many travels in different parts of the world, whenever he had the opportunity he collected fresh materials with a view to putting them together some day. In 1875 his controversy with Bataillard provoked him into compiling his long-contemplated work on the Gypsies. Unfortunately other interests intervened, and the work was never completed. It was one of the many unfinished things Burton intended to complete when he should have quitted the Consular Service. He hoped, for instance, to make fuller inquiries concerning the Gypsies in France, Germany, and other countries of Europe, and especially he intended to write a chapter on the Gypsies in England on his return home. Even as it stands, however, The Gypsy is a valuable addition to ethnology; for apart from Burton’s rare knowledge of strange peoples and tongues, his connexion with the Gypsies lends to the subject a unique interest. There is no doubt that he was affiliated to this strange people by nature, if not by descent. To quote from the Gypsy Lore Journal[1]:
“Whether there may not be also a tinge of Arab, or perhaps of Gypsy blood in Burton’s race, is a point which is perhaps open to question. For the latter suspicion an excuse may be found in the incurable restlessness which has beset him since his infancy, a restlessness which has effectually prevented him from ever settling long in any one place, and in the singular idiosyncrasy which his friends have often remarked—the peculiarity of his eyes. ‘When it (the eye) looks at you,’ said one who knows him well, ‘it looks through you, and then, glazing over, seems to see something behind you. Richard Burton is the only man (not a Gypsy) with that peculiarity, and he shares with them the same horror of a corpse, death-bed scenes, and graveyards, though caring little for his own life.’ When to this remarkable fact be added the scarcely less interesting detail that ‘Burton’ is one of the half-dozen distinctively Romany names, it is evident that the suspicion of Sir Richard Burton having a drop of Gypsy blood in his descent—crossed and commingled though it be with an English, Scottish, French, and Irish strain—is not altogether unreasonable.”
On this subject Lady Burton also wrote:
“In the January number of the Gypsy Lore Journal a passage is quoted from ‘a short sketch of the career’ of my husband (a little black pamphlet) which half suspects a remote drop of Gypsy blood in him. There is no proof that this was ever the case; but there is no question that he showed many of their peculiarities in appearance, disposition, and speech—speaking Romany like themselves. Nor did we ever enter a Gypsy camp without their claiming him: ‘What are you doing with a black coat on?’ they would say; ‘why don’t you join us and be our King?’”[2]