Colonel Burton continued his chemical studies, and in an evil hour for the family, purchased a copy of the quaint text book by S. Parkes: "A Chemical Catechism... with copious notes... to which are added a Vocabulary and a Chapter of Amusing Experiments." [42] And very amusing they were when Colonel Burton made them. Having studied the book closely, including the "poetry" with which it is studded, he manufactured, at vast expense, a few cakes of a nasty-looking and evil-smelling substance, which, he said, was soap, and ought to be put on the market. Mrs. Burton intimated that he might put it on the market or anywhere else as long as he did not make any more. He next, by the aid of the same manual, prepared a mixture which he called citric acid, though any other name would have suited it equally well; and of this, as neither he nor anybody else had any use for it, he daily produced large quantities. From Naples the family moved to Sorrento, where S'or Riccardo and S'or Edwardo, as the Italians called them, surrendered themselves to the natural and legendary influences of the neighbourhood and to reading. The promontory on which Sorrento stands is barren enough, but southward rise pleasant cliffs viridescent with samphire, and beyond them purple hills dotted with white spots of houses. At no great distance, though hidden from view, stood the classic Paestum, with its temple to Neptune; and nothing was easier than to imagine, on his native sea as it were, the shell-borne ocean-god and old Triton blowing his wreathed horn. Capri, the retreat of Tiberius, was of easy access. Eastward swept a land of myrtle and lemon orchards. While the elder Burton was immersed in the melodious Parkes, who sang about "Oxygen, abandoning the mass," and changing "into gas," his sons played the parts of Anacreon and Ovid, they crowned their heads with garlands and drank wine like Anacreon, not omitting the libation, and called to mind the Ovid of well-nigh two thousand years previous, and his roses of Paestum. From poetry they turned once more to pistols, again brought their mother's heart to her mouth, and became generally ungovernable. A visit to a house of poor reputation having been discovered, their father and Mr. Du Pre set upon them with horsewhips, whereupon the graceless but agile youths ran to a neighbouring house and swarmed to the top of a stack of chimneys, whence partly by word and partly by gesticulation they arranged terms of peace.
In 1836, the Burtons left for Pau in the South of France; and while there Richard lost his heart to the daughter of a French baron. Unfortunately, however, she had to go away to be married; and Richard who loved her to desperation, wept bitterly, partly because he was to lose her and partly because she didn't weep too. Edward and the young lady's sister, who also understood each other, fared no better, for Colonel Burton having got tired of Pau, the whole family had to return to Italy. At Pisa "S'or Riccardo" and "S'or Edwardo" again "cocked their hats and loved the ladies," Riccardo's choice being a slim, soft, dark beauty named Caterina, Edwardo's her sister Antonia. Proposals of marriage were made and accepted, but adieux had soon to follow, for Colonel Burton now moved to Lucca. All four lovers gave way to tears, and Richard was so wrung with grief that he did not become engaged again for over a fortnight. At Lucca the precious pair ruffled it with a number of dissolute medical students, who taught them several quite original wickednesses. They went, however, with their parents, into more wholesome society; and were introduced to Louis Desanges, the battle painter, Miss Helen Croly, daughter of the author of Salathiel, and Miss Virginia Gabriel (daughter of General, generally called Archangel Gabriel) the lady who afterwards attained fame as a musical composer [43] and became, as we have recently discovered, one of the friends of Walter Pater. Says Burton "she showed her savoir faire at the earliest age. At a ball given to the Prince, all appeared in their finest dresses, and richest jewellery. Miss Virginia was in white, with a single necklace of pink coral." They danced till daybreak, when Miss Virginia "was like a rose among faded dahlias and sunflowers."
Here, as everywhere, there was more pistol practice, and the boys plumed themselves on having discovered a new vice—that of opium-eating, while their father made the house unendurable by the preparation of sulphuretted hydrogen and other highly-scented compounds. It was recognised, however, that these chemical experiments had at least the advantage of keeping Colonel Burton employed, and consequently of allowing everybody a little breathing time at each stopping-place. In the spring of 1840, Colonel Burton, Mr. Du Pre and the lads set out for Schinznach, in Switzerland, to drink the waters; and then the family returned to England in order that Richard and Edward might have a university education. Their father, although not quite certain as to their future, thought they were most adapted for holy orders. Their deportment was perfect, the ladies admired them, and their worst enemies, it seems, had never accused them of being "unorthodox in their views." Indeed, Mrs. Burton already pictured them mitred and croziered. For a few weeks the budding bishops stayed with "Grandmama Baker," who with "Aunt Sarah" and "Aunt Georgiana," and Aunt Sarah's daughters, Sarah and Elisa, was summering at Hampstead; and filled up the time, which hung heavy on their hands, with gambling, drinking and love-making.
Chapter II. October 1840-April 1842, Oxford
6. Trinity College, October 1840.
Edward was then placed under a clergyman at Cambridge—The Rev. Mr. Havergal, whose name, to that gentleman's indignation, the brothers turned into "a peculiar form of ridicule." [44] Richard was to go to Trinity College, Oxford. Neither, as we have seen, had been suitably prepared for a University career. Richard, who could speak fluently French, Italian, and modern Greek, did not know the Apostles' Creed, and what was even more unusual in a prospective clergyman, had never heard of the Thirty-nine Articles. He was struck with the architecture of the colleges, and much surprised at the meanness of the houses that surrounded them. He heretically calls the Isis 'a mere moat,' the Cherwell 'a ditch.' The brilliant dare-devil from Italy despised alike the raw, limitary, reputable, priggish undergraduates and the dull, snuffling, smug-looking, fussy dons. The torpor of academic dulness, indeed, was as irksome to Burton at Oxford as it had been to FitzGerald and Tennyson at Cambridge. After a little coaching from Dr. Ogle and Dr. William Alexander Greenhill [45], he in October 1840, entered Trinity, where he has installed in "a couple of frowsy dog-holes" overlooking the garden of old Dr. Jenkins, the Master of Balliol.
"My reception at College," says Burton, "was not pleasant. I had grown a splendid moustache, which was the envy of all the boys abroad, and which all the advice of Drs. Ogle and Greenhill failed to make me remove. I declined to be shaved until formal orders were issued by the authorities of the college. For I had already formed strong ideas upon the Shaven Age of England, when her history, with some brilliant exceptions, such as Marlborough, Wellington and Nelson, was at its meanest." An undergraduate who laughed at him he challenged to fight a duel; and when he was reminded that Oxford "men" like to visit freshmen's rooms and play practical jokes, he stirred his fire, heated his poker red hot, and waited impatiently for callers. "The college teaching for which one was obliged to pay," says Burton, "was of the most worthless description. Two hours a day were regularly wasted, and those who read for honours were obliged to choose and pay a private coach."
Another grievance was the constant bell ringing, there being so many churches and so many services both on week days and Sundays. Later, however, he discovered that it is possible to study, even at Oxford, if you plug your ears with cotton-wool soaked in glycerine. He spent his first months, not in studying, but in rowing, fencing, shooting the college rooks, and breaking the rules generally. Many of his pranks were at the expense of Dr. Jenkins, for whose sturdy common sense, however, he had sincere respect; and long after, in his Vikram and the Vampire, in which he satirises the tutors and gerund-grinders of Oxford, he paid him a compliment. [46]