The Life of Sir Richard Burton eBook

The Life of Sir Richard Burton by Thomas Wright

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Table of Contents

Page 1

Bibliography

60.  Camoens, 6 vols. 1 and 2, the Lusiads. 1880. 3 and 4, Life of Camoens and Commentary. 1882. 5 and 6, The Lyrics. 1884. 61.  The Kasidah. 1880. 62.  Visit to Lissa and Pelagoza. 1880. 63.  A Glance at the Passion Play. 1881. 64.  How to deal with the Slave Trade in Egypt. 1881. 65.  Thermae of Montfalcone. 1881.

98.  The Lusiads.

Burton had brought with him to Egypt his translation of The Lusiads, which had been commenced as early as 1847, and at which, as we have seen, he had, from that time onward, intermittently laboured.  At Cairo he gave his work the finishing touches, and on his return to Trieste in May it was ready for the press.  There have been many English translators of Camoens, from Fanshawe, the first, to Burton and Aubertin; and Burton likens them to the Simoniacal Popes in Dante’s Malebolge-pit—­each one struggling to trample down his elder brother.[FN#322] Burton’s work, which appeared in 1882, was presently followed by two other volumes consisting of a Life of Camoens and a Commentary on The Lusiads, but his version of The Lyrics did not appear till 1884.

Regarded as a faithful rendering, the book was a success, for Burton had drunk The Lusiads till he was super-saturated with it.  Alone among the translators, he had visited every spot alluded to in the poem, and his geographical and other studies had enabled him to elucidate many passages that had baffled his predecessors.  Then, too, he had the assistance of Aubertin, Da Cunha and other able Portuguese scholars and Camoens enthusiasts.  Regarded, however, as poetry, the book was a failure, and for the simple reason that Burton was not a poet.  Like his Kasidah, it contains noble lines, but on every page we are reminded of the translator’s defective ear, annoyed by the unnecessary use of obsolete words, and disappointed by his lack of what Poe called “ethericity.”  The following stanza, which expresses ideas that Burton heartily endorsed, may be regarded as a fair sample of the whole: 

   “Elegant Phormion’s philosophick store
      see how the practised Hannibal derided
      when lectured he with wealth of bellick lore
      and on big words and books himself he prided. 
      Senhor! the soldier’s discipline is more
      than men may learn by mother-fancy guided;
    Not musing, dreaming, reading what they write;
    ’tis seeing, doing, fighting; teach to fight."[FN#323]

The first six lines contain nothing remarkable, still, they are workmanlike and pleasant to read; but the two concluding lines are atrocious, and almost every stanza has similar blemishes.  A little more labour, even without much poetic skill, could easily have produced a better result.  But Burton was a Hannibal, not a Phormion, and no man can be both.  He is happiest, perhaps, in the stanzas containing the legend of St. Thomas,[FN#324] or Thome, as he calls him,

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       “the Missioner sanctified
   Who thrust his finger in Lord Jesu’s side.”

According to Camoens, while Thorme was preaching to the potent Hindu city Meleapor, in Narsinga land[FN#325] a huge forest tree floated down the Ganges, but all the king’s elephants and all the king’s men were incompetent to haul it ashore.

   “Now was that lumber of such vasty size,
     no jot it moves, however hard they bear;
     when lo! th’ Apostle of Christ’s verities
     wastes in the business less of toil and care: 
     His trailing waistcord to the tree he ties,
     raises and sans an effort hales it where
    A sumptuous Temple he would rear sublime,
    a fit example for all future time.”

This excites the jealousy and hatred of the Brahmins, for

   “There be no hatred fell and fere, and curst
    As by false virtue for true virtue nurst.”

The chief Brahmin then kills his own son, and tries to saddle the crime on Thome, who promptly restores the dead youth to life again and “names the father as the man who slew.”  Ultimately, Thome, who is unable to circumvent the further machinations of his enemies, is pierced to the heart by a spear; and the apostle in glory is thus apostrophised: 

   “Wept Gange and Indus, true Thome! thy fate,
     wept thee whatever lands thy foot had trod;
     yet weep thee more the souls in blissful state
     thou led’st to don the robes of Holy Rood. 
     But angels waiting at the Paradise-gate
     meet thee with smiling faces, hymning God. 
    We pray thee, pray that still vouchsafe thy Lord
    unto thy Lusians His good aid afford.”

In a stanza presented as a footnote and described as “not in Camoens,” Burton gives vent to his own disappointments, and expends a sigh for the fate of his old friend and enemy, John Hanning Speke.  As regards himself, had he not, despite his services to his country, been relegated to a third-rate seaport, where his twenty-nine languages were quite useless, except for fulminating against the government!  The fate of poor Speke had been still more lamentable: 

   “And see you twain from Britain’s foggy shore
     set forth to span dark Africk’s jungle-plain;
     thy furthest fount, O Nilus! they explore,
     and where Zaire springs to seek the Main,
     The Veil of Isis hides thy land no more,
     whose secrets open to the world are lain. 
    They deem, vain fools! to win fair Honour’s prize: 
    This exiled lives, and that untimely dies.”

Burton, however, still nursed the fallacious hope that his merits would in time be recognised, that perhaps he would be re-instated in Damascus or appointed to Ispahan or Constantinople.

99.  At Ober Ammergau, August 1880.

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In August (1880) the Burtons paid a visit to Ober Ammergau, which was just then attracting all eyes on account of its Passion Play.  Burton’s object in going was “the wish to compare, haply to trace some affinity between, this survival of the Christian ‘Mystery’ and the living scenes of El Islam at Mecca,” while Mrs. Burton’s object may be gauged by the following prayer which she wrote previous to their departure from Trieste:  “O Sweet Jesu. ..  Grant that I, all unworthy though I be, may so witness this holy memorial of thy sacrificial love, Thy glorious victory over death and hell, that I may be drawn nearer to Thee and hold Thee in everlasting remembrance.  Let the representation of Thy bitter sufferings on the cross renew my love for Thee, strengthen my faith, and ennoble my life, and not mine only, but all who witness it.”  Then follows a prayer for the players.

Burton found no affinity between the scenes at Ober Ammergau and those at Mecca, and he was glad to get away from “a pandemonium of noise and confusion,” while Mrs. Burton, who was told to mind her own business by a carter with whom she remonstrated for cruelly treating a horse, discovered that even Ober Ammergau was not all holiness.  Both Burton and his wife recorded their impressions in print, but though his volume[FN#326] appeared in 1881, hers[FN#327] was not published till 1900.

100.  Mrs. Burton’s Advice to Novelists. 4th September 1880.

The following letter from Mrs. Burton to Miss Stisted, who had just written a novel, A Fireside King,[FN#328] gives welcome glimpses of the Burtons and touches on matters that are interesting in the light of subsequent events.  “My dearest Georgie, On leaving you I came on to Trieste, arriving 29th May, and found Dick just attacked by a virulent gout.  We went up to the mountains directly without waiting even to unpack my things or rest, and as thirty-one days did not relieve him, I took him to Monfalcone for mud baths, where we passed three weeks, and that did him good.  We then returned home to change our baggage and start for Ober Ammergau, which I thought glorious, so impressive, simple, natural.  Dick rather criticises it.  However, we are back. ...  I read your book through on the journey to England.  Of course I recognised your father, Minnie,[FN#329] and many others, but you should never let your heroine die so miserably, because the reader goes away with a void in his heart, and you must never put all your repugnances in the first volume, for you choke off your reader. ...  You don’t mind my telling the truth, do you, because I hope you will write another, and if you like you may stand in the first class of novelists and make money and do good too, but put your beasts a little further in towards the end of the first volume.  I read all the reviews that fell in my way, but though some were spiteful that need not discourage ...  Believe me, dearest G., your affectionate Zookins.”

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Miss Stisted’s novel was her first and last, but she did write another book some considerable time later, which, however, would not have won Mrs. Burton’s approval.[FN#330]

101.  The Kasidah, 1880.

This year, Burton, emulous of fame as an original poet, published The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi, A Lay of the Higher Law, which treats of the great questions of Life, Death and Immortality, and has certain resemblances to that brilliant poem which is the actual father of it, Edward FitzGerald’s rendering of The Rubaiyat of Oman Khayyam.  Lady Burton tells us that The Kasidah was written about 1853, or six years before the appearance of FitzGerald’s poem.  Nothing, however, is more certain than that, with the exception of a few verses, it was written after FitzGerald’s poem.  The veriest tyro in literature, by comparing the two productions, would easily understand their relationship.[FN#331] The facts are these.  About 1853, Burton, in a time of dejection, caused by the injustice done him in India, planned a poem of this nature, wrote a few stanzas, and then put it by and forgot all about it.  FitzGerald’s version of Omar Khayyam appeared in 1859, and Burton no sooner read than he burned to rival it.  So he drew from the pigeon-hole what he called his Lay, furbished up the few old verses, made a number of new ones, reconstructed the whole, and lo, The Kasidah!  Burton calls it a translation of a poem by a certain Haji Abdu.  There may have been a Haji Abdu who supplied thoughts, and even verses, but the production is really a collection of ideas gathered from all quarters.  Confucius, Longfellow, Plato, the FitzGeraldian Oman Khayyam, Aristotle, Pope, Das Kabir and the Pulambal are drawn upon; the world is placed under tribute from Pekin to the Salt Lake City.  A more careless “borrower” to use Emerson’s expression, never lifted poetry.  Some of his lines are transferred bodily, and without acknowledgment, from Hafiz;[FN#332] and, no doubt, if anybody were to take the trouble to investigate, it would be found that many other lines are not original.  It is really not very much to anyone’s credit to play the John Ferriar to so careless a Sterne.  He doesn’t steal the material for his brooms, he steals the brooms ready-made.  Later, as we shall see, he “borrowed” with a ruthlessness that was surpassed only by Alexandre Dumas.  Let us say, then, that The Kasidah is tesselated work done in Burton’s usual way, and not very coherently, with a liberal sprinkling of obsolete works.  At first it positively swarmed with them, but subsequently, by the advice of a friend, a considerable number such as “wox” and “pight” was removed.  If the marquetry of The Kasidah compares but feebly with the compendious splendours of FitzGerald’s quatrains; and if the poem[FN#333] has undoubted wastes of sand, nevertheless, the diligent may here and there pick up amber.  But it is only fair to bear in mind that the Lay is less a poem than an enchiridion, a sort of Emersonian

Page 5

Two of the couplets flash with auroral splendour, and of all the vast amount of metrical work that Burton accomplished, these are the only lines that can be pronounced imperishable.  Once only—­and only momentarily—­did the seraph of the sanctuary touch his lips with the live coal.

   “Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect
       applause;
    He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his
       self-made laws.”

and

   “All other life is living death, a world where none but
       phantoms dwell
    A breath, a wind, a sound, a voice, a tinkling of the
       camel-bell.”

We are also bidden to be noble, genuine and charitable.

“To seek the true, to glad the heart, such is of life the Higher Law.”

Neglecting the four really brilliant lines, the principal attraction of The Kasidah is its redolence of the saffron, immeasurable desert.  We snuff at every turn its invigorating air; and the tinkle of the camel’s bell is its sole and perpetual music.

At first Burton made some attempt to create the impression that there was actually a Haji Abdu, and that the verses were merely a translation.  Indeed, he quotes him, at the end of his Supplemental Nights, vol. ii., and elsewhere, as an independent author.  Later, however, the mask which deceived nobody was removed.  Not only was The Kasidah written in emulation of FitzGerald’s Omar, but Burton made no secret that such was the case.  To further

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102.  Lisa.

By this time Mrs. Burton had provided herself with another Chico.  Chico the Third (or Chica the Second) was a tall and lank, but well-built Italian girl, daughter of a baron.  Lisa had Khamoor’s ungovernable temper, but to the Burtons she at first exhibited the faithfulness of a dog.  Her father lived formerly at Verona, but in the war of 1866, having sided with Austria,[FN#337] he fell upon evil days; and retired to Trieste on a trifling pension.  Mrs. Burton and Lisa had not been long acquainted before Lisa became a member of the Burton household as a kind of lady’s maid, although she retained her title of Baroness, and Mrs. Burton at once set about Anglicising her new friend, though her attempt, as in Khamoor’s case, was only partially successful.  For instance, Lisa, would never wear a hat, “for fear of losing caste.”  She was willing, however, to hang out her stocking on Christmas eve; and on finding it full next morning said, “Oh, I like this game.  Shall we play it every night!” Just however, as a petted Khamoor had made a spoilt Khamoor; so a petted Lisa very soon made a spoilt Lisa.

With Mrs. Burton, her Jane Digbys, her Chicos, and her servants, Burton rarely interfered, and when he did interfere, it was only to make matters worse; for his judgment was weaker even than hers.  On one occasion, however, he took upon himself to dismiss the cook and to introduce another of his own finding.  On being requested to prepare the dinner the new acquisition set about it by drinking two bottles of wine, knocking down the housemaid, and beating the kitchenmaid with the saucepan.  Burton, who flew to their rescue, thought he must be in Somali-land once more.

   Chapter xxii
   August 1881-May 1882
   John Payne

103.  With Cameron at Venice, August 1881.

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Burton had for several years been acquainted with the African traveller V. Lovett Cameron,[FN#338] and in August 1881 they met accidentally at Venice.  A geographical conference was being held in the city and representatives from all nations were assembled; but, naturally, the first geographer of the day, Captain Burton, was not invited either to speak or even to be present.  On the morning of the conference, Burton, Mrs. Burton and Cameron gave themselves the treat of going over to the Lido for bathing and breakfast; and being in puckish mood, the two men, notwithstanding the great crowd of pleasure seekers, took off their shoes and stockings, turned up their trousers, and made sand castles.  “Look, nurse,” bawled Burton to his wife, “see what Cammy and I have done!” “If you please, nursey,” whined Cameron, “Dick’s snatched away my spade.”  At that moment Lord Aberdeen, President of the Royal Geographical Society, and a party of grave antiquaries and geographers, mostly run to nose, spectacles, and forehead, arrived on the scene; with the result of infinite laughter, in which Burton and Cameron joined heartily; and henceforward Mrs. Burton answered to no name but “Nursey.”  Burton, however, was justly indignant on account of his not having been invited to the conference, and his revenge took the shape of a pungent squib which he wrote on his card and left in the Congress Room.  Next day, while Burton and Cameron were strolling in front of St. Mark’s, a Portuguese gentleman came up and saluted them.  To Burton’s delight it was his old friend Da Cunha, the Camoens enthusiast; and then ensued a long argument, conducted in Portuguese, concerning Burton’s rendering of one of Camoens’ sonnets, Burton in the end convincing his friend of its correctness.  Having parted from Da Cunha, they ran against an Egyptian officer who had just visited Mecca and brought back a series of photographs.  The conversation this time was conducted in Arabic, and Burton explained to the Egyptian the meaning of much of the ritual of the pilgrimage.  “As a cicerone,” says Cameron, “Burton was invaluable.  His inexhaustible stock of historical and legendary lore furnished him with something to relate about even the meanest and commonest buildings."[FN#339] There were trips about the green canals in a long black gondola on the day and night of the regatta, when the Grand Canal and St. Mark’s were illuminated, all of which Burton enjoyed thoroughly, for round him had gathered the elite of Venice, and his brilliant personality, as usual, dazzled and dominated all who listened to him.

104.  John Payne, November 1881.

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We now come to that absorbing period of Burton’s life which is connected principally with The Arabian Nights.  Amazing as the statement may seem, we feel ourselves compelled to say at once, though regretfully, that Burton’s own account of the history of the translation, given in his Translator’s Foreword to the Arabian Nights, and Lady Burton’s account, given in her life of her husband, do not tally with the facts as revealed in his letters.  In matters relating to his own history Burton often spoke with amazing recklessness,[FN#340] and perhaps he considered he was justified in stating that his translation of The Arabian Nights was well advanced by November 1881, seeing that it had for thirty years intermittently occupied his thoughts.  As regards Lady Burton, no doubt, of some of the facts presently to be given, she was unaware.  But she was one who easily deceived herself.  Whatever she wished, she was apt to believe.  The actual facts compiled from existing documentary evidence—­including Burton’s own letters—­will now be revealed for the first time; and it will be found, as is generally the case, that the unembroidered truth is more interesting than the romance.  The story is strangely paralleled by that of the writing of The Kasidah; or in other words it recalls traits that were eminently characteristic of Burton.  As early as 1854, as we have seen, Burton and Steinhauser had planned a translation of The Arabian Nights, Steinhauser was to furnish the prose, Burton the poetry.  They corresponded on the subject, but made only trifling progress.  Steinhauser died in 1866, his manuscripts were scattered, and Burton never heard of them again.  Absolutely nothing more was done, for Burton was occupied with other matters—­travelling all over the world and writing piles of voluminous books on other subjects.  Still, he had hoards of Eastern manuscripts, and notes of his own on Eastern manners and customs, which had for years been accumulating and an even greater mass of curious information had been stored in his brain.  Again and again he had promised himself to proceed, but something every time hindered.

In November 1881, Burton, who was then at Trieste, noticed a paragraph in The Athenaeum[FN#341] to the effect that Mr. John Payne, the well-known author of The Masque of Shadows and of a famous rendering of The Poems of Francois Villon, was about to issue a Translation of The Book of the Thousand Nights and one Nights.  Burton, who was an enthusiastic admirer of the Villon and who, moreover, had not relinquished his own scheme, though it had lain so long quiescent, wrote at once to The Athenaeum a letter which appeared on 26th November 1881.  He said:  “Many years ago, in collaboration with my old and lamented friend, Dr. F. Steinhauser, of the Bombay Army, I began to translate the whole[FN#342] of The Thousand Nights and a Night.  The book, mutilated in Europe to a collection of fairy tales, and miscalled the Arabian Nights, is unique as a study of anthropology. 

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“Not non omnia possumus.  Although a host of friends has been eager to subscribe, my work is still unfinished, nor could it be finished without a year’s hard labour.  I rejoice, therefore, to see that Mr. John Payne, under the Villon Society, has addressed himself to a realistic translation without ‘abridgments or suppressions.’  I have only to wish him success, and to express a hope that he is resolved verbum reddere verbo, without deference to any prejudice which would prevent his being perfectly truthful to the original.  I want to see that the book has fair play; and if it is not treated as it deserves, I shall still have to print my own version.[FN#343] ‘Villon,’ however, makes me hope for the best.”

In this letter Burton oddly enough speaks of his own work as “still unfinished.”  This was quite true, seeing that it was not even begun, unless two or three pages which he once showed to Mr. Watts-Dunton,[FN#344] and the pigeon-holing of notes be regarded as a commencement.  Still, the announcement of Mr. Payne’s edition—­ the first volume of which was actually in the press—­must have caused him a pang; and the sincere good wishes for his rival’s success testify to the nobility, unselfishness and magnanimity of his character.

Mr. Payne, supposing from his letter that Burton had made considerable progress with his translation, wrote on November 28th to Burton, and, using the words Tantus labor non sit cassus, suggested collaboration.  Thus commenced one of the most interesting friendships in the annals of literature.  Before relating the story, however, it will be helpful to set down some particulars of the career of Mr. Payne.  John Payne was born in 1842 of a Devonshire family, descended from that breezy old sea-dog, Sir John Hawkins.  Mr. Payne, indeed, resembles Hawkins in appearance.  He is an Elizabethan transferred bodily into the 19th and 20th centuries, his ruff lost in transit.  Yet he not infrequently has a ruff even—­ a live one, for it is no uncommon event to see his favourite Angora leap on to his shoulders and coil himself half round his master’s neck, looking not unlike a lady’s boa—­and its name, Parthenopaeus, is long enough even for that.  For years Mr. Payne followed the law, and with success, but his heart was with the Muses and the odorous East.  From a boy he had loved and studied the old English, Scotch and Welsh writers, with the result that all his productions have a mediaeval aroma.  The

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Page 11

Mr. Payne first took up the work of a translator in 1878, his earliest achievement in the new province being his admirable rendering of Villon, in which he gives the music of the thief poet, and all his humour, and this reminds us that Mr. Payne, unlike most poets, is a skilled musician.  Of his life, indeed, music, in its most advanced and audacious manifestations had always been as much an essential a part as literature, hence the wonderful melodic effects of the more remarkable of his poems.  Already an excellent Arabic scholar, he had as early as 1875 resolved upon a translation of The Arabian Nights, and he commenced the task in earnest on 5th February 1877.  He worked with exhausting sedulity and expended upon it all the gifts in his power, with the result that his work has taken its places as a classic.  The price was nine guineas.  Imagining that the demand for so expensive a work would not be large, Mr. Payne, unfortunately, limited himself to the publication of only 500 copies.  The demand exceeded 2,000, so 1,500 persons were disappointed.

It was at this moment that Mr. Payne became acquainted with Burton.  Mr. Payne admired Burton as a traveller, an explorer, and a linguist, and recognised the fact that no man had a more intimate knowledge of the manners and customs of the East; and Burton on his part paid high tribute to Mr. Payne’s gifts as a translator and a poet.[FN#352]

105.  To the Gold Coast, 25th November 1881-20th May 1882.

When Mr. Payne’s letter reached Trieste, Burton had just started off, with Commander Verney Lovett Cameron, on an expedition to the Gold Coast.  In his Fernando Po period he had, as we have seen, been deeply interested in the gold digging and gold washing industries,[FN#353] had himself, indeed, to use his own words, “discovered several gold mines on that coast.”  For years his mind had turned wistfully towards those regions, and at last, early in 1881, he was able to enter into an arrangement with a private speculator concerning the supposed mines.  He and Cameron were to have all their expenses paid, and certain shares upon the formulation of the company.  The travellers left Trieste on November 18th, being accompanied as far as Fiume by Mrs. Burton and Lisa, who on the 25th returned to Trieste; and on December 17th they reached Lisbon, whither Mr. Payne’s letter followed them.  Burton, who replied cordially, said “In April, at the latest, I hope to have the pleasure of shaking hands with you in London, and then we will talk over the 1,000 Nights and a Night.  At present it is useless to say anything more than this—­I shall be most happy to collaborate with you. ....  Do you know the Rev. G. Percy Badger (of the Dictionary)?  If not, you should make his acquaintance, as he is familiar with the Persian and to a certain extent with the Egyptian terms of the Nights.  He is very obliging and ready to assist Arabists[FN#354] .....  I am an immense admirer of your Villon.”

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Writing to Burton early in the year Payne observed that as his first volume was in type, apparently it should at once go to press, but that he would be pleased to submit subsequent volumes to Burton.  Terms were also suggested.

Burton’s reply, addressed Axim, Gold Coast, and received by Mr. Payne, 20th March, 1882, runs as follows:  “I received your welcome letter by the steamer of yesterday, and to-morrow morning my companion Cameron and I again proceed to the ‘bush.’  Of course you must go to press at once.  I deeply regret it, but on arriving in England my time will be so completely taken up by the Gold Coast that I shall not have a moment’s leisure.  It would be a useless expense to keep up the type.  Your terms about the royalty,” he said, “are more than liberal.  I cannot accept them, however, except for value received, and it remains to be seen what time is at my disposal.  I am working out a scheme for Chinese immigration to the West African coast, and this may take me next winter to China.  I can only say that I shall be most happy to render you any assistance in my power; at the same time I must warn you that I am a rolling stone.  If I cannot find time you must apply in the matter of the introductory essay to the Rev. Percy Badger, Professor Robertson Smith (Glasgow) and Professor Palmer (Trinity, Cambridge).  I have booked your private address and have now only to reciprocate your good wishes.”

On April 18th Mrs. Burton and Lisa set out for England in order to rejoin Burton—­Lisa, as usual, without any headgear—­a condition of affairs which in every church they entered caused friction with the officials.  When this began Mrs. Burton would explain the position; and the officials, when they came to find that nothing they could say or do make the slightest difference to Lisa, invariably expressed themselves satisfied with the explanation.

Burton and Cameron reached Liverpool on May 20th, and were able to report both “that there was plenty of gold, and that the mines could easily be worked.”  The expedition, however, was unproductive of all anticipated results and no profit accrued to Burton.  Indeed it was Iceland and Midian over again.  “I ought,” he says in one of his letters to Payne, “to go down to history as the man who rediscovered one Gold Country and rehabilitated a second, and yet lost heavily by the discoveries."[FN#355]

   Chapter xxiii
   20th May 1882-July 1883
   The Meeting of Burton and Payne

Bibliography

66.  Lord Beaconsfield. 67.  To the Gold Coast for Gold. 2 vols. 1883. 68.  Stone Implements from the Gold Coast.  Burton and Cameron.

106.  Mrs. Grundy begins to roar.  May 1882.

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In May 1882, Burton called on Mr. Payne, and the matter of The Arabian Nights was fully discussed.  It then transpired that Burton’s project was still entirely in nubibus.  He told Mr. Payne that he had no manuscript of any kind beyond “a sheet or two of notes,"[FN#356] and it was afterwards gathered from his words that these notes were a mere syllabus of the contents of the Boulac edition of the Nights—­the only one of the four printed texts (Calcutta, Macnaghten, Boulac and Breslau) used and combined by Mr. Payne with which Burton was then acquainted.[FN#357] Mr. Payne’s first volume was completely in type and had for some weeks been held over for Burton’s return to England.  Of the remaining volumes three were ready for press, and the rest only awaited fair copying.  Burton’s thoughts, however, were then completely occupied with the Gold Coast, consequently the whole project of collaboration fell through.  Mr. Payne’s first volume duly appeared; and as the result of further conversations it was arranged that Burton should read Mr. Payne’s subsequent proofs, though he declined to accept any remuneration unless it should turn out that his assistance was necessary.  In June, Mr. Payne submitted the first proofs of Vol. ii. to Burton.  Meantime the literalism of Mr. Payne’s translation had created extraordinary stir, and Burton wrote thus forcefully on the matter (June 3rd):  “Please send me a lot of advertisements.[FN#358] I can place a multitude of copies.  Mrs. Grundy is beginning to roar; already I hear the voice of her.  And I know her to be an arrant w——­ and tell her so, and don’t care a ----- for her.”

The event at Trieste that summer was the opening of a Grand International Exhibition—­the hobby of the Governor of the town—­ Baron de Pretis, and Burton thus refers to it in a letter written to Mr. Payne, 5th August (1882).  “We arrived here just in time for the opening of the Exhibition, August 1st.  Everything went off well, but next evening an Orsini shell was thrown which killed one and wounded five, including my friend Dr. Dorn, Editor of the Triester Zeitung.  The object, of course, was to injure the Exhibition, and the effect will be ruinous.  I expect more to come and dare not leave my post.  So while my wife goes to Marienbad, I must content myself with the Baths at Monfalcone,[FN#359] distant only one hour by rail” In the next letter (August 14th) Burton refers to a proposed special quarto (large paper) edition of Mr. Payne’s Nights, the scheme for which, however, fell through.  “I am delighted with the idea,” he says, “for though not a bibliophile in practice ((pounds) s. d. preventing) I am entirely in theory.”  There is also an amusing reference to a clergyman who after giving his name for a copy withdrew it.  Says Burton, “If the Rev. A. miss this opportunity of grace he can blame only himself.  It is very sad but not to be helped. ...  And now good luck to the venture.”  Later he observes, “The fair sex appears wild to get at the Nights.[FN#360] I have received notes from two upon the nice subject, with no end of complaints about stern parients, brothers and brothers-in-law.”

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In September Burton asks for the loan of Payne’s copy of the Calcutta Edition (Macnaghten) and enquires after Vol. i.  He says “What news of Vol. i.?  I am very anxious to see it, and so are many female correspondents.  I look forward with great pleasure to the work.”

It was now understood that an attack was to be made on Payne’s volume in the press.  Says Burton, September 29th (1882).  “Perhaps it will be best to let -------[FN#361] sing his song. -------- has no end of enemies, and I can stir up a small wasp’s nest without once appearing in the matter.  The best answer will be showing up a few of Lane’s mistakes, but this must be done with the greatest care, so that no hole can be picked in the critique.[FN#362] I enclose three sonnets, a specimen of my next volume of Camoens, and should much like any suggestions from you.  They are line for line and mostly word for word.  But that is nothing; the question is, are they readable English?  They’ll be printed at my own expense, so they will ruin nobody.  Switzerland has set you up and don’t let the solicitor’s office pull you down.”

On October 2nd he says:  “Glad to hear of a new edition of Lane:  it will draw attention to the subject.  I must see what can be done with reviewers.  Saturday and I are at drawn daggers, and -------- of ------ is such a stiff young she-prig that I hardly know what to do about him.  However, I shall begin work at once by writing and collecting the vulnerable points of the clique. ----- is a very much hated man, and there will be no difficulty.”  On the 8th, in reference to the opposing “clique,” Burton writes:  “In my own case I should encourage a row with this bete noire; but I can readily understand your having reasons for wishing to keep it quiet.”  Naturally, considering the tactics that were being employed against them, the Villon Society, which published Mr. Payne’s works, had no wish to draw the attention of the authorities to the moral question.  Indeed, of the possible action of the authorities, as instigated by the clique, the Society stood in some fear.

Burton goes on:  “I shall write to-day to T----- to know how ---- is
best hit.   T----- hates me--so do most people.   Meanwhile, you must
(either yourself or by proxy) get a list of Lane’s laches.   I regret
to say my copy of his Modern Egyptians has been lost or stolen,
and with it are gone the lists of his errata I had drawn up many
years ago.   Of course I don’t know Arabic, but who does?   One may
know a part of it, a corner of the field, but all!   Bah!   Many
thanks for the notes on the three sonnets [Camoens].   Most hearty
thanks for the trouble you have taken.   The remarks are those of a
scholar and a translator.”

Later, Burton sent Payne other Camoens sonnets to look over.  Writing on 29th October 1882, he says, “Many thanks for the sonnet.  Your version is right good, but it is yourself, not me.  In such a matter each man expresses his own individuality.  I shall follow your advice about the quatrains and tercets.  No. 19 is one of the darkest on account of its extreme simplicity.  I shall trouble you again.”

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The first proofs (pp. 1-144) of Vol. ii. were read by Burton in October 1882, and returned by him October 21st.  In his letter to Mr. Payne of that date he says, “It will only be prudent to prepare for an attack.  I am perfectly ready to justify a complete translation of the book.  And if I am obliged to say what I think about Lane’s Edition there will be hard hitting.  Of course I wish to leave his bones in peace, but —–­ may make that impossible.  Curious to see three editions of the 1,000 Nights advertised at the same time, not to speak of the bastard.[FN#363] I return you nine sheets [of proofs] by parcels post registered.  You have done your work very well, and my part is confined to a very small amount of scribble which you will rub out at discretion.”

Subsequently Burton observed that Mr. Payne required no assistance of any kind; and therefore he re-refused to accept remuneration for reading the proofs.  Naturally, they differed, as Arabists all do, upon certain points, but on all subjects save two Burton allowed that Mr. Payne’s opinion was as good as his own.

The first concerned the jingles in the prose portions of the Nights, such as “The trees are growing and the waters flowing and Allah all good bestowing.”  Burton wanted them to be preserved, but to this Mr. Payne could not consent, and he gives the reasons in his Terminal Essay.  The second exception was the treatment of the passages referring to a particular subject; and this indicates to us clearly the difference in the ideas and aims of the two men.  Of artistry, of what FitzGerald calls “sinking and reducing,” Burton had no notion.  “If anything is in any redaction of the original, in it should go,” he said.  “Never mind how shocking it may be to modern and western minds.  If I sin, I sin in good company—­in the company of the authors of the Authorised Version of the Bible, who did not hesitate to render literatim certain passages which persons aiming simply at artistic effect would certainly have omitted.”

Payne on the other hand was inclined to minimise these passages as much as possible.  Though determined that his translation should be a complete one, yet he entirely omitted coarsenesses whenever he could find excuse to do so—­that is to say, when they did not appear in all the texts.  If no such excuse existed he clothed the idea in skilful language.[FN#364] Nothing is omitted; but it is of course within the resources of literary art to say anything without real offence.  Burton, who had no aptitude for the task; who, moreover, had other aims, constantly disagreed with Payne upon this point.

Thus, writing 12th May 1883, he says:  “You are drawing it very mild.  Has there been any unpleasantness about plain speaking?  Poor Abu Nuwas[FN#365] is (as it were) castrated.  I should say ’Be bold or audace,’ &c., only you know better than I do how far you can go and cannot go.  I should simply translate every word.”

Page 16

“What I meant by literalism,” he says, 1st October 1883, “is literally translating each noun (in the long lists which so often occur) in its turn, so that the student can use the translation.”

This formed no part of Mr. Payne’s scheme, in fact was directly opposed to the spirit of his work, which was to make the translation, while quite faithful to the original, a monument of noble English prose and verse.

“I hold the Nights,” continues Burton, the best of class books, and when a man knows it, he can get on with Arabs everywhere.  He thus comments on Payne’s Vol. iv., some of the tales of which, translate them as you will, cannot be other than shocking.  “Unfortunately it is these offences (which come so naturally in Greece and Persia, and which belong strictly to their fervid age) that give the book much of its ethnological value.  I don’t know if I ever mentioned to you a paper (unpublished) of mine showing the geographical limits of the evil.[FN#366] I shall publish it some day and surprise the world.[FN#367] I don’t live in England, and I don’t care an asterisk for Public Opinion.[FN#368] I would rather tread on Mrs. Grundy’s pet corn than not, she may howl on her *** *** to her heart’s content.”  On August 24th (1883) Burton says, “Please keep up in Vol. v. this literality in which you began.  My test is that every Arab word should have its equivalent English. ...Pity we can’t manage to end every volume with a tidbit!  Would it be dishonest to transfer a tale from one night or nights to another or others?  I fancy not, as this is done in various editions.  A glorious ending for Vol. iv.  Would have been The Three Wishes or the Night of Power[FN#369] and The Cabinet with Five Shelves."[FN#370]

107.  The Search for Palmer, October 1882.

Burton was now to make what proved to be his last expedition.  All the year Egypt had been ablaze with the rebellion of Arabi Pasha.  Alexandria was bombarded by the English on July 11th, Arabi suffered defeat at Tell-el-Kebir three months later.  On the commencement of the rebellion the British Government sent out Burton’s old friend Professor Palmer to the Sinaitic peninsula with a view to winning the tribes in that part of the British side, and so preventing the destruction of the Suez Canal.  The expedition was atrociously planned, and the fatal mistake was also made of providing it with (pounds)3,000 in gold.  Palmer landed at Jaffa at the end of June, and then set out via Gaza across the “Short Desert,” for Suez, where he was joined by Captain Gill and Lieutenant Charrington.  In fancy one hears him as he enters on his perilous journey asking himself that question, which was so absurdly frequent in his lips, “I wonder what will happen?”

It is customary for travellers, before entering the Arabian wastes, to hire a Ghafir, that is, a guide and protector.  Palmer, instead of securing a powerful chief, as the case required, selected a man of small account named Matr Nassar, and this petty shaykh and his nephew were the expedition’s only defence.

Page 17

The doomed party left Suez on August 8th.  On the 10th at midnight they were attacked by the Bedawin.  “Palmer expostulated with his assassins; but all his sympathetic facility, his appeals to Arab honour and superstition, his threats, his denunciations, and the gift of eloquence which had so often prevailed with the wild men, were unheeded.”  As vainly, Matr Nassar[FN#371] covered his proteges with his aba[FN#372] thus making them part of his own family.  On the evening of August 11th the captives were led to the high bank of the Wady Sudr, where it received another and smaller fiumara yet unnamed, and bidden to prepare for death.  Boldly facing his enemies, Palmer cursed them[FN#373] in Biblical language, and in the name of the Lord.  But while the words were in his mouth, a bullet struck him and he fell.  His companions also fell in cold blood, and the bodies of all three were thrown down the height[FN#374]—­ a piteous denouement—­and one that has features in common with the tragic death scene of another heroic character of this drama—­ General Gordon.

The English Government still believed and hoped that Palmer has escaped; and on October 17th it sent a telegram to Burton bidding him go and assist in the search for his old friend.

Like the war horse in the Bible, the veteran traveller shouted “Aha!” and he shot across the Mediterranean like a projectile from a cannon.  But he had no sooner reached Suez than he heard—­his usual luck—­that Sir Charles Warren, with 200 picked men, was scouring the peninsula, and that consequently his own services would not be required.  In six weeks he was back again at Trieste and so ended Viator’s[FN#375] last expedition.  The remains of Palmer and his two companions were discovered by Sir Charles and sent to England to be interred in St. Paul’s Cathedral.  To Palmer’s merits as a man Burton paid glowing tributes; and he praised, too, Palmer’s works, especially The Life of Harun Al Raschid and the translations of Hafiz,[FN#376] Zoheir and the Koran.  Of the last Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole says finely:  It “has the true desert ring in it; .. the translator has carried us among the Bedawin tents, and breathed into us the strong air of the desert, till we fancy we can hear the rich voice of the Blessed Prophet himself as he spoke to the pilgrims on Akabah.”

In his letter to Payne of 23rd December 1882, Burton adumbrates a visit eastward.  “After January,” he says, “I shall run to the Greek Islands, and pick up my forgotten modern Greek.”  He was unable, however, to carry out his plans in their entirety.  On January 15th he thanks Payne for the loan of the “Uncastrated Villon,"[FN#377] and the Calcutta and Breslau editions of the Nights, and says “Your two vols. of Breslau and last proofs reached me yesterday.  I had written to old Quaritch for a loan of the Breslau edition.  He very sensibly replied by ignoring the loan and sending me a list of his prices.  So then the thing dropped.  What is the use of paying (pounds)3 odd for a work that would be perfectly useless to me. ...  But he waxes cannier every year.”

Page 18

   Chapter xxiv
   July 1883-November 1883
   The Palazzone

108.  Anecdotes of Burton.

In 1883 the Burtons removed from their eyrie near the Railway Station and took up their abode in a palazzone[FN#378]—­“the Palazzo Gosleth”—­situated in a large garden, on the wooded promontory that divides the city from the Bay of Muggia.  It was one of the best houses in Trieste, and boasted an entrance so wide that one could have driven a carriage into the hall, a polished marble staircase and twenty large rooms commanding extensive and delightful views.  The garden, however, was the principal amenity.  Here, in fez and dressing-gown, Burton used to sit and write for hours with nothing to disturb him except the song of birds and the rustle of leaves.  In the Palazzo Gosleth he spent the last eight years of his life, and wrote most of his later works.

Perhaps this is the best place to introduce a sheaf of miscellaneous unpublished anecdotes which have been drawn together from various sources.  We are uncertain as to their dates, but all are authentic.  To the ladies Burton was generally charming, but sometimes he behaved execrably.  Once when he was returning alone to Trieste, a lady past her prime, being destined for the same place, asked whether she might accompany him.  Burton, who hated taking care of anyone, frowned and shook his head.  “There can be no scandal, Captain Burton,” pleaded the lady, “because I am old.”

“Madame,” replied Burton, “while fully appreciating your kindness, I must decline.  Had you been young and good-looking I would have considered the matter.”

109.  Burton and Mrs. Disraeli.

But Burton could be agreeable enough even to plain ladies when he wished.  In one of his books or pamphlets he had said “There is no difference except civilization between a very old woman and an ape.”  Some time after its publication, when he was the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Disraeli, Mrs. Disraeli, herself both elderly and very plain, laid a plan to disconcert him.  She seated herself close to a low mirror, in the hopes that Burton would presently join her.  He soon fell into the trap and was observed a few minutes later leaning over her and “doing the amiable.”

“Captain Burton,” said Mrs. Disraeli, with affected annoyance, and pointing to her reflection, “There must be an ape in the glass.  Do you not see it?”

Burton instantly recalled the remark in his book, but without exhibiting the least disconcertion, he replied, “Yaas, yaas, Madam, quite plainly; I see myself.”

It was altogether impossible for Burton to do anything or to be in anything without causing a commotion of some kind.  Generally it was his own fault, but sometimes the Fates were to blame.  Few scenes at that period could have been more disgraceful than those at the official receptions held in London by the Prime Minister.  Far too many persons were invited and numbers behaved more like untutored Zulus than civilised human beings.

Page 19

“Now darling,” said Mrs. Burton to her husband, just before one of these functions, “You are to be amiable, remember, and not lose your temper.”  Burton readily promised compliance, but that day, unfortunately, the crush on the staircase was particular disgraceful.  Apparently Burton, his wife on arm, was pushed on to the train of a lady in front of him, but whatever he was doing the crush had rendered him helpless.

“Oh dear!” cried the lady, “this horrid man is choking me.”

“It’s that blackguard of a Burton!” followed the lady’s husband.

Burton’s eyes flashed and his lips went livid, “I’ll have you out for this,” he cried, “and if you won’t fight I’ll thrash you like a dog.”

“That’s how you keep your promise,” said Mrs. Burton to him, when they got home.  “You don’t get half a dozen steps up the staircase before you have a row with someone.”  Then he burst out with his “pebble on ice” laughter.

For Burton to overhear remarks uncomplimentary to himself was no uncommon occurrence, but he rarely troubled to notice them.  Now and again, however, as the previous anecdote shows, he broke his rule.  Once at a public gathering a lady said, loudly, to a companion, “There is that infamous Captain Burton, I should like to know that he was down with some lingering and incurable illness.”

Burton turned round, and fixing his eyes upon her, said with gravity:  “Madame, I have never in all my life done anything so wicked as to express so shocking a wish as that.”

The next anecdote shows how dangerous Burton could be to those who offended him.  When the Sultan of Zanzibar was paying a visit to England, Burton and the Rev. Percy Badger were singled out to act as interpreters.  But Burton had quarrelled with Badger about something or other; so when they approached the Sultan, Burton began addressing him, not in Arabic, but in the Zanzibar patois.  The Sultan, after some conversation, turned to Badger, who, poor man, not being conversant with the patois, could only stand still in the dunce’s cap which Burton, as it were, had clapped on him and look extremely foolish; while the bystanders nodded to each other and said, “Look at that fellow.  He can’t say two words.  He’s a fraud.”  Burton revelled in Badger’s discomfiture; but a little later the two men were on good terms again; and when Badger died he was, of course, Burton’s “late lamented friend.”

Another of Burton’s aversions was “any old woman made up to look very young.”  “Good gracious,” he said, one day to a painted lady of that category.  “You haven’t changed since I saw you forty years ago.  You’re like the British flag that has braved a thousand years of the battle and the breeze.”  But the lady heaped coals of fire on his head.

“Oh, Captain Burton,” she cried, “how could you, with that musical—­ that lovely voice of yours—­make such very unpleasant remarks.”

110.  “I am an Old English Catholic.”

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In England, whatever objections Protestants may make to Roman Catholic services, they admit that everything is done decently and in order.  The laxity, however, in the Italian churches is, or was until recently, beyond belief, and every traveller brought home some queer tale.  Mrs. Burton, who prided herself on being “an old English Catholic,” was frequently distressed by these irregularities, and she never hesitated to reprove the offending priests.  One day a priest who had called at Burton’s house was requested to conduct a brief service in Mrs. Burton’s private chapel.  But the way in which he went through the various ceremonies so displeased Mrs. Burton that she called out to him, “Stop! stop! pardon me, I am an old English Catholic—­and therefore particular.  You are not doing it right—­Stand aside, please, and let me show you.”  So the astonished priest stood aside, and Mrs. Burton went through all the gesticulations, genuflexions, etcetera, in the most approved style.  Burton, who was standing by, regarded the scene with suppressed amusement.  When all was over, he touched the priest on the shoulder and said gravely and slowly, pointing to Mrs. Burton:  “Do you know who this is?  It is my wife.  And you know she will some day die—­We all must die—­And she will be judged—­ we must all be judged—­and there’s a very long and black list against her.  But when the sentence is being pronounced she will jump up and say:  ’Stop! stop! please pardon my interruption, but I am an old English Catholic.’”

To one house, the hostess of which was one of the most fashionable women in London, Burton, no matter how much pressed, had never been prevailed upon to go.  He disliked the lady and that was enough.  “Here’s an invitation for all of us to Lady ——­’s,” said Mrs. Burton to him one day in honied tones.  “Now, Dick, darling, this time you must go just for Lisa’s sake.  It’s a shame she should lose so excellent a chance of going into good society.  Other people go, why shouldn’t we?  Eh, darling?”

“What won’t people do,” growled Burton, “for the sake of a dinner!”

Eventually, however, after an explosion, and he’d be asterisked if he would, and might the lady herself be asterisked, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, “Dick Darling” was coaxed over, and he, Mrs. Burton and Lisa at the appointed time sallied forth in all the glory of war paint, and in due course were ushered into the detested house.

As he approached the hostess she looked steadily at him through her lorgnon, and then, turning to a companion, said with a drawl:  “Isn’t it horrid, my dear!  Every Dick, Tom and Harry’s here to-night.”

“That’s what comes of being amiable,” said Burton to his wife, when they got home again—­and he’d be asterisked, and might everybody else be asterisked, if he’d enter that asterisked house again.  Then the humour of it all appealed to him; and his anger dissolved into the usual hearty laughter.

Page 21

One very marked feature of Burton’s character was that, like his father, he always endeavoured to do and say what he thought was right, quite regardless of appearances and consequences.  And we may give one anecdote to illustrate our meaning.

On one occasion[FN#379] he and another Englishman who was known by Burton to have degraded himself unspeakably, were the guests at a country house.  “Allow me, Captain Burton,” said the host, “to introduce you to the other principal guest of the evening, Mr. ——­” Looking Mr. ——­ in the face, Burton said:  “When I am in Persia I am a Persian, when in India a Hindu, but when in England I am an English gentleman,” and then he turned his back on Mr. ——­ and left him.  As Mr. ——­’s record was not at the time generally known, those who were present at the scene merely shrugged their shoulders and said:  “Only another of Burton’s eccentricities.”  A few months, later, however, Mr. —–­’s record received publicity, and Burton’s conduct and words were understood.

One of Burton’s lady relations being about to marry a gentleman who was not only needy but also brainless, somebody asked him what he thought of the bridegroom-elect.

“Not much,” replied Burton, drily, “he has no furniture inside or out.”

To “old maids” Burton was almost invariably cruel.  He found something in them that roused all the most devilish rancours in his nature; and he used to tell them tales till the poor ladies did not know where to tuck their heads.  When reproved afterwards by Mrs. Burton, he would say:  “Yaas, yaas, no doubt; but they shouldn’t be old maids; besides, it’s no good telling the truth, for nobody ever believes you.”  He did, however, once refer complimentarily to a maiden lady—­a certain Saint Apollonia who leaped into a fire prepared for her by the heathen Alexandrians.  He called her “This admirable old maid.”  Her chief virtue in his eyes, however, seems to have been not her fidelity to her principles, but the fact that she got rid of herself, and so made one old maid fewer.

“What shall we do with our old maids?” he would ask, and then answer the question himself—­“Oh, enlist them.  With a little training they would make first-rate soldiers.”  He was also prejudiced against saints, and said of one, “I presume she was so called because of the enormity of her crimes.”

Although Mrs. Burton often reproved her husband for his barbed and irritating remarks, her own tongue had, incontestibly, a very beautiful edge on it.  Witness her reply to Mrs. X., who declared that when she met Burton she was inexpressibly shocked by his Chaucerian conversation and Canopic wit.

“I can quite believe,” commented Mrs. Burton, sweetly, “that on occasions when no lady was present Richard’s conversation might have been startling.”

How tasteful is this anecdote, as they say in The Nights, “and how enjoyable and delectable.”

111.  Burton begins his Translation, April 1884.

Page 22

As we have already observed, Mr. Payne’s 500 copies of the Thousand Nights and a Night were promptly snapped up by the public and 1,500 persons had to endure disappointment.  “You should at once,” urged Burton, “bring out a new edition.”  “I have pledged myself,” replied Mr. Payne, “not to reproduce the book in an unexpurgated form.”

“Then,” said Burton, “Let me publish a new edition in my own name and account to you for the profits—­it seems a pity to lose these 1,500 subscribers.”  This was a most generous and kind-hearted, but, from a literary point of view, immoral proposition; and Mr. Payne at once rejected it, declaring that he could not be a party to a breach of faith with the subscribers in any shape or form.  Mr. Payne’s virtue was, pecuniarily and otherwise, its punishment.  Still, he has had the pleasure of a clear conscience.  Burton, however, being, as always, short of money, felt deeply for these 1,500 disappointed subscribers, who were holding out their nine-guinea cheques in vain; and he then said “Should you object to my making an entirely new translation?” To which, of course, Mr. Payne replied that he could have no objection whatever.  Burton then set to work in earnest.  This was in April, 1884.  As we pointed out in Chapter xxii., Lady Burton’s account of the inception and progress of the work and Burton’s own story in the Translator’s Foreword (which precedes his first volume) bristle with misstatements and inaccuracies.  He evidently wished it to be thought that his work was well under weigh long before he had heard of Mr. Payne’s undertaking, for he says, “At length in the spring of 1879 the tedious process of copying began and the book commenced to take finished form.”  Yet he told Mr. Payne in 1881 that beyond notes and a syllabus of titles nothing had been done; and in 1883 he says in a letter, “I find my translation is a mere summary,” that is to say, of the Boulac edition, which was the only one familiar to him till he met Mr. Payne.  He admits having made ample use of the three principal versions that preceded his, namely, those of Jonathan Scott, Lane and Payne, “the whole being blended by a callida junctura into a homogeneous mass.”  But as a matter of fact his obligations to Scott and Lane, both of whom left much of the Nights untranslated, and whose versions of it were extremely clumsy and incorrect, were infinitesimal; whereas, as we shall presently prove, practically the whole of Burton is founded on the whole of Payne.  We trust, however, that it will continually be borne in mind that the warm friendship which existed between Burton and Payne was never for a moment interrupted.  Each did the other services in different ways, and each for different reasons respected and honoured the other.  In a letter to Mr. Payne of 12th August, 1884, Burton gave an idea of his plan.  He says “I am going in for notes where they did not suit your scheme and shall make the book a perfect repertoire of Eastern knowledge in its most esoteric form.”  A paper on these subjects which Burton offered to the British Association was, we need scarcely say, courteously declined.

Page 23

Writing to Payne on September 9th (1884) he says, “As you have been chary of notes my version must by way of raison d’etre (amongst others) abound in esoteric lore, such as female circumcision and excision, etc.  I answer all my friends that reading it will be a liberal education, and assure them that with such a repertory of esotericism at their finger ends they will know all the Scibile[FN#380] requisite to salvation.  My conviction is that all the women in England will read it and half the men will cut me.”

112.  The Battle over the Nights.

Although, as we have seen, Burton’s service to Mr. Payne’s translation was almost too slight to be mentioned, Burton was to Mr. Payne in another way a tower of strength.  Professional spite, jealousy and other causes had ranged against his Nights whole platoons of men of more or less weight.  Jealousy, folly and ignorance made common cause against the new translation—­the most formidable coterie being the group of influential men who for various reasons made it their business to cry up the commonplace translation of E. W. Lane, published in 1840, and subsequently reprinted—­a translation which bears to Payne’s the relation of a glow-worm to the meridian sun.  The clique at first prepared to make a professional attack on the work, but the appearance of Volume i. proved it to be from a literary, artistic and philological point of view quite unassailable.  This tactic having failed, some of these gentlemen, in their meanness, and we fear we must add, malevolence, then tried to stir up the authorities to take action against Mr. Payne on the ground of public morality.[FN#381] Burton had long been spoiling for a fight—­and now was his opportunity.  In season and out of season he defended Payne.  He fell upon the Lane-ites like Samson upon the Philistines.  He gloried in the hurly-burly.  He wallowed, as it were, in blood.  Fortunately, too, at that time he had friends in the Government—­straightforward, commonsense men—­ who were above all pettinesses.  Lord Houghton, F. F. Arbuthnot, and others, also ranged themselves on the same side and hit out manfully.

Before starting on the Palmer expedition, Burton, in a letter of October 29th, had written to Mr. Payne:  “The more I read your translation the more I like it.  You have no need to fear the Lane clique; that is to say, you can give them as good as they can give you.  I am quite ready to justify the moral point.  Of course we must not attack Lane till he is made the cheval de bataille against us.  But peace and quiet are not in my way, and if they want a fight, they can have it.”  The battle was hot while it lasted, but it was soon over.  The Lane-ites were cowed and gradually subsided into silence.  Mr. Payne took the matter more coolly than Burton, but he, too, struck out when occasion required.  For example, among the enemy was a certain reverend Professor of Semitic languages, who held advanced opinions on religious matters. 

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113.  Completion of Mr. Payne’s Translation.

Mr. Payne’s first volume appeared as we have seen in 1882.  The last left the press in 1884.  The work was dedicated to Burton, who writes, “I cannot but feel proud that he has honoured me with the dedication of ‘The Book of the Thousand Nights and one Night.’ ...He succeeds admirably in the most difficult passages, and he often hits upon choice and special terms and the exact vernacular equivalent of the foreign word so happily and so picturesquely that all future translators must perforce use the same expression under pain of falling far short.”

Having finished the Nights, Mr. Payne commenced the translation of other Eastern stories—­which he published under the title of Tales from the Arabic.[FN#385]

Chapter xxv
1883 to May 1885
The Kama Shastra Society

Bibliography: 

69.  Publications of the Kama Shastra Society.

                               Author.  Translator.
1.  The Kama Sutra. 1883 Vatsyayana.  Bhagvanlal Indraji. 2.  The Ananga Ranga. 1885 Kullianmull. " 3.  The Arabian Nights. 1885-1886. " Burton.
4.  The Scented Garden
   ("My old version"). 1886.  Nafzawi.  Burton and others.
5.  The Beharistan. 1887.  Jami.  Rehatsek. 6.  The Gulistan 1888.  Sadi. "
    or Rose Garden.

Works still in Manuscript.

                                         Author.  Translator
7.  The Nigaristan Jawini.  Rehatsek. 8.  The Observances of the Zenanah " 9.  Etiquette of eating and Drinking "
      (A Persian Essay).
10.  Physiognomies (A Persian Ms.) Al-R’azy " 11.  Anecdotes from the Nuzhat al Yaman. "
      (Persian).
12.  The Merzuban Namah. (Persian). 13.  Extracts from Al Mostatraf. (Arabic). " 14.  Extracts from Siraj-ul-moluk. (Arabic). " 15.  Extracts from Tuhfat al akhwan us Safa.* "

* For further particulars respecting these works see Appendix.

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114.  The Azure Apollo.

If Payne’s translation had been met by the wind, Burton anticipated that his own, with its blunt faithfulness to the original and its erotic notes, would be met by whirlwind.  Considering the temper of the public[FN#386] at the time he thought it not improbable that an action would be brought against him, and in fancy he perceived himself standing at bay with the Authorised Version of the Bible in one hand as a shield, and Urquhart’s Rabelais in the other as a missile.

But though a man of amazing courage, Burton was not one to jeopardise himself unnecessarily.  He was quite willing to take any reasonable precautions.  So he discussed the matter with his friend F. F. Arbuthnot, who had recently returned from India, married,[FN#387] and settled at a charming place, Upper House Court, near Guildford.  Mr. Arbuthnot, who, as we have seen, had for years given his whole soul to Eastern literature, had already published a group of Hindu stories[FN#388] and was projecting manuals of Persian[FN#389] and Arabic[FN#390] literature and a series of translations of famous Eastern works, some of which were purely erotic.  He now suggested that this series and Burton’s Arabian Nights should be published nominally by a society to which might be given the appropriate name, “The Kama Shastra”—­that is the cupid-gospel—­Society, Kama being the Hindu god of love.  This deity is generally represented as a beautiful youth riding on an emerald-plumaged lorry or parrot.  In his hand he holds a bow of flowers and five arrows—­the five senses; and dancing girls attend him.  His favourite resort is the country round Agra, where Krishna[FN#391] the azure Hindu Apollo,

   “Tunes harps immortal, and to strains divine
    Dances by moonlight with the Gopia nine."[FN#392]

The books were to be translated by Rehatsek and a Hindu pundit named Bhagvanlal Indraji, Burton and Arbuthnot were to revise and annotate, and Arbuthnot was to find the money.  Burton fell in with the idea, as did certain other members of Arbuthnot’s circle, who had always been keenly interested in Orientalism, and so was formed the famous Kama Shastra Society.  That none of the particulars relating to the history of the Society has before been made public, is explained by the fact that Burton and Arbuthnot, conversant with the temper of the public, took pains to shroud their proceedings in mystery.  It cannot, however, be too strongly insisted upon that Arbuthnot’s standpoint, like Burton’s, was solely for the student.  “He wished,” he said, “to remove the scales from the eyes of Englishmen who are interested in Oriental literature.”  These erotic books in one form or another are in the hands of 200,000,000 of Orientals.  Surely, argued Arbuthnot, a few genuine English students—­a few, grave, bald-headed, spectacled, happily married old gentlemen—­may read them without injury.[FN#393] The modern student seeks his treasure everywhere, and

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We have the first hint of the Kama Shastra Society in a letter to Payne, 5th August 1882.  “I hope,” says Burton, “you will not forget my friend, F. F. Arbuthnot, and benefit him by your advice about publishing when he applies to you for it.  He has undertaken a peculiar branch of literature—­the Hindu Erotic, which promises well.”  On Dec. 23th he writes:  “My friend Arbuthnot writes to me that he purposes calling upon you.  He has founded a society consisting of himself and myself.”  After further reference to the idea he adds, “I hope that you will enjoy it.”  A few days later Mr. Arbuthnot called on Mr. Payne.  Mr. Payne did not “enjoy” the unfolding of the Kama Shastra scheme, he took no interest in it whatever; but, of course, he gave the information required as to cost of production; and both then and subsequently assisted in other matters of business.  Moreover, to Mr. Arbuthnot himself, as a man of great personal charm, Mr. Payne became sincerely attached, and a friendship resulted that was severed only by death.

The arrangement about financing the books did not, of course, apply to The Arabian Nights.  That was Burton’s own affair; for its success was supposed to be assured from the first.  Of the books other than The Arabian Nights published by the Kama Shastra Society—­each of which purported, facetiously, to be printed at Behares, the name which Burton chose to give to Stoke Newington, we shall now give a brief account.

Several, we said, are erotic.  But it should be clearly understood what is here meant by the term.  The plays of Wycherley and other Caroline dramatists are erotic in a bad sense.  We admit their literary qualities, but we cannot hide from ourselves the fact that they were written by libertines and that an attempt is made to render vice attractive.  The injured husband, for example, is invariably ridiculed, the adulterer glorified.  The Hindu books, on the other hand, were written by professedly religious men whose aim was “not to encourage chambering and wantonness, but simply and in all sincerity to prevent the separation of husband and wife”—­

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   The Kama Sutra (Book of Love) by Vatsyayana. 
   Ananga Ranga (Stage of Love) by Kullianmull. 
   Ratirahasya (Secrets of Love) by Kukkoka. 
   Panchasakya (The Five Arrows) by Jyotirisha. 
   Smara Pradipa (Light of Love) by Gunakara. 
   Ratimanjari (Garland of Love) by Jayadeva. 
   Rasmanjari (Sprout of Love) by Bhanudatta.

Of these seven books two only were issued, namely the Kama Sutra and the Ananga Ranga or Lila Shastra.  The precise share that Burton[FN#395] had in them will never be known.  It is sufficient to say that he had a share in both, and the second, according to the title page, was “translated from the Sanskrit and annotated by A. F. F. and B. F. R.,” that is F. F. Arbuthnot and Richard Francis Bacon—­the initials being purposely reversed.

115.  The Kama Sutra.

When commencing upon The Kama Sutra, Indraji—­for he was the actual translator—­found his copy, which had been procured in Bombay, to be defective, so he wrote to Benares, Calcutta and Jeypoor for copies of the manuscripts preserved in the Sanskrit libraries of those places.  These having been obtained and compared with each other, a revised copy of the entire work was compiled and from this Indraji made his translation.  “This work,” he says, “is not to be used merely as an instrument for satisfying our desires.  A person acquainted with the true principles of this science, who preserved his Dharma (virtue or religious merit), his Artha (worldly wealth) and his Kama (pleasure, or sensual gratification), and who has regard to the customs of the people, is sure to obtain the mastery over his senses.  In short, an intelligent and knowing person, attending to Dharma, and Artha and also to Kama, without becoming the slave of his passions, will obtain success in everything that he may do.”  According to Vatsyayana, Kama should be taught just as is taught—­say, hygiene or political economy.  “A man practising Dharma, Artha and Kama enjoys happiness both in this world and in the world to come.”  It must not be supposed that the work is entirely erotic.  There are also directions for one’s conduct at religious festivals, especially that in honour of Saraswati,[FN#396] picnics, drinking parties and other social gatherings.  Still, the erotic preponderates.  The work is mainly a handbook on Love.  One is informed respecting what women are or are not worthy of affection.  There are full instructions respecting kissing, an art which is not so easy to learn as some persons think.  Still, a man who could not kiss

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For Edwin and Angelina when they get married there is also much wholesome instruction.  “The wife, whether she be a woman of noble family or a virgin widow re-married,[FN#398] should lead a chaste life.”  “When the man sets out on a journey she should make him swear that he will return quickly.[FN#399] ...  When the man does return home she should worship the God Kama.”  Ladies will be interested to learn that there are twenty-seven artifices by which a woman can get money out of a man.  One is “Praising his intelligence to his face.”  Then there are useful directions for the personal adornment of both sexes.  “If the bone of a peacock or of a hyena be covered with gold and tied to the right hand, it makes a man lovely in the eyes of other people.”

Of the essential portions of the book it is sufficient to say that they are similar to those of the other avowedly erotic Eastern works, the contents of the principal of which have been touched upon by Burton in the Terminal Essay to his Arabian Nights and in some of his notes.  Finally we are told that the Kama Sutra was composed for the benefit of the world by Vatsyayana, while leading the life of a religious student, and wholly engaged in the contemplation of the Deity.  At the same time, the teaching of this holy man amounts to very much the same as that of Maupassant, which is, to use Tolstoy’s words, “that life consists in pleasures of which woman with her love is the chief, and in the double, again reflected delight of depicting this love and exciting it in others."[FN#400]

The work lets a flood of light on Hindu manners and customs; and it must be borne in mind that the translation was issued privately at a high price and intended only for “curious students.”  In the Preface, Burton and Arbuthnot observe that after a perusal of the Hindoo work the reader will understand the subject upon which it treats, “At all events from a materialistic, realistic and practical point of view.  If all science is founded more or less on a stratum of facts, there can be no harm in making known to mankind generally certain matters intimately connected with their private, domestic and social life.  Alas! complete ignorance of them has unfortunately wrecked many a man and many a woman, while a little knowledge of a subject generally ignored by the masses would have enabled numbers of people to understand many things which they believed to be quite incomprehensible, or which were not thought worthy of their consideration.”

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Writing to Payne, 15th January, 1883, Burton says, “Has Arbuthnot sent you his Vatsyayana?[FN#401] He and I and the Printer have started a Hindu Kama Shastra (Ars Amoris Society).  It will make the Brit(ish) Pub(lis) stare.  Please encourage him.”  Later Arbuthnot, in reply to a question put to him by a friend, said that the Society consisted practically of himself, Sir Richard Burton and the late Lord Houghton.[FN#402]

Chapter XXVI The Ananga Ranga or Lila Shastra

Bibliography: 

70.  The Book of the Sword. 1884.

116.  The Ananga Ranga.[FN#403]

The title page of the second book, the Ananga Ranga, which was issued in 1885, was as follows: 

Ananga Ranga
(Stage of the Bodiless One)
or
the Hindu art of love
(Ars Amoris Indica)
Translated from the Sanskrit
and annotated
by
A. F. F. and B. F. R.

Cosmopoli MDCCCLXXXV, for the Kama Shastra Society of London and Benares, and for private circulation only.

Dedicated to that small portion of the British Public which takes enlightened interest in studying the manners and customs of the olden East.

We are told that this book was written about 1450 by the arch-poet Kalyana Mull,[FN#404] that lithographed copies have been printed by hundreds of thousands, that the book is in the hands of almost every one “throughout the nearer East,” and also that it is “an ethnological treasure, which tells us as much of Hindu human nature as The Thousand Nights and a Night of Arab manners and customs in the cinquecento.”  In India the book is known as the Kama Shastra or Lila Shastra, the Scripture of Play or Amorous Sport.  The author says quaintly, “It is true that no joy in the world of mortals can compare with that derived from the knowledge of the Creator.  Second, however, and subordinate only to his are the satisfaction and pleasure arising from the possession of a beautiful woman.”

“From the days of Sotades and Ovid,” says the writer of the Preface, who is certainly Burton, “to our own time, Western authors have treated the subject either jocularly or with a tendency to hymn the joys of immorality, and the gospel of debauchery.  The Indian author has taken the opposite view, and it is impossible not to admire the delicacy with which he has handled an exceedingly difficult theme. ....Feeling convinced that monogamy is a happier state than polygamy, he would save the married couple from the monotony and satiety which follow possession, by varying their pleasures in every conceivable way and by supplying them with the means of being psychically pure and physically pleasant to each other.”

There is a reference to this work in Burton’s Vikram and the Vampire, where we read:[FN#405] “As regards the neutral state, that poet was not happy in his ideas who sang,

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   ’Whene’er indifference appears, or scorn,
     Then, man, despair! then, hapless lover, mourn!’

for a man versed in the Lila Shastra can soon turn a woman’s indifference into hate, which I have shown is as easily permuted to love.”

This curious book concludes:  “May this treatise, Ananga Ranga, be beloved of man and woman, as long as the Holy River Ganges, springeth from Shiva with his wife Gauri on his left side; as long as Lakshmi loveth Vishnu; as long as Brahma is engaged in the study of the Vedas, and as long as the earth, the moon and the sun endure.”

The Kama Shastra Society also issued a translation of the first twenty chapters of The Scented Garden.[FN#406] In reality it was a translation of the French version of Liseux, but it was imperfect and had only a few notes.  It has been repeatedly denied that Burton had anything to do with it.  All we can say is that in a letter to Mr. A. G. Ellis of 8th May 1887, he distinctly calls it “my old version,"[FN#407] and he must mean that well-known edition of 1886, because all the other impressions are like it, except in respect to the title page.

117.  The Beharistan, 1887.

The Society now determined to issue unexpurgated editions of the three following great Persian classics: 

The Gulistan or Rose Garden, by Sadi (A.D. 1258).  The Nigaristan or Picture Gallery, by Jawini (A.D. 1334).  The Beharistan or Abode of Spring, by Jami (A.D. 1487).

The first to appear was The Beharistan in 1887.  Jami, the author, is best known in England on account of his melodious poems Salaman and Absal, so exquisitely rendered by Edward FitzGerald, and Ysuf and Zuleika (Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife), familiar to Englishmen mainly through Miss Costello’s fragrant adaptation.[FN#408] To quote from the Introduction of the translation of The Beharistan, which is written in Arbuthnot’s bald and hesitating style, “there is in this work very little indeed to be objected to.  A few remarks or stories scattered here and there would have to be omitted in an edition printed for public use or for public sale.  But on the whole the author breathes the noblest and purest sentiments, and illustrates his meanings by the most pleasing, respectable, and apposite tales, along with numerous extracts from the Koran.”  The work consists of stories and verses—­ two or three of which will be found in our Appendix—­pleasantly intermingled; but as Rehatsek, the translator, made no attempt to give the verses rhythmical form, only an inadequate idea is conveyed of the beauty of the original.  It would require an Edward FitzGerald or a John Payne to do justice to Jami’s jewelled verses.

118.  The Gulistan, 1888.

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The Gulistan of Sadi,[FN#409] which was the next book issued, is best known in England from the translations by James Ross (1823) and Edward B. Eastwick (1852).  Sadi’s aim was to make “a garden of roses whose leaves the rude hand of the blast of Autumn could not affect."[FN#410] “The very brambles and rubbish of this book,” says an ancient enthusiastic admirer, “are of the nature of ambergris.”  Men treasured the scraps of Sadi’s writing “as if they were gold leaf,” and The Gulistan has attained a popularity in the East “which has never been reached in this Western world.”  The school-boy lisps his first lessons in it, the pundit quotes it, and hosts of its sayings have become proverbial.  From end to end the “unity, the unapproachable majesty, the omnipotence, the long-suffering and the goodness of God” are nobly set forth—­the burden of every chapter being: 

   “The world, my brother! will abide with none,
    By the world’s Maker let thy heart be won.”

119.  The Nigaristan.

The third of the great trio, Jawini’s Nigaristan, did not reach the press owing to Arbuthnot’s death.  The manuscript, however, in Rehatsek’s hand-writing, is still in the possession of the Royal Asiatic Society, 22, Albermarle Street, and we trust to see it some day suitably edited and published.  Arbuthnot, who contributes the preface, points out that it contains 534 stories in prose and verse, and that it abounds “in pure and noble sentiments, such as are to be found scattered throughout the Sacred Books of the East, the Old and New Testaments and the Koran.”  A few citations from it will be found in our Appendix.

120.  Letters to Payne, 19th January 1884.

On January 19th, Burton, after asking for the remaining volumes of Mr. Payne’s Nights, says “A friend here is reading them solemnly and with huge delight:  he would be much disappointed to break off perforce half way.  When do you think the 9 vols. will be finished?  Marvellous weather here.  I am suffering from only one thing, a want to be in Upper Egypt.  And, of course, they won’t employ me.  I have the reputation of ‘independent,’ a manner of ’Oh! no, we never mention it, sir,’ in the official catalogue, and the one unpardonable Chinese Gordon has been sacked for being ‘eccentric,’ which Society abominates.  England is now ruled by irresponsible clerks, mostly snobs.  My misfortunes in life began with not being a Frenchman.  I hope to be in London next Spring, and to have a talk with you about my translation of the 1001.”

All the early months of 1884, Burton was seriously ill, but in April he began to mend.  He writes to Payne on the 17th:  “I am just beginning to write a little and to hobble about (with a stick).  A hard time since January 30th!  Let me congratulate you on being at Vol. ix.  Your translation is excellent and I am glad to see in Academy that you are working at Persian tales.[FN#411] Which are they?  In my youth I read many of them.  Now that your

Page 32

121.  At Sauerbrunn, 12th August 1884.

The next letter to Payne, written from Sauerbrunn, in Austria, is dated 12th August 1884.  After enquiring concerning “the supererogatory three vols.” he says, “We left Marienbad last of last month, and came to this place (a very pretty little spa utterly clear of Britishers), where we shall stay till the end of the month and then again for Trieste to make plans for the winter.  Will you kindly let me have the remaining volumes, and when you have a spare quarter of an hour I want a little assistance from you.  When you sent me your Breslau you pencilled in each volume the places from which you had taken matter for translation (How wretchedly that Breslau is edited!) I want these notes scribbled out by way of saving time.  Of course I shall have to read over the whole series; but meanwhile will content myself with your references.  Have you the Arabian Nights published in Turkish by Mr. Clermont Ganneau?  You will want it for the supererogatory.  If you can’t get it I have it somewhere, and will look for it on return to Trieste.  Have you a copy of Trebutien?  Cotton, of Academy has just sent me Clouston’s Book of Sindibad[FN#413] for review.  I thought it was our old friend the sailor, but find out my mistake.  You will have no objection to my naming (in my review) your style in the 1001 as that he should have taken for a model.”

He writes again on September 9th (1884):  “On return here I found Vol. ix., with the dedication which delighted me hugely.  I did not notice your fine work in reviewing the Clouston treatise.  I had not your express permission.  Living so far from the world I am obliged to be very careful in these matters:  one never knows what harm one may be doing unawares.  Of course I shall speak of your translation in my preface, as it deserves to be spoken of.  Nothing would give me greater

Page 33

122.  Burton’s Circulars, September 1884.

By September 1884 the first volumes of Burton’s Arabian Nights were almost ready for print, and Burton asked himself how many copies would suffice the public.  He was aware that 1,500 persons were disappointed of being able to obtain copies of Mr. Payne’s Edition, but it did not necessarily follow that all these 1,500 would subscribe to his.  Finally he decided upon 1,000, and he had three circulars printed respecting the work.

The first began “Captain Burton, having neither agent nor publisher for his forthcoming Arabian Nights, requests that all subscribers will kindly send their names to him personally (Captain Burton, Trieste, Austria), when they will be entered in a book kept for the purpose.”  It was then mentioned that there would be ten volumes at a guinea apiece,[FN#415] each to be paid for on delivery, that 1,000 copies would be printed, and that no cheaper edition would be issued.  The second dealt with the advantages of the work to students of Arabic.  The third consisted of an article welcoming the work from The Daily Tribune, New York, written by G. W. S(malley).  Burton posted about 20,000 of these circulars at an expense of some (pounds)80, but received only 300 favourable replies.  Lady Burton, in dismay, then wrote to Mr. Payne begging for advice.  Several letters passed between them, and Mr. Payne sent her the names of the subscribers to his own book and lists of other likely persons.  A second shower of circulars effected the desired purpose.  Indeed it did far more, for the number of favourable replies ultimately rose to 2,000.  But as we have seen, Burton had restricted himself to the issue of 1,000.  So he found that he had made precisely the same mistake as Mr. Payne.  However, it could not be remedied.

123.  The Book of the Sword.

This year was published Burton’s The Book of the Sword, which he dedicated, appropriately, to the memory of his old friend Alfred Bates Richards, who had died in 1876.  It is a history of the sword in all times and countries down to the Middle Ages,[FN#416] with numerous illustrations, the interest being mainly archaeological.  Of “The Queen of Weapons” he ever spoke glowingly.  “The best of calisthenics,” he says, “this energetic educator teaches the man to carry himself like a soldier.  A compendium of gymnastics, it increases strength and activity, dexterity, and rapidity of movement.  The foil is still the best training tool for the consensus of eye and hand, for the judgment of distance and opportunity, and, in fact, for the practice of combat.  And thus swordsmanship engenders moral confidence and self-reliance, while it stimulates a habit of resource.”

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124.  The Lyrics of Camoens, 1884.

This same year, too, he published his translation of the Lyrics of Camoens, in which, as will have been judged from the letters already quoted, he had been assisted by Mr. John Payne, who was also a Portuguese scholar and a lover of Camoens.  “The learning and research of your work,” wrote Mr. A. C. Swinburne, in reference to Burton’s six Camoens volumes, “are in many points beyond all praise of mine, but not more notable than the strength and skill that wield them.  I am hungrily anticipating the Arabian Nights.”

125.  More Letters to Payne, 1st October 1884.

On October 1st 1884, Burton wrote to thank Mr. Payne for a splendid and complete set (specially bound) of his edition of the Nights.  He says, “I am delighted with it, especially with the dedication.[FN#417] ...  To my horror Quaritch sent me a loose vol. of his last catalogue with a notice beginning, ’The only absolutely true translation of the [Arabian Nights], &c.’  My wife telegraphed to him and followed with a letter ordering it not to be printed.  All in vain.  I notice this only to let you know that the impertinence is wholly against my will.  Life in Trieste is not propitious to work as in the Baths; yet I get on tolerably.  Egypt is becoming a comedy.”  Then follows the amazing remark:  “I expect to see Gordon (who is doubtless hand in hand with the Mahdi) sent down to offer to guide Wolseley up to Khartum.”

126.  Death of Gordon, January 1885.

Burton little dreamt that the days of the heroic Englishman were numbered.  Sent by the English Government to the Soudan, Gordon had been at Khartum hardly a month before it was invested by the Mahdi.  The relief expedition arrived just two days too late.  Gordon was slain!  This was in January 1885.  The shock to Burton was comparable only to that which he received by the death of Speke.  In one of the illustrated papers there was a picture of Gordon lying in the desert with vultures hovering around.  “Take it away!” said Burton.  “I can’t bear to look at it.  I have had to feel like that myself.”

127.  W. F. Kirby,[FN#418] 25th March 1885.

Shortly after the announcement of his edition of the Nights, Burton received a letter from Mr. W. F. Kirby,[FN#418] better known as an entomologist, who had devoted much study to European editions of that work, a subject of which Burton knew but little.  Mr. Kirby offered to supply a bibliographical essay which could be used as an appendix.  Burton replied cordially, and this was the beginning of a very pleasant friendship.  Mr. Kirby frequently corresponded with Burton, and they often met at Mr. Kirby’s house, the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, or the British Museum.  Says Mr. Kirby:  “At the British Museum, Burton seemed more inclined to talk than to work.  I thought him weak in German[FN#419] and when I once asked him to help me with a Russian book, he was unable

Page 35

   Chapter XXVII
   May 1885-5th February 1886
   A Glance through “The Arabian Nights”

Bibliography: 

71.  The Thousand Nights and a Night. 1st Vol. 12th September 1885. 10th Vol. 12th July 1886. 72.  Il Pentamerone. (Translated—­not published till 1893). 73.  Iracema or Honey Lips; and Manoel de Moraes the Convert.  Translated from the Brazilian. 1886.

128.  Slaving at the Athenaeum, May 1885.

In May 1885, Burton obtained leave of absence, and on arriving in England he made various arrangements about the printing of The Arabian Nights and continued the work of translation.  When in London he occupied rooms at the St. James’s Hotel (now the Berkeley) in Piccadilly.  He used to say that the St. James’s Hotel was the best place in the world in which to do literary work, and that the finest place in the whole world was the corner of Piccadilly.  Still, he spent most of his time, as usual, at the Athenaeum.  Mr. H. R. Tedder, the Secretary, and an intimate friend of Burton’s, tells me that “He would work at the round table in the library for hours and hours—­with nothing for refreshment except a cup of coffee and a box of snuff, which always stood at his side;” and that he was rarely without a heavy stick with

Page 36

The Hon. Henry J. Coke, looking in at the Athenaeum library one day, and noticing the “white trousers, white linen coat and a very shabby old white beaver hat,” exclaimed, “Hullo Burton, do you find it so very hot?”

“I don’t want,” said Burton, “to be mistaken for anyone else.”

“There’s not much fear of that, without your clothes,” followed Coke.[FN#424]

During this holiday Burton visited most of his old friends, and often ran down to Norwood to see his sister and her daughter, while everyone remarked his brightness and buoyancy.  “It was delightful,” says Miss Stisted, “to see how happy he was over the success of his venture.”  He had already resolved to issue six additional volumes, to be called Supplemental Nights.  He would then take sixteen thousand pounds.  He calculated printing and sundries as costing four thousand, and that the remainder would be net profit.  As a matter of fact the expenses arose to (pounds)6,000, making the net profit (pounds)10,000[FN#425] Burton had wooed fortune in many ways, by hard study in India, by pioneering in Africa, by diplomacy at Court, by gold-searching in Midian and at Axim, by patent medicining.  Finally he had found it in his inkstand; but as his favourite Jami says, it requires only a twist of the pen to transmute duvat into dulat[FN#426]—­inkstand into fortune.

Except when his father died, Burton had never before possessed so large a sum, and, at the time, it appeared inexhaustible.  Bubbling over with fun, he would pretend to make a great mystery as to the Kama Shastra Society at Benares, where he declared the Nights were being printed.

129.  A Visit to Mr. Arbuthnot’s.

Of all the visits to be made during this holiday Burton had looked forward to none with so much pleasure as those to Mr. Arbuthnot, or “Bunny,"[FN#427] as he called him, and Mr. Payne.  Mr. Arbuthnot was still living at Upper House Court, Guildford, studying, writing books, and encouraging struggling men of letters with a generosity that earned for him the name of “the English Mecaenas;” and it was there the friends discussed the publications of the Kama Shastra Society and made arrangements for the issue of fresh volumes.  While the roses shook their odours over the garden, they talked of Sadi’s roses, Jami’s “Aromatic herbs,” and “Trees of Liberality,"[FN#428] and the volume

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130.  Dr. Steingass.

Born in 1825, Dr. Steingass came to England in 1873, and after five years as Professor of Modern Languages at Wakefield Grammar School, Birmingham, was appointed Professor at the Oriental Institute, Woking.  Though entirely self-taught, he was master of fourteen languages.[FN#432] His Arabic Dictionary (1884) and his Persian English Dictionary (1892) are well known, the latter being the best extant, but he will, after all, be chiefly remembered by his masterly rendering of Hariri.  Dr. Steingass presently became acquainted with Burton, for whom he wrote the article “On the Prose Rhyme and the Poetry of the Nights."[FN#433] He also assisted Burton with the Notes,[FN#434] supervised the MSS. of the Supplemental Volumes and enriched the last three with results of his wide reading and lexicographical experience.[FN#435] The work of transcribing Burton’s manuscript and making the copy for the press fell to a widow lady, Mrs. Victoria Maylor, a Catholic friend of Mrs. Burton.  Mrs. Maylor copied not only The Arabian Nights, but several of Burton’s later works, including The Scented Garden.

131.  Anecdotes.

When asked why he spent so much time and money on Orientalism, Arbuthnot gave as excuse his incompetency to do anything else.  He admitted, indeed, that for the higher walks of life, such as whist and nap, he had no aptitude.  Occasionally at Upper House Court, politics were introduced, and Arbuthnot, a staunch Liberal in a shire of Tories, was sometimes rallied upon his opinions by the Conservative Burton and Payne.  He took it all, however, as he took everything else,

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About this time an anonymous letter of Burton’s appeared in The World, but we forget upon what subject.  It excited wide interest, however, and hundreds of persons wrote to Mr. Yates, the editor, for the name of the author.

“Did you see my letter in The World?” enquired Burton of Mrs. E. J. Burton.

“The Christian World?” asked Mrs. Burton innocently.

“No,” replied Burton, sharply, “The Unchristian World.”

Once when Burton was present at some gathering, a missionary caused a shudder to run through the company by saying that he had had the dreadful experience of being present at a cannibal feast.  The cannibals, he said, brought in their prisoner, butchered him, cut him up, and handed the pieces round smoking hot.  With his curious feline laugh, Burton enquired, “Didn’t they offer you any?” “They did,” replied the missionary, “but of course I refused.”  “What a fool you were,” cried Burton, “to miss such a unique opportunity.”

132.  The Pentameron.  Burton and Gladstone.

We must next record a visit to Mr. Payne, who then resided in London.  Burton talked over his projects, and said that he had been wondering what book to take up after the completion of The Nights.  “I think,” said he, “I shall fix upon Boccaccio next.”

“My dear boy,” followed Mr. Payne, “I’ve just done him."[FN#436] As his poem “Salvestra” shows, Mr. Payne’s mind had for long been running on “that sheaf of flowers men call Decameron.”  His brilliant translation was, indeed, already in the press, and it appeared the following year in three volumes.

“You are taking the bread out of my mouth,” commented Burton plaintively.

“But,” continued Mr. Payne, “there is another work that I thought of doing—­The Pentameron,[FN#437] by Giambattista Basile, and if you care to take my place I will not only stand aside but lend you the materials collected for the purpose.”  Burton, who had some knowledge of the Neapolitan dialect but had never met with the work referred to, welcomed the idea; and as soon as he had finished the Nights he commenced a translation of The Pentameron, which, however, was not published until after his death.  His rendering, which cannot be praised, was aptly described by one of the critics as “an uncouth performance.”  Burton also told Payne about the proposed Ariosto translation, and they discussed that too, but nothing was done.

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On July 19th 1885, the Burtons lunched with Lord Houghton—­“our common Houghton,” as Mr. Swinburne used to call him; and found his lordship unwell, peevish, and fault-finding.  He had all the trials of the successful man who possesses everything that wealth can purchase or the mind conceive.

“Good-bye, my dear old friend,” cried Burton, when parting, “Would that I could share your troubles with you!"[FN#438]

But poor Lord Houghton was too far gone to appreciate the jest.  Indeed, he was on the brink of the grave.  A few days later he left for Vichy, where he died on August 11th.  His remains were brought to Fryston, and Burton and Arbuthnot were present at his funeral.

In October, while he was the guest of Lord Salisbury at Hatfield, Burton solicited the consulate of Morocco, and as his application was supported by fifty men of prominence he felt almost certain of obtaining it.

Apparently, it was during this visit to England, too, that Burton committed the frightful sin of contradicting Mr. Gladstone.  At some great house after dinner, Mr. Gladstone, who was the guest of the evening, took it upon himself, while every one listened in respectful silence, to enlarge on Oriental matters.

After he had finished, Burton, who had been fidgeting considerably, turned to him and said, “I can assure you, Mr. Gladstone, that everything you have said is absolutely and entirely opposite to fact.”

The rest of the company were aghast, could scarcely, indeed, believe their ears; and one of them, as soon as he had recovered from the shock, was seen scribbling like mad on a menu card.  Presently Burton felt the card tucked into his hand under the table.  On glancing at it he read “Please do not contradict Mr. Gladstone.  Nobody ever does.”

133.  A Brief Glance through the Nights.

By this time Burton had finished the first volume of his translation of The Arabian Nights, which left the press 12th September 1885.  The book was handsomely bound in black and gold, the colours of the Abbaside caliphs; and contained a circular “earnestly requesting that the work might not be exposed for sale in public places or permitted to fall into the hands of any save curious students of Moslem manners.”  The last volume was issued in July 1886.  Let us turn over the pages of this remarkable work, surrender ourselves for a few moments to its charms, and then endeavour to compare it calmly and impartially with the great translation by Mr. Payne.

What a glorious panorama unfolds itself before us!  Who does not know the introduction—­about the king who, because his wife was unfaithful, vowed to take a new wife every evening and slay her in the morning!  And all about the vizier’s daughter, the beautiful Shahrazad, who, with a magnificent scheme in her head, voluntarily came forward and offered to take the frightful risk.

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Did ever tale-teller compare with Shahrazad?  Who does not sympathise with the Trader who killed the invisible son of the jinni?  Who has not dreamt of the poor fisherman and the pot that was covered with the seal of King Solomon?  The story of Duban, who cured King Yunon of leprosy and was sent home on the royal steed reads like a verse out of Esther,[FN#439] and may remind us that there is no better way of understanding the historical portions of the Bible than by studying The Arabian Nights.  King Yunan richly deserved the death that overtook him, if only for his dirty habit of wetting his thumb when turning over the leaves of the book.[FN#440] What a rare tale is that of the Ensorcelled Prince, alias The Young King of the Black Isles, who though he sat in a palace where fountains limbecked water “clear as pearls and diaphanous gems,” and wore “silken stuff purfled with Egyptian gold,” was from his midriff downwards not man but marble!  Who is not shocked at the behaviour of the Three Ladies of Baghdad!  In what fearful peril the caliph and the Kalendars placed themselves when, in spite of warning, they would ask questions!  How delightful are the verses of the Nights, whether they have or have not any bearing upon the text!  Says the third Kalendar, apropos of nothing: 

   “How many a weal trips on the heels of ill
    Causing the mourner’s heart with joy to thrill.”

What an imbecile of imbeciles was this same Kalendar when he found himself in the palace with the forty damsels, “All bright as moons to wait upon him!” It is true, he at first appreciated his snug quarters, for he cried, “Hereupon such gladness possessed me that I forgot the sorrows of the world one and all, and said, ’This is indeed life!’” Then the ninny must needs go and open that fatal fortieth door!  The story of Nur al-Din Ali and his son Badr al-Din Hasan has the distinction of being the most rollicking and the most humorous in the Nights.  What stupendous events result from a tiff!  The lines repeated by Nur al-Din Ali when he angrily quitted his brother must have appealed forcibly to Burton: 

Travel! and thou shalt find new friends for old ones left behind;
   toil! for the sweets of human life by toil and moil are found;
The stay at home no honour wins nor ought attains but want; so
   leave thy place of birth and wander all the world around.[FN#441]

As long as time lasts the pretty coquettish bride will keep on changing her charming dresses; and the sultan’s groom (poor man! and for nothing at all) will be kept standing on his head.  The moribund Nur al-Din turns Polonius and delivers himself of sententious precepts.  “Security,” he tells his son, “lieth in seclusion of thought and a certain retirement from the society of thy fellows....  In this world there is none thou mayst count upon. ...so live for thyself, nursing hope of none.  Let thine own faults distract thine attention from the faults of other men.[FN#442] Be cautious, kind, charitable, sober, and economical.”  Then the good old man’s life “went forth.”  This son, when, soon after, confronted with misfortune, gives utterance to one of the finest thoughts in the whole work: 

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“It is strange men should dwell in the house of abjection, when
   the plain of God’s earth is so wide and great."[FN#443]

But there is another verse in the same tale that is also well worth remembering—­we mean the one uttered by Badr al-Din Hasan (turned tart merchant) when struck by a stone thrown by his son.

Unjust it were to bid the world be just; and blame her not:  She
  ne’er was made for justice: 
Take what she gives thee, leave all griefs aside, for now to
fair and
  Then to foul her lust is.[FN#444]

We need do no more than mention the world-famous stories of the unfortunate Hunchback and the pragmatical but charitable Barber.  Very lovely is the tale of Nur al-Din and the Damsel Anis al Jalis[FN#445] better known as “Noureddin and the Beautiful Persian.”  How tender is the scene when they enter the Sultan’s garden!  “Then they fared forth at once from the city, and Allah spread over them His veil of protection, so that they reached the river bank, where they found a vessel ready for sea.”  Arrived at Baghdad they enter a garden which turns out to be the Sultan’s.  “By Allah,” quoth Nur al-Din to the damsel, “right pleasant is this place.”  And she replied, “O my lord, sit with me awhile on this bench, and let us take our ease.  So they mounted and sat them down ... and the breeze blew cool on them, and they fell asleep, and glory be to Him who never sleepeth.”  Little need to enquire what it is that entwines The Arabian Nights round our hearts.

When calamity over took Nur al-Din he mused on the folly of heaping up riches: 

“Kisra and Caesars in a bygone day stored wealth; where is it,
   and ah! where are they?"[FN#446]

But all came right in the end, for “Allah’s aid is ever near at hand.”  The tale of Ghanim bin Ayyub also ends happily.  Then follows the interminable history of the lecherous and bellicose King Omar.  Very striking is its opening episode—­the meeting of Prince Sharrkan with the lovely Abrizah.  “Though a lady like the moon at fullest, with ringleted hair and forehead sheeny white, and eyes wondrous wide and black and bright, and temple locks like the scorpion’s tail,” she was a mighty wrestler, and threw her admirer three times.  The tender episode of the adventures of the two forlorn royal children in Jerusalem is unforgettable; while the inner story of Aziz and Azizah, with the touching account of Azizah’s death, takes perhaps the highest place in the Nights.  The tale of King Omar, however, has too much fighting, just as that of Ali bin Bakkar and Shams al Nahar, the amourist martyrs, as Burton calls them, has too much philandering.  Then comes the Tale of Kamar al Zaman I—­about the Prince and the Princess whose beauty set the fairy and the jinni disputing.  How winning were the two wives of Kamar al Zaman in their youth; how revolting after!  The interpolated tale of Ni’amah and Naomi is tender and pretty, and as the Arabs say,

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One of the most curious features of the Nights is the promptitude with which everyone—­porters, fishermen, ladies, caliphs—­recites poetry.  It is as if a cabman when you have paid him your fare were to give you a quatrain from FitzGerald’s rendering of Omar Khayyam, or a cripple when soliciting your charity should quote Swinburne’s Atalanta.  Then in the midst of all this culture, kindliness, generosity, kingliness, honest mirth,—­just as we are beginning to honour and love the great caliph, we come upon a tale[FN#448] with the staggering commencement “When Harun al Rashid crucified Ja’afar;” and if we try to comfort ourselves with the reflection that we are reading only Fiction, History comes forward and tells us bluntly that it is naked truth.  Passing from this story, which casts so lurid a light over the Nights, we come to Abu Mohammed, Lazybones, the Arab Dick Whittington, whose adventures are succeeded by those of Ali Shar, a young man who, with nothing at all, purchases a beautiful slave girl—­Zumurrud.  When, after a time, he loses her, he loses also his senses, and runs about crying: 

   “The sweets of life are only for the mad.”

By and by Zumurrud becomes a queen, and the lovers are re-united.  She is still very beautiful, very sweet, very pious, very tender, and she flays three men alive.

We need do no more than allude to “The Man of Al Yaman and his six Slave Girls,” “The Ebony Horse,” and “Uns al Wujud and Rose in Hood.”

The tale of the blue-stocking Tawaddud[FN#449] is followed by a number of storyettes, some of which are among the sweetest in the Nights.  “The Blacksmith who could handle Fire without Hurt,” “The Moslem Champion,” with its beautiful thoughts on prayer, and “Abu Hasn and the Leper” are all of them fragrant as musk.  Then comes “The Queen of the Serpents” with the history of Janshah, famous on account of the wonderful Split Men—­the creatures already referred to in this work, who used to separate longitudinally.  The Sindbad cycle is followed by the melancholy “City of Brass,” and a great collection of anecdotes illustrative of the craft and malice of woman.

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In “The Story of Judar"[FN#450] we find by the side of a character of angelic goodness characters of fiendish malevolence—­Judar’s brothers—­a feature that links it with the stories of Abdullah bin Fazil[FN#451] and Abu Sir and Abu Kir.[FN#452] Very striking is the account of the Mahrabis whom Judar pushed into the lake, and who appeared with the soles of their feet above the water and none can forget the sights which the necromancy of the third Maghrabi put before the eyes of Judar.  “Oh, Judar, fear not,” said the Moor, “for they are semblances without life.”  The long and bloody romance of Gharib and Ajib is followed by thirteen storyettes, all apparently historical, and then comes the detective work of “The Rogueries of Dalilah,” and ’the Adventures of Mercury Ali.”  If “The Tale of Ardashir” is wearisome, that of “Julnar the Sea Born and her son King Badr,” which like “Abdullah of the Land, and Abdullah of the Sea,"[FN#453] concerns mer-folk, amply atones for it.  This, too, is the tale of the Arabian Circe, Queen Lab, who turns people into animals.  In “Sayf al Muluk,” we make the acquaintance of that very singular jinni whose soul is outside his body, and meet again with Sindbad’s facetious acquaintance, “The Old Man of the Sea.”

“Hasan of Bassorah” is woven as it were out of the strands of the rainbow.  Burton is here at his happiest as a translator, and the beautiful words that he uses comport with the tale and glitter like jewels.  It was a favourite with him.  He says, “The hero, with his hen-like persistency of purpose, his weeping, fainting, and versifying, is interesting enough, and proves that ’Love can find out the way.’  The charming adopted sister, the model of what the feminine friend should be; the silly little wife who never knows that she is happy till she loses happiness, the violent and hard-hearted queen with all the cruelty of a good woman; and the manners and customs of Amazon-land are outlined with a life-like vivacity.”

Then follow the stories of Kalifah, Ali Nur al Din and Miriam the Girdle Girl[FN#454]; the tales grouped together under the title of “King Jalead of Hind;” and Abu Kir and Abu Sir, memorable on account of the black ingratitude of the villain.

“Kamar al Zaman ii.” begins with the disagreeable incident of the Jeweller’s Wife—­“The Arab Lady Godiva of the Wrong Sort”—­and the wicked plot which she contrived in concert with the depraved Kamar al Zaman.  However, the storyteller enlists the reader’s sympathies for the Jeweller, who in the end gains a wife quite as devoted to him as his first wife had been false.  The unfaithful wife gets a reward which from an Arab point of view precisely meets the case.  Somebody “pressed hard upon her windpipe and brake her neck.”  “So,” concludes the narrator, “he who deemeth all women alike there is no remedy for the disease of his insanity.”  There is much sly humour in the tale, as for example when we are told that even the cats and dogs were comforted when “Lady Godiva” ceased to make her rounds.  “Abdullah bin Fazil” is simply “The Eldest Lady’s Tale” with the sexes changed.

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The last tale in the Nights, and perhaps the finest of all, is that of “Ma’aruf the Cobbler."[FN#455] Ma’aruf, who lived at Cairo, had a shrewish wife named Fatimah who beat him, and hauled him before the Kazi because he had not been able to bring her “kunafah sweetened with bees’ honey.”  So he fled from her, and a good-natured Marid transported him to a distant city.  Here he encounters an old playfellow who lends him money and recommends him to play the wealthy merchant, by declaring that his baggage is on the road.  This he does with a thoroughness that alarms his friend.  He borrows money right and left and lavishes it upon beggars.  He promises to pay his creditors twice over when his baggage comes.  By and by the king—­a very covetous man—­hears of Ma’aruf’s amazing generosity, and desirous himself of getting a share of the baggage, places his treasury at Ma’aruf’s disposal, and weds him to his daughter Dunya.  Ma’arfu soon empties the treasury, and the Wazir, who dislikes Ma’aruf, suspects the truth.  Ma’aruf, however, confesses everything to Dunya.  She comes to his rescue, and her clairvoyance enables her to see his future prosperity.  Having fled from the king, Ma’aruf discovers a magic “souterrain” and a talismanic seal ring, by the aid of which he attains incalculable wealth.  Exclaims his friend the merchant when Ma’aruf returns as a magnifico, “Thou hast played off this trick and it hath prospered to thy hand, O Shaykh of Imposters!  But thou deservest it.”  Ma’aruf ultimately succeeds to the throne.  Then occurs the death of the beautiful and tender Dunya—­an event that is recorded with simplicity and infinite pathos.  The old harridan Fatimah next obtrudes, and, exhibiting again her devilish propensities, receives her quietus by being very properly “smitten on the neck.”  So ends this fine story, and then comes the conclusion of the whole work.  This is very touching, especially where the story-telling queen, who assumes that death is to be her portion, wants to bid adieu to the children whom she had borne to the king.  But, as the dullest reader must have divined, the king had long before “pardoned” her in his heart, and all ends pleasantly with the marriage of her sister Dunyazad to the king’s brother.

What an array of figures—­beautiful, revolting, sly, fatuous, witty, brave, pusillanimous, mean, generous—­meets the eye as we recall one by one these famous stories; beautiful and amorous, but mercurial ladies with henna scented feet and black eyes—­often with a suspicion of kohl and more than a suspicion of Abu Murreh[FN#456] in them—­peeping cautiously through the close jalousies of some lattice; love sick princes overcoming all obstacles; executioners with blood-dripping scimitars; princesses of blinding beauty and pensive tenderness, who playfully knock out the “jaw-teeth” of their eunuchs while “the thousand-voiced bird in the coppice sings clear;"[FN#457] hideous genii, whether of the amiable or the vindictive sort, making their appearance in

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Where the dust of Shahrazad is kept tradition does not tell us.  If we knew we would hasten to her tomb, and in imitation of the lover of Azizeh[FN#460] lay thereon seven blood-red anemones.

Chapter XXVIII The Two Translations Compared

134.  The Blacksmith Who, etc.

Having glanced through the Nights, let us now compare the two famous translations.  As we have already mentioned, Burton in his Translator’s Foreword did not do Mr. Payne complete justice, but he pays so many compliments to Mr. Payne’s translation elsewhere that no one can suppose that he desired to underrate the work of his friend.  In the Foreword he says that Mr. Payne “succeeds admirably in the most difficult passages and often hits upon choice and special terms and the exact vernacular equivalent of the foreign word so happily and so picturesquely that all future translators must perforce use the same expression under pain of falling far short.”  Still this does not go far enough, seeing that, as we said before, he made his translation very largely a paraphrase of Payne’s.  Consequently he was able to get done in two broken years (April 1884 to April 1886) and with several other books in hand, work that had occupied Mr. Payne six years (1876-1882).  Let us now take Mr. Payne’s rendering and Burton’s rendering of two short tales and put them in juxtaposition.  The Blacksmith who could handle Fire without Hurt and Abu Al Hasan and Abu Ja’afar the Leper will suit our purpose admirably.

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The portion taken by Burton from Payne are in italics.

         Payne Burton
     Vol.  V. p. 25 Vol.  V. p. 271
                                (Lib.  Ed., vol. iv., p. 220)

The blacksmith who               the blacksmith who
could handle fire                 could handle fire
without hurt                       without hurt

A certain pious man             It reached the ears of
once heard that there           a certain pious man that
abode in such a town a          there abode in such a town
blacksmith who could            a blacksmith who could
put his hand into the fire      put his hand into the fire
and pull out the red-hot        and pull out the iron red-hot,
iron, without its doing         without the flames
him any hurt.   So he set        doing him aught of hurt.
out for the town in question    So he set out for the town in
and enquiring for the           question and asked for
blacksmith, watched him         the blacksmith; and when
at work and saw him do          the man was shown to
as had been reported to         him; he watched him at
him.   He waited till he         work and saw him do as
had made an end of his          had been reported to him.
day’s work, then going          He waited till he had made
up to him, saluted him          an end of his day’s work;
and said to him, “I             then, going up to him,
would fain be thy guest         saluted him with the salam
this night.”   “With all         and said, “I would be thy
my heart,” replied the          guest this night.”   Replied
smith, and carried him to       the smith, “With gladness
his house, where they           and goodly gree!” and
supped together and lay         carried him to his place,
down to sleep.   The guest       where they supped together
watched his host, but           and lay down to sleep.
found no sign of [special]      The guest watched but saw
devoutness in him and           no sign in his host of praying
said to himself.   “Belike       through the night or
he concealeth himself from      of special devoutness, and
me.”   So he lodged with         said in his mind, “Haply
him a second and a third        he hideth himself from
night, but found that he        me.”   So he lodged with
did no more than observe        him a second and a third
the ordinary letter of the      night, but found that he
law and rose but little         did not exceed the devotions
in the night [to pray].   At     prescribed by the
last he said to him, “O         law and custom of the
my brother, I have heard        Prophet and rose but little
of the gift with which          in the dark hours to pray. 
God hath favoured thee          At last he said to him, “O
and have seen the truth of      my brother, I have heard
it with mine eyes.   Moreover,   of the gift with which
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I have taken note of            Allah hath favoured thee,
thine assiduity [in             and have seen the truth of
religious exercises], but       it with mine eyes.   Moreover,
find in thee no special         I have taken note
fervour of piety, such as       of thine assiduity in
distinguisheth those in         religious exercises, but find
whom such miraculous            in thee no such piety as
gifts are manifest.             distinguished those who work
“Whence, then, cometh           saintly miracles; whence,
this to thee?”  “I will         then cometh this to thee?”
tell thee,” answered the        “I will tell thee,”
smith.                          answered the smith.

“Know that I was once           “Know that I was once
passionately enamoured of       passionately enamoured
a certain damsel and            of a slave girl and oft-times
required her many a time        sued her for loveliesse,
of love, but could not          but could not prevail
prevail upon her, for           upon her, because she
that she still clave fast       still held fast by her
unto chastity.   Presently       chastity.   Presently there
there came a year of            came a year of drought and
drought and hunger and          hunger and hardship, food
hardship; food failed and       failed, and there befell a
there befell a sore famine      sore famine.   As I was
in the land.   I was sitting     sitting one day at home,
one day in my house,            somebody knocked at the
when one knocked at the         door; so I went out, and,
door; so I went out and         behold, she was standing
found her standing there;       there; and she said to
and she said to me, ’O          me, ’O my brother, I am
my brother, I am stricken       sorely an hungered and I
with excessive hunger, and      lift mine eyes to thee,
I lift mine eyes to thee,       beseeching thee to feed me,
beseeching thee to feed         for Allah’s sake!’  Quoth
me for God’s sake!’                I, ’Wottest thou not how
Quoth I, ’Dost thou not         I love thee and what I have
know how I love thee            suffered for thy sake?   Now
and what I have suffered        I will not give thee one
for thy sake!   I will give      bittock of bread except
thee no whit of food,           thou yield thy person
except thou yield thyself       to me.’   Quoth she,
to me.’   But she said,          ’Death, but not
‘Better death than              disobedience to the Lord!’
disobedience to God.’   Then     Then she went away and
she went away and               returned after two days with
returned after two days         the same prayer for food
with the same petition          as before.   I made her a
for food.   I made her a like    like answer, and she
answer, and she entered         entered and sat down in my
and sat down, being nigh        house, being nigh upon
upon death.   I set food         death.   I set food before
before her, whereupon her       her, whereupon her eyes
eyes ran over with tears,       brimmed with tears, and
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and she said, ’Give me          she cried, ’Give me meat
to eat for the love of God,     for the love of Allah, to
to whom belong might            whom belong Honour and
and majesty!’  ‘Not so,         Glory!’  But I answered
by Allah,’ answered I,          ’Not so, by Allah, except
‘except thou yield thyself      thou yield thyself to me.’
to me.’   Quoth she,             Quoth she, ’Better is
’Better is death to me          death to me than the wrath
than the wrath of God           and wreak of Allah the
the Most High.’   And            Most Highest; and she
she left the food               rose and left the food untouched
untouched[FN#461] and went away [FN#461] and went away
repeating the following         repeating these couplets: 
verses: 

O, Thou, the only God, whose O, Thou, the One, whose grace
  grace embraceth all that be, doth all the world embrace;
  Thine ears have heard my Thine ears have heard, Thine
  moan, Thine eyes have seen eyes have seen my case!
  my misery;

Indeed, privation and distress Privation and distress have dealt
  are heavy on my head; I me heavy blows; the woes
  cannot tell of all the woes that weary me no utterance
  that do beleaguer me. can trace.

I’m like a man athirst, that I am like one athirst who eyes
  looks upon a running stream, the landscape’s eye, yet may
  yet may not drink a single not drink a draught of
  draught of all that he doth streams that rail and race.
  see.

My flesh would have me buy its My flesh would tempt me by the
  will, alack, its pleasures sight of savoury food whose
  flee!  The sin that pays their joys shall pass away and
  price abides to all eternity. pangs maintain their place.

[The girl, “worn out with want,” came a third time, and met with the same answer.  But then remorse seized upon the blacksmith and he bade her, “eat, and fear not.”]

“When she heard this “Then she raised her eyes she raised her eyes to to heaven and said, heaven and said,

“’O my God, if this             “’O my God, if this man
man be sincere, I pray          say sooth, I pray thee
Thee forbid fire to do          forbid fire to harm him
him hurt in this world          in this world and the
and the next, for Thou art      next, for Thou over all
He that answereth prayer        things art Omnipotent and
and art powerful to do          Prevalent in answering the
whatsoever Thou wilt!’          prayer of the penitent!’

“Then I left her and            Then I left her and went
went to put out the fire        to put out the fire in
in the brasier.   Now the        the brazier.   Now the
time was the winter-cold,       season was winter and the
and a hot coal fell on          weather cold, and a live
my body; but by the             coal fell on my body, but
ordinance of God (to            by the decree of Allah (to
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whom belong might and           whom be Honour and
majesty), I felt no pain        Glory!) I felt no pain, and
and it was born in upon         it became my conviction
me that her prayer had          that her prayer had been
been answered.”                 answered.”

[The girl then praised God, who “straightway took her soul to Him.”  The story finishes with some verses which are rendered by Payne and Burton each according to his wont.]

135.  Abu al-Hasan.

We will next take “Abu al-Hasan and Abu Ja’afar the Leper.”

Payne Burton
V. 49 V. 294
(Lib.  Ed., iv., 242)

Aboulhusn ed Durraj                 Abu al-Hasan
and Abou Jaafer the                      and
leper                     Abu Ja’afar the leper

Quoth Aboulhusn ed              I had been many times
Durraj, I had been many         to Mecca (Allah increase
times to Mecca (which           its honour!) and the folk
God increase in honour)         used to follow me for my
and the folk used to follow     knowledge of the road and
me by reason of my knowledge    remembrance of the water
of the road and                 stations.   It happened one
the watering-places.   It        year that I was minded to
chanced one year that I         make the pilgrimage to
was minded to make the          the Holy House and visitation
pilgrimage to the Holy          of the tomb of His
House of God and visit the      Prophet (on whom be
tomb of His prophet (on         blessing and the Peace!)
whom be peace and blessing),    and I said in myself.   “I
and I said to myself,           well know the way and
“I know the road and will       will fare alone.”   So I
go alone.”   So I set out        set out and journeyed till I
and journeyed till I came       came to Al-Kadisiyah, and
to El Cadesiyeh, and entering   entering the Mosque there,
the Mosque there, saw           saw a man suffering from
a leper seated in the           black leprosy seated in
prayer-niche.   When he          the prayer-niche.   Quoth he
saw me, he said to me,          on seeing me, “O Abu
“O Aboulhusn, I crave           al-Hasan, I crave thy company
thy company to Mecca.”          to Meccah.”   Quoth I
Quoth I to myself, “I           to myself, “I fled from all
wished to avoid companions,     my companions and how
and how shall I                 shall I company with lepers.”
company with lepers?”           So I said to him, “I will
So I said to him, “I will       bear no man company,”
bear no one company,”           and he was silent at my
and he was silent.              words.

Next day I continued            Next day I walked on
my journey alone, till I        alone, till I came to
came to Acabeh, where           Al-Akabah, where I entered
I entered the Mosque and        the mosque and found the
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was amazed to find the          leper seated in the prayer
leper seated in the prayer-     niche.   So I said to myself,
niche.   “Glory be to God,”      “Glory be to Allah!
said I in myself.   “How         how hath this fellow preceded
hath this fellow foregone       me hither.”   But
me hither?”  But he             he raised his head to me
raised his eyes to me           and said with a smile, “O
and said, smiling, “O,          Abu al-Hasan, He doth
Aboulhusn, He doth for          for the weak that which
the weak that which the         surpriseth the strong!”
strong wonder at.”   I           I passed that night confounded
passed that night in            at what I had
perplexity, confounded at       seen; and, as soon as
what I had seen, and in         morning dawned, set out
the morning set out again       again by myself; but
by myself; but when I           when I came to Arafat
came to Arafat and entered      and entered the mosque,
the mosque, behold,             behold! there was the leper
there was the leper seated      seated in the niche.   So I
in the niche!   So I threw       threw myself upon him
myself upon him and kissing     and kissing his feet said,
his feet, said, “O my           “O my lord, I crave thy
lord, I crave thy company.”     company.”   But he answered,
But he said,                    “This may in no
“This may nowise be.”           way be.”   Then I began
Whereupon I fell a-weeping      weeping and wailing at
and lamenting, and              the loss of his company
he said:  “Peace:  weeping        when he said, “Spare thy
will avail thee nothing,”       tears, which will avail thee
And he recited the              naught!” and he recited
following verses:                these couplets: 

For my estrangement dost thou Why dost thou weep when I
  weep,—­whereas it came depart and thou didst parting
  from thee,—­And restoration claim; and cravest union
  dost implore, when none, when we ne’er shall re-unite
  alas! may be? the same?

Thou sawst my weakness and Thou lookedest on nothing save
  disease, as it appeared, and my weakness and disease;
  saidst, “He goes, nor comes, and saidst, “Nor goes, nor
  or night, or day, for this his comes, or night, or day, this
  malady.” sickly frame.”

Seest not that God (exalted be Seest not how Allah (glorified
  His glory) to His slave His glory ever be!) deigneth
  vouchsafeth all he can conceive to grant His slave’s petition
  of favour fair and free! wherewithal he came.

If I, to outward vision, be as If I, to eyes of men be that and
  it appears and eke in body, for only that they see, and this
  despite of fate, e’en that my body show itself so full
  which thou dost see. of grief and grame.

And eke no victual though I And I have nought of food that
  have, unto the holy place shall supply me to the place
  where crowds unto my Lord where crowds unto my Lord
  resort, indeed, to carry me. resort impelled by single aim.

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I have a Maker, hidden are His I have a high Creating Lord
  bounties unto me; yea, whose mercies aye are hid;
  there’s no parting me from a Lord who hath none equal
  Him, and without peer is He. and no fear is known to Him.

Depart from me in peace and So fare thee safe and leave me
  leave me and my strangerhood; lone in strangerhood to wone. 
  For with the lonely For He the only One, consoles
  exile still the One shall my loneliness so lone.
  company.

So I left him and continued       Accordingly I left him,
my journey; and                   but every station I came
every stage I came to, I          to, I found he had foregone
found him before me, till         me, till I reached Al-Madinah,
I came to Medina, where           where I lost sight
I lost sight of him and           of him, and could hear
could hear no news of             no tidings of him.   Here
him.   Here I met Abou             I met Abu Yazid
Yezid el Bustani and Abou         al-Bustami and Abu Bakr
Beker es Shibli and a             al-Shibli and a number of
number of other doctors,          other Shaykhs and learned
to whom I told my case,           men to whom with many
and they said, “God               complaints I told my case,
forbid that thou shouldst         and they said, “Heaven
gain his company after            forbid that thou shouldst
this!   This was Abou              gain his company after
Jaafer the leper, in whose        this!   He was Abu Ja’afar
name, at all tides, the folk      the leper, in whose name
pray for rain, and by whose       folk at all times pray for
blessings prayers are answered.”  rain and by whose blessing
When I heard                      prayers their end attain.”
this, my longing for his          When I heard their words,
company redoubled and             my desire for his company
I implored God to reunite         redoubled and I implored
me with him.   Whilst I            the Almighty to reunite me
was standing on Arafat,           with him.   Whilst I was
one plucked me from behind,       standing on Arafat one
so I turned and                   pulled me from behind, so
behold, it was Abou Jaafer.        I turned and behold, it
At this sight I gave a loud       was my man.   At this
cry and fell down in a            sight I cried out with a
swoon; but when I came            loud cry and fell down in
to myself, he was gone.           a fainting fit; but when I
came to myself he had disappeared
from my sight.

This increased my yearning        This increased my yearning
for him and the ways              for him and the
were straitened upon              ceremonies were tedious to
me and I prayed God to            me, and I prayed Almighty
give me sight of him;             Allah to give me sight of
nor was it but a few days         him; nor was it but a few
after when one pulled me          days after, when lo! one
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from behind, and I turned,        pulled me from behind,
and behold, it was he             and I turned and it was
again.   Quoth he, “I conjure      he again.   Thereupon he
thee, ask thy desire              said, “Come, I conjure
of me.”   So I begged him          thee, and ask thy want of
to pray three prayers to          me.”   So I begged him to
God for me; first, that           pray for me three prayers: 
He would make me love             first, that Allah would make
poverty; secondly, that I         me love poverty; secondly,
might never lie down to           that I might never lie down
sleep upon known provision,       at night upon provision
and thirdly, that                 assured to me; and
He, the Bountiful One,            thirdly, that he would
would vouchsafe me to             vouchsafe me to look upon
look upon His face.   So he        His bountiful face.   So
prayed for me, as I wished,       he prayed for me as I
and departed from me.             wished, and departed from
And, indeed, God hath             me.   And indeed Allah
granted me the first two          hath granted me what the
prayers; for He hath              devotee asked in prayer;
made me in love with              to begin with he hath made
poverty, so that, by Allah,       me so love poverty that, by
there is nought in the            the Almighty! there is
world dearer to me than           nought in the world dearer
it, and since such a year,        to me than it, and secondly
I have never lain down            since such a year I have
upon assured provision;           never lain down to sleep
yet hath He never let me          upon assured provision,
lack of aught.   As for the        withal hath He never let
third prayer, I trust that        me lack aught.   As for the
He will vouchsafe me that         third prayer, I trust that
also, even as He hath             he will vouchsafe me that
granted the two others,           also, even as He hath
for He is bountiful and           granted the two precedent,
excellently beneficient.   And     for right Bountiful and
may God have mercy on             Beneficient is His Godhead,
him who saith:                     and Allah have mercy on
him who said;

Renouncement, lowliness, the Garb of Fakir, renouncement,
  fakir’s garments be; In lowliness;
  patched and tattered clothes His robe of tatters and of rags
  still fares the devotee. his dress;

Pallor adorneth him, as on their And pallor ornamenting brow
  latest nights, The moons as though
  with pallor still embellished ’Twere wanness such as waning
  thou mayst see. crescents show.

Long rising up by night to pray Wasted him prayer a-through
  hath wasted him; And from the long-lived night,
  his lids the tears stream down.  And flooding tears ne’er cease
  as ’twere a sea. to dim his sight.

The thought of God to him his Memory of Him shall cheer his
  very housemate is; For lonely room;
  bosom friend by night, th’ Th’ Almighty nearest is in
  Omnipotent hath he. nightly gloom.

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God the Protector helps the fakir The Refuge helpeth such Fakir
  in his need; And birds and in need;
  beasts no less to succour him Help e’en the cattle and the
  agree. winged breed;

On his account, the wrath of Allah for sake of him of wrath
  God on men descends, And is fain,
  by his grace, the rains fall And for the grace of him shall
  down on wood and lea. fall the rain;

And if he pray one day to do And if he pray one day for plague
  away a plague, The oppressor’s to stay,
  slain and men from ’Twill stay, and ’bate man’s
  tyrants are made free; wrong and tyrants slay.

For all the folk are sick, While folk are sad, afflicted one
  afflicted and diseased, And he’s and each,
  the pitying leach withouten He in his mercy’s rich, the
  stint or fee. generous leach;

His forehead shines; an thou Bright shines his brow; an thou
  but look upon his face, Thy regard his face
  heart is calmed, the lights of Thy heart illumined shines by
  heaven appear to thee. light of grace.

O thou that shunnest these, their O thou that shunnest souls of
  virtues knowing not, Woe’s worth innate,
  thee!  Thou’rt shut from Departs thee (woe to thee!) of
  them by thine iniquity. sins the weight.

Thou think’st them to o’ertake, Thou thinkest to overtake them,
  for all thou’rt fettered fast; while thou bearest
  Thy sins from thy desire Follies, which slay thee whatso
  do hinder thee, perdie. way thou farest.

Thou wouldst to them consent Didst not their worth thou hadst
  and rivers from thine eyes all honour showed
  Would run from them, if thou And tears in streamlets from
  their excellence could’st see. thine eyes had flowed.

Uneath to him to smell, who’s To catarrh-troubled men flowers
  troubled with a rheum, Are lack their smell;
  flowers; the broker knows And brokers ken for how much
  what worth the garments be. clothes can sell;

So supplicate thy Lord right So haste and with thy Lord
  humbly for His grace And re-union sue,
  Providence, belike, shall And haply fate shall lend thee
  help thy constancy; aidance due.

And thou shalt win thy will and Rest from rejection and
  from estrangement’s stress estrangement stress,
  And eke rejection’s pains And joy thy wish and will shall
  shall be at rest and free. choicely bless.

The asylum of His grace is wide His court wide open for the
  enough for all That seek; The suer is dight:—­
  one true God, the One, very God, the Lord, th’
  Conqueror, is He!  Almighty might.

Page 54

We may also compare the two renderings of that exquisite and tender little poem “Azizeh’s Tomb"[FN#462] which will be found in the “Tale of Aziz and Azizeh.”

         Payne Burton

I passed by a ruined tomb in the I past by a broken tomb amid
  midst of a garden way, Upon a garth right sheen, Whereon
  whose letterless stone seven on seven blooms of Nu’aman
  blood-red anemones lay. glowed with cramoisie.

“Who sleeps in this unmarked Quoth I, “Who sleepeth in this
  grave?” I said, and the tomb?” Quoth answering
  earth, “Bend low; For a earth, “Before a lover
  lover lies here and waits for Hades-tombed bend reverently.”
  the Resurrection Day.”

“God keep thee, O victim of Quoth I, “May Allah help thee,
  love!” I cried, “and bring O thou slain of love, And
  thee to dwell In the highest grant thee home in heaven
  of all the heavens of Paradise, and Paradise-height to see! 
  I pray!

“How wretched are lovers all, “Hapless are lovers all e’en
  even in the sepulchre, tombed in their tombs,
  For their very tombs are Where amid living folk the
  covered with ruin and decay! dust weighs heavily!

“Lo! if I might, I would plant “Fain would I plant a garden
  thee a garden round about, blooming round thy grave
  and with my streaming tears And water every flower with
  the thirst of its flowers tear-drops flowing
  allay!” free!"[FN#463]

136.  The Summing Up.

The reader will notice from these citations: 

(1) That, as we have already said, and as Burton himself partly admitted, Burton’s translation is largely a paraphrase of Payne’s.  This is particularly noticeable in the latter half of the Nights.  He takes hundreds—­nay thousands—­of sentences and phrases from Payne, often without altering a single word.[FN#464] If it be urged that Burton was quite capable of translating the Nights without drawing upon the work of another, we must say that we deeply regret that he allowed the opportunity to pass, for he had a certain rugged strength of style, as the best passages in his Mecca and other books show.  In order to ensure originality he ought to have translated every sentence before looking to see how Payne put it, but the temptation was too great for a very busy man—­a man with a hundred irons in the fire—­and he fell.[FN#465]

(2) That, where there are differences, Payne’s translation is invariably the clearer, finer and more stately of the two.  Payne is concise, Burton diffuse.[FN#466]

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(3) That although Burton is occasionally happy and makes a pat couplet, like the one beginning “Kisras and Caesars,” nevertheless Payne alone writes poetry, Burton’s verse being quite unworthy of so honourable a name.  Not being, like Payne, a poet and a lord of language; and, as he admits, in his notes, not being an initiate in the methods of Arabic Prosody, Burton shirked the isometrical rendering of the verse.  Consequently we find him constantly annexing Payne’s poetry bodily, sometimes with acknowledgement, oftener without.  Thus in Night 867 he takes half a page.  Not only does he fail to reproduce agreeably the poetry of the Nights, but he shows himself incapable of properly appreciating it.  Notice, for example, his remark on the lovely poem of the Fakir at the end of the story of “Abu Al-Hasan and Abu Ja’afer the Leper,” the two versions of which we gave on a preceding page.  Burton calls it “sad doggerel,” and, as he translates it, so it is.  But Payne’s version, with its musical subtleties and choice phrases, such as “The thought of God to him his very housemate is,” is a delight to the ear and an enchantment of the sense.  Mr. Payne in his Terminal Essay singles out the original as one of the finest pieces of devotional verse in the Nights; and worthy of Vaughan or Christina Rossetti.  The gigantic nature of Payne’s achievement will be realised when we mention that The Arabian Nights contains the equivalent of some twenty thousand decasyllabic lines of poetry, that is to say more than there are in Milton’s Paradise Lost, and that he has rendered faithfully the whole of this enormous mass in accordance with the intricate metrical scheme of the original, and in felicitous and beautiful language.

(4) That Burton, who was well read in the old English poets, also introduces beautiful words.  This habit, however, is more noticeable in other passages where we come upon cilice,[FN#467] egromancy,[FN#468] verdurous,[FN#469] vergier,[FN#470] rondure,[FN#471] purfled,[FN#472] &c.  Often he uses these words with excellent effect, as, for example, “egromancy,"[FN#473] in the sentence:  “Nor will the egromancy be dispelled till he fall from the horse;” but unfortunately he is picturesque at all costs.  Thus he constantly puts “purfled” where he means “embroidered” or “sown,” and in the “Tale of the Fisherman and the Jinni,” he uses incorrectly the pretty word “cucurbit"[FN#474] to express a brass pot; and many other instances might be quoted.  His lapses, indeed, indicate that he had no real sense of the value of words.  He uses them because they are pretty, forgetting that no word is attractive except in its proper place, just as colours in painting owe their value to their place in the general colour scheme.  He took most of his beautiful words from our old writers, and a few like ensorcelled[FN#475] from previous translators.  Unfortunately, too, he spoils his version by the introduction of antique words that are ugly, uncouth,

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Burton, alas! was also unscrupulous enough to include one tale which, he admitted to Mr. Kirby, does not appear in any redaction of the Nights, namely that about the misfortune that happened to Abu Hassan on his Wedding day.[FN#479] “But,” he added, “it is too good to be omitted.”  Of course the tale does not appear in Payne.  To the treatment meted by each translator to the coarsenesses of the Nights we have already referred.  Payne, while omitting nothing, renders such passages in literary language, whereas Burton speaks out with the bluntness and coarseness of an Urquhart.

In his letter to Mr. Payne, 22nd October 1884, he says of Mr. Payne’s translation, “The Nights are by no means literal but very readable which is the thing.”  He then refers to Mr. Payne’s rendering of a certain passage in the “Story of Sindbad and the Old Man of the Sea,” by which it appears that the complaint of want of literality refers, as usual, solely to the presentable rendering of the offensive passages.  “I translate,” he says **********.  “People will look fierce, but ce n’est pas mon affaire.”  The great value of Burton’s translation is that it is the work of a man who had travelled in all the countries in which the scenes are laid; who had spent years in India, Egypt, Syria, Turkey and the Barbary States, and had visited Mecca; who was intimately acquainted with the manners and customs of the people of those countries, and who brought to bear upon his work the experience of a lifetime.  He is so thoroughly at home all the while.  Still, it is in his annotations and not in his text that he really excells.  The enormous value of these no one would now attempt to minimize.

All over the world, as Sir Walter Besant says, “we have English merchants, garrisons, consuls, clergymen, lawyers, physicians, engineers, living among strange people, yet practically ignorant of their manners and thoughts. .... it wants more than a knowledge of the tongue to become really acquainted with a people.”  These English merchants, garrisons, consults and others are strangers in a strange land.  It is so very rare that a really unprejudiced man comes from a foreign country to tell us what its people are like, that when such a man does appear we give him our rapt attention.  He may tell us much that will shock us, but that cannot be helped.

Chapter XXIX Burton’s Notes

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137.  Burton’s Notes.

These Notes, indeed, are the great speciality of Burton’s edition of the Nights.  They are upon all manner of subjects—­from the necklace of the Pleiades to circumcision; from necromancy to the characteristics of certain Abyssinian women; from devilish rites and ceremonies to precious stones as prophylactics.  They deal not only with matters to which the word erotic is generally applied, but also with unnatural practices.  There are notes geographical, astrological, geomantic, bibliographical, ethnological, anthropomorphitical; but the pornographic, one need hardly say, hugely predominate.  Burton’s knowledge was encyclopaedic.  Like Kerimeddin[FN#480] he had drunk the Second Phial of the Queen of the Serpents.  He was more inquisitive than Vathek.  To be sure, he would sometimes ask himself what was the good of it all or what indeed, was the good of anything; and then he would relate the rebuke he once received from an indolent Spaniard whom he had found lying on his back smoking a cigarette.  “I was studying the thermometer,” said Burton, and I remarked, “’The glass is unusually high.’  ‘When I’m hot, it’s hot,’ commented the Spaniard, lazily, ‘and when I’m cold it’s cold.  What more do I want to know?’” Burton, as we have seen, had for a long time devoted himself particularly to the study of vice and to everything that was bizarre and unnatural:  eunuchs, pederasts, hermaphrodites, idiots, Augustus-the-Strongs, monstrosities.  During his travels he never drank anything but green tea, and if Le Fanu’s ideas[FN#481] in In a Glass Darkly are to be respected, this habit is partly responsible for his extraordinary bias.  He deals with subjects that are discussed in no other book.  He had seen many lands, and, like Hafiz, could say: 

   “Plunder I bore from far and near,
    From every harvest gleaned an ear;”

and blighted ears some of them were.  No other man could have written these notes; no other man, even if possessed of Burton’s knowledge, would have dared to publish them.  Practically they are a work in themselves.  That they were really necessary for the elucidation of the text we would not for a moment contend.  At times they fulfil this office, but more often than not the text is merely a peg upon which to hang a mass of curious learning such as few other men have ever dreamt of.  The voluminous note on circumcision[FN#482] is an instance in point.  There is no doubt that he obtained his idea of esoteric annotation from Gibbon, who, though he used the Latin medium, is in this respect the true father of Burton.  We will give specimens of the annotations, taken haphazard—­merely premising that the most characteristic of them—­ those at which the saints in heaven knit their brows—­necessarily in a work of this kind exclude themselves from citations: 

“Laughter.  ’Sweetness of her smile’(Abu al Husn and Tawaddud).  Arab writers often mention the smile of beauty, but rarely, after European fashion, the laugh, which they look upon as undignified.  A Moslem will say ’Don’t guffaw (kahkahah) in that way; leave giggling and grinning to monkeys and Christians.’  The Spaniards, a grave people, remark that Christ never laughed."[FN#483]

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“Swan-maidens.  ‘And became three maidens’ (Story of Janshah).[FN#484] We go much too far for an explanation of the legend; a high bred girl is so much like a swan[FN#485] in many points that the idea readily suggests itself.  And it is also aided by the old Egyptian (and Platonic) belief in pre-existence, and by the Rabbinic and Buddhistic doctrine of Ante-Natal sin, to say nothing of metempsychosis. (Josephus’ Antiq., xvii., 153).”

“The Firedrake.  ‘I am the Haunter of this place’ (Ma’aruf the Cobbler).[FN#486] Arab, Amir=one who inhabiteth.  Ruins and impure places are the favourite homes of the Jinn.”

“Sticking Coins on the Face.  ‘Sticks the gold dinar’ (Ali Nur al-Din).[FN#487] It is the custom for fast youths in Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere to stick small gold pieces, mere spangles of metal, on the brows, cheeks and lips of the singing and dancing girls, and the perspiration and mask of cosmetics make them adhere for a time, till fresh movement shakes them off.”

“Fillets hung on trees.  ’Over the grave was a tall tree, on which hung fillets of red and green’ (Otbah and Rayya).[FN#488] Lane and many others are puzzled about the use of these articles.  In many cases they are suspended to trees in order to transfer sickness from the body to the tree and to whoever shall touch it.  The Sawahili people term such articles a Keti (seat or vehicle) for the mysterious haunter of the tree, who prefers occupying it to the patient’s person.  Briefly the custom, still popular throughout Arabia, is African and Fetish.”

The value of the notes depends, of course, upon the fact that they are the result of personal observation.  In his knowledge of Eastern peoples, languages and customs Burton stands alone.  He is first and there is no second.  His defence of his notes will be found in the last volume of his Supplemental Nights.  We may quote a few sentences to show the drift of it.  He says “The England of our day would fain bring up both sexes and keep all ages in profound ignorance of sexual and intersexual relations; and the consequences of that imbecility are particularly cruel and afflicting.  How often do we hear women in Society lamenting that they have absolutely no knowledge of their own physiology. ...  Shall we ever understand that ignorance is not innocence.  What an absurdum is a veteran officer who has spent a quarter of a century in the East without knowing that all Moslem women are circumcised, and without a notion of how female circumcision is effected,” and then he goes on to ridicule what the “modern Englishwoman and her Anglo-American sister have become under the working of a mock modesty which too often acts cloak to real devergondage; and how Respectability unmakes what Nature made."[FN#489]

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Mr. Payne’s edition contains notes, but they were intended simply to elucidate the text.  Though succinct, they are sufficient for the general reader.  Here and there, however, we come upon a more elaborate note, such as that upon the tuning of the lute (Vol. viii., 179), where Mr. Payne’s musical knowledge enables him to elucidate an obscure technical point.  He also identified (giving proper chapter and verse references), collated, and where needful corrected all the Koranic citations with which the text swarms, a task which demanded great labour and an intimate knowledge of the Koran.  The appropriate general information bearing on the work he gave in a succinct and artistic form in his elaborate Terminal Essay—­a masterpiece of English—­in which he condensed the result of erudition and research such as might have furnished forth several folio volumes.

138.  The Terminal Essay.

Finally there is the Terminal Essay, in which Burton deals at great length not only with the origin and history of the Nights and matters erotic, but also with unnatural practices.  This essay, with the exception of the pornographic portions, will be found, by those who take the trouble to make comparisons, to be under large obligations to Mr. Payne’s Terminal Essay, the general lines and scheme of which it follows closely.  Even Mr. Payne’s special phrases such as “sectaries of the god Wunsch,"[FN#490] are freely used, and without acknowledgement.  The portions on sexual matters, however, are entirely original.  Burton argues that the “naive indecencies of the text of The Arabian Nights are rather gaudisserie than prurience.”  “It is,” he says, “a coarseness of language, not of idea. ...  Such throughout the East is the language of every man, woman and child, from prince to peasant.”  “But,” he continues, “there is another element in the Nights, and that is one of absolute obscenity, utterly repugnant to English readers, even the least prudish.”  Still, upon this subject he offers details, because it does not enter into his plan “to ignore any theme which is interesting to the Orientalist and the Anthropologist.  To assert that such lore is unnecessary is to state, as every traveller knows, an absurdum.”

That these notes and the Terminal Essay were written in the interests of Oriental and Anthropological students may be granted, but that they were written solely in the interests of these students no one would for a moment contend.  Burton simply revelled in all studies of the kind.  Whatever was knowledge he wanted to know; and we may add whatever wasn’t knowledge.  He was insatiable.  He was like the little boy who, seeing the ocean for the first time, cried, “I want to drink it all up.”  And Burton would have drunk it all.  He would have swallowed down not only all the waters that were under the firmament but also all the creatures, palatable and unpalatable—­especially the unpalatable—­that sported therein.

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139.  Final Summing up.

To sum up finally:  (1) Both translations are complete, they are the only complete translations in English, and the world owes a deep debt of gratitude to both Payne and Burton.

(2) According to Arabists, Payne’s Translation is the more accurate of the two.[FN#491]

(3) Burton’s translation is largely a paraphrase of Payne’s.

(4) Persons who are in love with the beauty of restraint as regards ornament, and hold to the doctrine which Flaubert so well understood and practised, and Pater so persistently preached will consider Payne’s translation incomparably the finer.

(5) Burton’s translation is for those who, caring nothing for this doctrine, revel in rococo work, a style flamboyant at all costs, and in lawless splendours; and do not mind running against expressions that are far too blunt for the majority of people.

(6) Payne’s rendering of the metrical portions is poetry; Burton’s scarcely verse.

(7) Burton’s Terminal Essay, with the exception of the pornographic sections, is largely indebted to Payne’s.

(8) The distinctive features of Burton’s work are his notes and the pornographic sections of his Terminal Essay—­the whole consisting of an amazing mass of esoteric learning, the result of a lifetime’s study.  Many of the notes have little, if any, connection with the text, and they really form an independent work.

Burton himself says:  “Mr. Payne’s admirable version appeals to the Orientalist and the Stylist, not to the many-headed; and mine to the anthropologist and student of Eastern manners and customs.”  Burton’s Arabian Nights has been well summed up as “a monument of knowledge and audacity."[FN#492]

Having finished his task Burton straightway commenced the translation of a number of other Arabic tales which he eventually published as Supplemental Nights[FN#493] in six volumes, the first two of which correspond with Mr. Payne’s three volumes entitled Tales from the Arabic.

140.  Mr. Swinburne on Burton.

Congratulations rained in on Burton from all quarters; but the letters that gave him most pleasure were those from Mr. Ernest A. Floyer and Mr. A. C. Swinburne, whose glowing sonnet: 

    “To Richard F. Burton
  On his Translation of the Arabian Nights”

is well known.  “Thanks to Burton’s hand,” exclaims the poet magnificently: 

  “All that glorious Orient glows
   Defiant of the dusk.  Our twilight land
   Trembles; but all the heaven is all one rose,
   Whence laughing love dissolves her frosts and snows.”

In his Poems and Ballads, 3rd Series, 1889, Mr. Swinburne pays yet another tribute to the genius of his friend.  Its dedication runs:—­ “Inscribed to Richard F. Burton.  In redemption of an old pledge and in recognition of a friendship which I must always count among the highest honours of my life.”

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If private persons accorded the work a hearty reception, a large section of the press greeted it with no les cordiality.  “No previous editor,” said The Standard, “had a tithe of Captain Burton’s acquaintance with the manners and customs of the Moslem East.  Apart from the language, the general tone of the Nights is exceptionally high and pure.  The devotional fervour ... often rises to the boiling point of fanaticism, and the pathos is sweet and deep, genuine and tender, simple and true. ...  In no other work is Eastern life so vividly pourtrayed.  This work, illuminated with notes so full of learning, should give the nation an opportunity for wiping away that reproach of neglect which Captain Burton seems to feel more keenly than he cares to express.”  The St. James’s Gazette called it “One of the most important translations to which a great English scholar has ever devoted himself.”

Then rose a cry “Indecency, indecency!  Filth, filth!” It was said, to use an Arabian Nights expression, that he had hauled up all the dead donkeys in the sea.  The principal attack came from The Edinburgh Review (July 1886).  “Mr. Payne’s translation,” says the writer, “is not only a fine piece of English, it is also, save where the exigencies of rhyme compelled a degree of looseness, remarkably literal. ...  Mr. Payne translates everything, and when a sentence is objectionable in Arabic, he makes it equally objectionable in English, or, rather, more so, since to the Arabs a rude freedom of speech is natural, while to us it is not.”  Then the reviewer turns to Burton, only, however, to empty out all the vials of his indignation—­quite forgetting that the work was intended only for “curious students of Moslem manners,” and not for the general public, from whom, indeed, its price alone debarred it.[FN#494] He says:  “It is bad enough in the text of the tales to find that Captain Burton is not content with plainly calling a spade a spade, but will have it styled a dirty shovel; but in his notes he goes far beyond this, and the varied collection of abominations which he brings forward with such gusto is a disgrace and a shame to printed literature. ...  The different versions, however, have each its proper destination—­Galland for the nursery, Lane for the library, Payne for the study and Burton for the sewers."[FN#495]

Burton’s spirited reply will be found in the last volume of his Supplemental Nights.  Put compendiously, his argument is:  “I had knowledge of certain subjects such as no other man possessed.  Why should it die with me?  Facts are facts, whether men are acquainted with them or not.”  “But,” he says, “I had another object while making the notes a Repertory of Eastern knowledge in its esoteric form.  Having failed to free the Anthropological Society[FN#496] from the fetters of mauvaise honte and the mock-modesty which compels travellers and ethnographical students to keep silence concerning one side of human nature

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In order to be quite ready, should prosecution ensue, Burton compiled what he called The Black Book, which consisted of specimens, of, to use his own expression, the “turpiloquium” of the Bible and Shakespeare.  It was never required for its original purpose, but he worked some portions into the Terminal Essay to The Arabian Nights.[FN#497] And here it may be said that when Burton attacks the Bible and Christianity he is inconsistent and requires to be defended against himself.  The Bible, as we have seen was one of the three books that he constantly carried about with him, and few men could have had greater admiration for its more splendid passages.  We know, too, that the sincere Christian had his respect.  But his Terminal Essay and these notes appeared at a moment when the outcry was raised against his Arabian Nights; consequently, when he fires off with “There is no more immoral work than the Old Testament,” the argument must be regarded as simply one of Tu quoque.  Instead of attacking the Bible writers as he did, he should, to have been consistent, have excused them, as he excused the characters in The Arabian Nights, with:  “Theirs is a coarseness of language, not of idea, &c., &c. ...  Such throughout the East is the language of every man, woman and child,"[FN#498] and so on.  The suggestion, for example, that Ezekiel and Hosea are demoralizing because of certain expressions is too absurd for refutation.  The bloodshed of the Bible horrified him; but he refused to believe that the “enormities” inflicted by the Jews on neighbouring nations were sanctioned by the Almighty.[FN#499] “The murderous vow of Jephthah,” David’s inhuman treatment of the Moabites, and other events of the same category goaded him to fury.

If he attacks Christianity, nevertheless, his diatribe is not against its great Founder, but against the abuses that crept into the church even in the lifetime of His earliest followers; and again, not so much against Christiantiy in general as against Roman Catholicism.  Still, even after making every allowance, his article is mainly a glorification of the crescent at the expense of the cross.

   Chapter xxx
   21st November 1885-5th June 1886
   K. C. M. G.

Bibliography: 

74.  Six Months at Abbazia. 1888. 75.  Lady Burton’s Edition of the Arabian Nights. 1888.

141.  In Morocco, 21st November 1885.

On October 28th the Burtons went down to Hatfield, where there was a large party, but Lord Salisbury devoted himself chiefly to Burton.  After they had discussed the Eastern Question, Lord Salisbury said to Burton “Now go to your room, where you will be quiet, and draw up a complete programme for Egypt.”

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Burton retired, but in two or three minutes returned with a paper which he handed to Lord Salisbury.

“You’ve soon done it,” said his Lordship, and on unfolding the paper he found the single word “Annex.”

“If I were to write for a month,” commented Burton, on noticing Lord Salisbury’s disappointment, “I could not say more.”

However, being further pressed, he elaborated his very simple programme.[FN#500] The policy he advocated was a wise and humane one; and had it been instantly adopted, untold trouble for us and much oppression of the miserable natives would have been avoided.  Since then we have practically followed his recommendations, and the present prosperous state of Egypt is the result.

On 21st November 1885, Burton left England for Tangier, which he reached on the 30th, and early in January he wrote to the Morning Post a letter on the Home Rule question, which he thought might be settled by the adoption of a Diet System similar to that which obtained in Austro-Hungary.  On January 15th he wants to know how Mr. Payne’s translation of Boccaccio[FN#501] is proceeding and continues:  “I look forward to Vol. i. with lively pleasure.  You will be glad to hear that to-day I finished my translation and to-morrow begin with the Terminal Essay, so that happen what may subscribers are safe.  Tangier is beastly but not bad for work. ...  It is a place of absolute rascality, and large fortunes are made by selling European protections—­a regular Augean stable.”

Mrs. Burton and Lisa left England at the end of January, and Burton met them at Gibraltar.

142.  K.C.M.G., 5th February 1886.

When the first volume of The Arabian Nights appeared Burton was sixty-four.  So far his life had been a long series of disappointments.  His labours as an explorer had met with no adequate recognition, the Damascus Consulship could be remembered only with bitterness, his numerous books had sold badly.  Every stone which for forty years he had rolled up proved to be only a Sisyphus stone.  He was neglected, while every year inferior men—­ not to be mentioned in the same breath with him—­were advanced to high honours.  Small wonder that such treatment should have soured him or that—­a vehement man by nature—­he should often have given way to paroxysms of anger.  Still he kept on working.  Then all of a sudden the transplendent sun sailed from its clouds and poured upon him its genial beams.  He had at last found the golden Chersonese.  His pockets, so long cobwebbed, now bulged with money.  Publishers, who had been coy, now fought for him.  All the world—­ or nearly all—­sang his praises.[FN#502] Lastly came the K.C.M.G., an honour that was conferred upon him owing in large measure to the noble persistency of the Standard newspaper, which in season and out of season “recalled to the recollection of those with whom lay the bestowal of ribbons and crosses the unworthy neglect with which he had been so long treated.”

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Lady Burton thus describes the reception of the news.  “On the 5th of February 1886, a very extraordinary thing happened[FN#503]—­ it was a telegram addressed ‘Sir Richard Burton!’ He tossed it over to me and said, ’Some fellow is playing me a practical joke, or else it is not for me.  I shall not open it, so you may as well ring the bell and give it back again.’  ‘Oh no,’ I said, ’I shall open it if you don’t.’”

It was from Lord Salisbury, conveying in the kindest terms that the queen had made him K.C.M.G. in reward for his services.  He looked very serious and quite uncomfortable, and said, “Oh, I shall not accept it."[FN#504] His wife told him, however, that it ought to be accepted because it was a certain sign that the Government intended to give him a better appointment.  So he took it as a handsel.

143.  Burton at 65.

Having accompanied Sir Richard Burton to the meridian of his fame, we may fitly pause a moment and ask what manner of a man he was at this moment.  Though sixty-five, and subject to gout, he was still strong and upright.  He had still the old duskened features, dark, piercing eyes, and penthouse brows, but the long and pendulous Chinaman moustaches had shrunk till they scarcely covered his mouth.  The “devil’s jaw” could boast only a small tuft of hair.  There were wrinkles in “the angel’s forehead.”  If meddlesome Time had also furrowed his cheeks, nevertheless the most conspicuous mark there was still the scar of that great gash received in the ding-dong fight at Berbera.  His hair, which should have been grizzled, he kept dark, Oriental fashion, with dye, and brushed forward.  Another curious habit was that of altering his appearance.  In the course of a few months he would have long hair, short hair, big moustache, small moustache, long beard, short beard, no beard.  Everyone marked his curious, feline laugh, “made between his teeth.”  The change in the world’s treatment of him, and in his circumstances, is noticeable to his countenance.  In photographs taken previous to 1886 his look betrays the man who feels that he has been treated neglectfully by an ungrateful world for which he had made enormous sacrifices.  Indeed, looking at the matter merely from a pecuniary standpoint, he must have spent at least (pounds)20,000 of his own money in his various explorations.  He is at once injured, rancorous, sullen, dangerous.  All these pictures exhibit a scowl.  In some the scowl is very pronounced, and in one he looks not unlike a professional prize-fighter.  They betray a mind jaundiced, but defiant.  A restless, fiery soul, his temper, never of the best, had grown daily more gnarled and perverse.  Woe betide the imprudent human who crossed him!  What chance had anybody against a man who had the command of all the forcible words in twenty-eight languages!  His peremptory voice everywhere ensured obedience.  To all save his dearest friends he was proud and haughty.  Then came the gold shower.  There

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Burton’s chief pleasure in his garden was feeding the birds.  They used to wait for him in flocks on an almond tree, and became “quite imperious in their manners if he did not attend to them properly.”  He loved the sparrow especially, for Catullus’ sake.

His gigantic personality impressed all who met him.  Conversation with him reduced the world from a sphere to a spherule.  It shrank steadily—­he had traversed so much of it, and he talked about out-of-the-way places so familiarly.  As of old, when friends stayed with him he never wanted to go to bed, and they, too, listening to his learned, animated and piquant talk, were quite content to outwatch the Bear.  As an anthropologist his knowledge was truly amazing.  “He was also a first-rate surgeon and had read all the regular books."[FN#505] People called him, for the vastness of his knowledge, the Encyclopaedia Britannica.  He looked to the past and the future.  To the past, for no one was more keenly interested in archaeology.  He delighted to wander on forlorn moors among what Shelley calls “dismal cirques of Druid stones.”  To the future, for he continued to study spiritualism, and to gaze into crystals.  He longed to make himself master of the “darkling secrets of Eternity."[FN#506] Both he and Lady Burton were, to use Milton’s expression, “struck with superstition as with a planet.”  She says:  “From Arab or gipsy he got. ... his mysticism, his superstition (I am superstitious enough, God knows, but he was far more so), his divination."[FN#507] Some of it, however, was derived from his friendship in early days with the painter-astrologer Varley.  If a horse stopped for no ascertained reason or if a house martin fell they wondered what it portended.  They disliked the bodeful chirp of the bat, the screech of the owl.  Even the old superstition that the first object seen in the morning—­a crow, a cripple, &c.—­determines the fortunes of the day, had his respect.  “At an hour,” he comments, “when the senses are most impressionable the aspect of unpleasant spectacles has a double effect."[FN#508] He was disturbed by the “drivel of dreams,” and if he did not himself search for the philosopher’s stone he knew many men who were so engaged (he tells us there were a hundred in London alone) and he evidently sympathised with them.

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Fear of man was a feeling unknown to him, and he despised it in others.  “Of ten men,” he used to say, quoting an Osmanli proverb, “nine are women.”  Behind his bed hung a map of Africa, and over that a motto in Arabic which meant: 

   “All things pass.”

This saying he used to observe, was always a consolation to him.

If he had been eager for money, it was only for what money would buy.  He wanted it because it would enable him to do greater work.  “I was often stopped, in my expeditions,” he told Dr. Baker, “for the want of a hundred pounds.”  He was always writing:  in the house, in the desert, in a storm, up a tree, at dinner, in bed, ill or well, fresh or tired,—­indeed, he used to say that he never was tired.  There was nothing histrionic about him, and he never posed, except “before fools and savages.”  He was frank, straightforward, and outspoken, and his face was an index of his mind.  Every thought was visible just “as through a crystal case the figured hours are seen.”  He was always Burton, never by any chance any one else.  As.  Mr. A. C. Swinburne said of him:  “He rode life’s lists as a god might ride.”  Of English Literature and especially of poetry he was an omnivorous reader.  He expressed warm admiration for Chaucer, “jolly old Walter Mapes,” Butler’s Hudibras, and Byron, especially Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, with its allusions to his beloved Tasso, Ariosto and Boccaccio.  Surely, however, he ought not to have tried to set us against that tender line of Byron’s,

   “They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died,"[FN#509]

by pointing out that the accent of Arqua is rightly on the second syllable, and by remarking:  “Why will not poets mind their quantities in lieu of stultifying their lines by childish ignorance."[FN#510] Then, too, he savagely attacked Tennyson for his “rasher of bacon line”—­“the good Haroun Alraschid,"[FN#511] Raschid being properly accented on the last syllable.  Of traveller authors, he preferred “the accurate Burckhardt.”  He read with delight Boswell’s Johnson, Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands, Renan’s Life of Jesus, Gibbon, whom he calls “our great historian"[FN#512] and the poems of Coleridge.  At Cowper he never lost an opportunity of girding, both on account of his Slave Ballads[FN#513] and the line: 

   “God made the country and man made the town."[FN#514]

“Cowper,” he comments, “had evidently never seen a region untouched by the human hand.”  It goes without saying that he loved “his great namesake,” as he calls him, “Robert Burton, of melancholy and merry, of facete and juvenile memory.”  Of contemporary work he enjoyed most the poems of D. G. Rossetti, Mr. Swinburne, Mr. John Payne and FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat, and we find him praising Mr. Edmund Gosse’s lyrics.  Of novelists Dickens was his favourite.  He called Darwin “our British Aristotle.”  Eothen[FN#515] was “that book of books.”  He never

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Unlike so many of his fellow-countrymen, he was a lover or art, and had visited all the galleries in Europe.  “If anyone,” he used to say, “thinks the English have the artistic eye, let him stand in the noblest site in Europe, Trafalgar Square, and look around.”  On another occasion he described the square as “the nation’s last phase of artistic bathos.”  The facade of the National Gallery was his continual butt.

A fine handwriting, he said, bespoke the man of audacity and determination; and his own might have been done with a pin.  Then he used to split his words as if they were Arabic; writing, for example, “con tradict” for contradict.  When young ladies teased him to put something in their albums he generally wrote: 

   “Shawir hunna wa khalif hunna,”

which may be translated: 

   “Ask their advice, ye men of wit
    And always do the opposite.”

Another of his favourite sayings against women was the Persian couplet: 

   “Agar nek budi zan u Ray-i-Zan
    Zan-ra Ma-zan nam budi, na Zan,"[FN#516]

which may be rendered: 

   “If good were in woman, of course it were meeter
    To say when we think of her, Beat not, not Beat her.”

Zan meaning “woman” and also “beat,” and ma-zan “beat not.”

There was in Burton, as in most great men, a touch of the Don Quixote, derived, no doubt, in his case, from his father.  He was generous and magnanimous, and all who knew him personally spoke of him with affection.  He was oftenest referred to as “a dear chap.”  Arbuthnot regarded him as a paladin, with no faults whatever.  When younger he had, as we have noticed, never undervalued a good dinner, but as he advanced in years, everything—­food, sleep, exercise—­had to give way before work.

144.  More Anecdotes.

For silver he had a conspicuous weakness.  “Every person,” he used to say, “has some metal that influences him, and mine is silver.”  He would have every possible article about him of that metal—­ walking-stick knobs, standishes, modern cups, ancient goblets—­ all of gleamy silver.  Had he been able to build an Aladdin’s palace it would have been all of silver.  He even regarded it as a prophylactic against certain diseases.  If his eyes got tired through reading he would lie on his back with a florin over each.  When the gout troubled him, silver coins had to be bound to his feet; and the household must have been

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Another anecdote of this period reveals Burton doing a little smuggling.  One day, we are told, Lady Burton invited the consular chaplain to accompany her to the quay.  Stopping her cab just in front of the Custom House, she induced her companion to talk to the Custom house officer while she herself went on board a vessel to see about a case of wine for her husband.  Presently a porter came with the case and some loose bottles, the later being placed by the chaplain’s orders in the bottom of the carriage.  No sooner had this been done than Lady Burton followed, and stepping into the cab bade the coachman drive off.  Up to this moment the chaplain had kept watch, smoking a cigar, at the window of the carriage.  The officer seeing a case being placed in the carriage was about to make inquiry just as the coachman whipped up the horse.  Lady Burton smilingly saluted the officer from the window and thus allayed his suspicions.  He returned her nod with a military salute, and was soon invisible.  The speed, however, was too much for the loose bottles, and the duty was paid in kind, as the wine flowed freely at the bottom of the cab, while Burton pretended to rate his wife for exposing him to the charge of smuggling and damaging the reputation of the chaplain.[FN#518]

At Trieste Burton was always popular.  The people appreciated his genius and sympathised with his grievances, and he could truly say of them in the words of his prototype, Ovid: 

   “They wish, good souls, to keep me, yet I know
    They wish me gone, because I want to go."[FN#519]

Not that he pleased everyone.  Far from it, and hereby hangs a delectable anecdote.  Some Englishman at Trieste, who took umbrage on account of the colossal muddle Burton made with his accounts and the frequency of his absence, wrote to the Foreign Office something to this effect.  “As Sir Richard Burton is nearly always away from his post and the Vice-Consul has to do the greater portion of the work, why on earth don’t you get rid of Sir Richard and let the Vice-Consul take his place?  I wonder the Foreign Office can put up with him at all.”

To which came the following graceful reply.  “Dear Sir,—­We look upon the consulship of Trieste as a gift to Sir Richard Burton for his services to the nation, and we must decline to interfere with him in any way."[FN#520]

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Chapter XXXI Burton’s Religion

145.  Burton’s Religion.

As regards religion, Burton had in early life, as we have seen, leaned to Sufism; and this faith influenced him to the end.  For a little while he coquetted with Roman Catholicism; but the journey to Mecca practically turned him into a Mohammedan.  At the time of his marriage he called himself an agnostic, and, as we have seen, he was always something of a spiritualist.  Lady Burton, charmingly mixing her metaphors,[FN#521] says “he examined every religion, and picked out its pear to practise it.”  The state of his mind in 1880 is revealed by his Kasidah.  From that time to his death he was half Mohammedan and half Agnostic.  His wife pressed him in season and out of season to become a Catholic, and, as we shall see, he did at last so far succumb to her importunities as to sign a paper in which, to use Lady Burton’s expression, “he abjured the Protestant heresy,” and put himself in line with the Catholics.[FN#522] But, as his opinions do not seem to have changed one iota, this “profession of faith” could have had little actual value.  He listened to the prayers that his wife said with him every night, and he distinctly approved of religion in other persons.  Thus, he praised the Princess of Wales[FN#523] for hearing her children say their “little prayers,"[FN#524] every night at her knee, and he is credited with the remark:  “A man without religion may be excused, but a woman without religion is unthinkable.”  Priests, ceremonials, services, all seemed to him only tinkling cymbals.  He was always girding at “scapularies and other sacred things.”  He delighted to compare Romanism unfavourably with Mohammedanism.  Thus he would say sarcastically, “Moslems, like Catholics, pray for the dead; but as they do the praying themselves instead of paying a priest to do it, their prayers, of course, are of no avail.”  He also objected to the Church of Rome because, to use his own words, “it has added a fourth person to the Trinity."[FN#525] He said he found “four great Protestant Sommites:  (1) St. Paul, who protested against St. Peter’s Hebraism; (2) Mohammed, who protested against the perversions of Christianity; (3) Luthur, who protested against the rule of the Pope; (4) Sir Richard Burton, who protested against the whole business.”  The way in which he used to ridicule the Papal religion in his wife’s presence often jarred on his friends, who thought that however much he might disapprove of it, he ought, for her sake, to have restrained his tongue.  But he did not spare other religious bodies either.  He wanted to know, for instance, what the clergy of the Church of England did for the (pounds)3,500,000 a year “wasted on them,” while he summed up the Nonconformists in the scornful phrase:  “Exeter Hall!” He considered anthropomorphism to explain satisfactorily not only the swan maiden, and the other feathered ladies[FN#526]

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146.  Burton as a Writer.

On Burton as a writer we have already made some comments.  One goes to his books with confidence; in the assurance that whatever ever he saw is put down.  Nothing is hidden and there is no attempt to Munchausenize.  His besetting literary sin, as we said, was prolixity.  Any one of his books reduced to one-quarter, or better, one-sixth the size, and served up artistically would have made a delightful work.  As it is, they are vast storehouses filled with undusted objects of interest and value, mingled with heaps of mere lumber.  His books laid one on the top of another would make a pile eight feet high!

He is at his best when describing some daring adventure, when making a confession of his own weaknesses, or in depicting scenery.  Lieutenant Cameron’s tribute to his descriptive powers must not be passed by.  “Going over ground which he explored,” says Cameron, “with his Lake Regions of Central Africa in my hand, I was astonished at the acuteness of his perception and the correctness of his descriptions.”  Stanley spoke of his books in a similar strain.

Burton owed his success as a narrator in great measure to his habit of transferring impressions to paper the moment he received them—­ a habit to which he was led by reading a passage of Dr. Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands.  “An observer deeply impressed by any remarkable spectacle,” says Johnson, “does not suppose that the traces will soon vanish from his mind, and having commonly

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Of Burton’s carelessness and inaccuracies, we have already spoken.  We mentioned that to his dying day he was under a wrong impression as to his birthplace, and that his account of his early years and his family bristles with errors.  Scores of his letters have passed through my hands and nearly all are imperfectly dated.  Fortunately, however, the envelopes have in almost every case been preserved; so the postmark, when legible, has filled the lacuna.  At every turn in his life we are reminded of his inexactitude—­especially in autobiographical details.  And yet, too, like most inexact men, he was a rare stickler for certain niceties.  He would have defended the “h” in Meccah with his sword; and the man who spelt “Gypsy” with an “i” for ever forfeited his respect.

Burton’s works—­just as was his own mind—­are vast, encyclopaedic, romantic and yet prosaic, unsystematic; but that is only repeating the line of the old Greek poet: 

   “Like our own selves our work must ever be."[FN#533]

   Chapter xxxii
   5th June 1886-15th April 1888
   Burton and Social Questions:  Anecdotes

147.  The Population Question.

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In social questions Burton took a keen interest.  Indeed he was in many respects a man far in advance of his age.  In denouncing various evils he betrays the earnestness of a Carlyle, and when propounding plans for the abolition of the Slave Trade in “that Devil’s Walk and Purlieu,” East Africa, Saul becomes one of the prophets.  That he was no saint we should have known if he himself had not told us; but he had, as he believed, his special work to do in the world and he did it with all his might.  Though a whirlwind of a man, he had, as we have seen, the tenderest of hearts, he thought with sorrow of the sufferings of the poor, and he often said to his wife:  “When I get my pension we’ll spend the rest of our lives in helping the submerged tenth.”  Although sympathising warmly with the efforts of General Booth and other men who were trying to grapple with social evils, he could see, nevertheless, that they touched only the fringe of the difficulty.  He was, broadly speaking, what is now known as a Neo-Mathusian, that is to say, he held that no man had a right to bring into the world a larger number of children than he could support with comfort, that the poor ought to be advised to limit their families, and that persons suffering from certain terrible diseases ought not to be allowed to marry, or at any rate to have children.

Himself a man of splendid physique, Burton wanted to see every man in England physically healthy and strong.  He considered it abominable that infant monstrosities or children born blind should be allowed to live, and held that showmen and others who exhibit monstrosities should be promptly jailed.  “Indeed,” he says, “it is a question if civilisation may not be compelled to revive the law of Lycurgus, which forbade a child, male or female, to be brought up without the approbation of public officers appointed ad hoc.  One of the curses of the 19th century is the increased skill of the midwife and the physician, who are now able to preserve worthless lives and to bring up semi-abortions whose only effect upon the breed is increased degeneracy."[FN#534] He thought with Edward FitzGerald and many another sympathiser with the poor, that it is the height of folly for a labouring man living in a cottage with only two small bedrooms and earning twelve shillings a week to burden himself with a family of from ten to a dozen.  Three or four children he considered enough for anybody.  At the same time he perceived that the Neo-Malthusian system might be abused—­that is to say, rich persons who could well afford to bring up respectable-sized families might be tempted to restrict the number to one or two.[FN#535] Consequently, in the Terminal Essay to the Arabian Nights, we find him recommending the study of an Arabic work, Kitab al Bah not only to the anthropologist but also to the million.  He says, “The conscientious study would be useful to humanity by teaching the use and unteaching the abuse of the Malthusian system,[FN#536] whereby the family is duly limited to the necessities of society.”  At the present time—­with the diminishing birth-rate and when the subject is discussed freely in every upper and middle class home in England—­these ideas cause no wonderment; but in those days they were novel.

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148.  New Projects.

We left the Burtons, it will be remembered, at Gibraltar.  After a short stay there, they crossed over to Morocco in a cattle tug.  Neither of them liked Tangiers, still, if the Consulate had been conferred upon Sir Richard, it would have given them great happiness.  They were, however, doomed to disappointment.  Lord Salisbury’s short-lived administration of 1886 had been succeeded by a Liberal Government with Lord Rosebery as Premier; and Tangiers was given to Mr. (afterwards Sir) W. Kirby Green.[FN#537] The Burtons were back in Trieste at the end of March.

The success of The Arabian Nights, which was owing entirely to its anthropological and pornographic notes, was for Sir Richard Burton both good and bad.  It was good because it removed for the remainder of his life all pecuniary anxieties; it was bad because it led him to devote himself exclusively to subjects which certainly should not occupy exclusively the attention of any man.  Henceforth every translation was to be annotated from a certain point of view.[FN#538] One can but regret this perversity, for the old Roman and other authors have unpleasantnesses enough without accentuating them.  Thus in reading some sweet poem of Catullus, spoilt by perhaps a single objectionable line, we do not want our attention drawn particularly to the blemish.  Unfortunately, Sir Richard now made this kind of work his speciality, and it would be idle—­ or rather it would be untrue—­to deny that he now chose certain books for translation, not on account of their beautiful poetry and noble thoughts, but because they lent themselves to pungent annotation.  Indeed, his passion for this sort of literature had become a monomania.[FN#539] He insisted, however, and he certainly believed, that he was advancing the interests of science; nor could any argument turn him.  We wish we could say that it was chiefly for their beauties that he now set himself to translate Catullus, Ausonius,[FN#540] and Apuleius.  He did appreciate their beauties; the poets and the classic prose writers were to him as the milk of paradise; and some of his annotations would have illuminated the best passages, but the majority of them were avowedly to be consecrate to the worst.  Having in The Arabian Nights given the world the fruits of his enquiries in Eastern lands, and said his say, he might with advantage have let the subject rest.  He had certainly nothing new to tell us about the manners and customs of the Romans.  Then again, for the translating of so delicate, so musical and so gracious a poet as Catullus he was absolutely and entirely unqualified.  However, to Catullus he now turned.  Sirmio and Rome succeeded to Baghdad and Damascus; jinni and ghoul fled before hoofed satyrs and old Silenus shaking his green stick of lilies.  As we shall see, however, he did not begin the translation in earnest till January 1890.[FN#541]

149.  Mr. A. G. Ellis and Professor Blumhardt. 5th June 1886-5th April 1887.

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On June 5th the Burtons and their “Magpie Trunk” again left Trieste and travelled via Innsbruck, Zurich, Bale and Boulogne to England.  After a short stay at Folkestone with Lady Stisted and her daughter, they went on to London, whence Burton memorialized the vice-chancellor and the curators of the Bodleian Library for the loan of the Wortley Montagu manuscripts of the Arabian Nights.  Not a private loan, but a temporary transference to the India Office under the charge of Dr. R. Rost.  On November 1st came a refusal, and Burton, at great inconvenience to himself, had to go to Oxford.  “The Bodleian,” he says, “is the model of what a reading library should not be, and the contrast of its treasures with their mean and miserable surroundings is a scandal.”  He did not know in which he suffered most, the Bodleian, the Radcliffe or the Rotunda.  Finally, however, the difficulty was got over by having the required pages photographed.

He now wrote to the Government and begged to be allowed, at the age of sixty-six, to retire on full pension.  His great services to the country and to learning were set down, but though fifty persons of importance in the political and literary world supported the application, it was refused.  It is, however, only just to the Government to say that henceforward Burton was allowed “leave” whenever he wanted it.  An easier post than that at Trieste it would have been impossible to imagine, still, he was in a measure tied, and the Government missed an opportunity of doing a graceful act to one of its most distinguished servants, and to one of the most brilliant of Englishmen.

Then followed a holiday in Scotland, where the Burtons were the guests of Mr. (now Sir) Alexander Baird of Urie.  Back in London, they lunched at different times with F. F. Arbuthnot, G. A. Sala, A. C. Swinburne, and “dear old Larkin”—­now 85—­in whose house at Alexandria, Burton had stayed just before his Mecca journey.  It was apparently during this visit that Burton gave to his cousin St. George Burton a seal showing on one side the Burton crest, on another the Burton Arms, and on the third a man’s face and a hand with thumb to the nose and fingers spread out.  “Use it,” said Burton, “when you write to a d-----d snob.”  And he conveyed the belief that it would be used pretty often.

On 16th September 1886, writing to Mr. Kirby[FN#542] from “United Service Club,” Pall Mall, Burton says, “We here have been enjoying splendid weather, and a really fine day in England (I have seen only two since May) is worth a week anywhere else. ...  You will find your volumes[FN#543] sent to you regularly.  No. 1 caused big sensation.  A wonderful leader about it in Standard (Mrs. Gamp, of all people!) followed by abuse in Pall Mall.  I have come upon a young woman friend greedily reading it in open drawing-room, and when I warned another against it, she answered:  ’Very well, Billy [her husband] has a copy, and I shall read it at once.’”

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Later Burton’s curiosity was aroused by the news that Mr. A. G. Ellis, of the British Museum, had shown Mr. Kirby an edition of Alaeddin in Malay.[FN#544] “Let me know,” he says, “when you go to see Mr. Ellis.  I especially want to accompany you, and must get that Malay version of Alaeddin.  Lord Stanley of Alderley could translate it.”

It was about this time that Burton decided to make a new and lavishly annotated translation of The Scented Garden.  To the Kama Shastra edition of 1886 we have already referred, and we shall deal fully with the whole subject in a later chapter.

On October 6th the Burtons heard Mr. Heron Allen lecture on palmistry at Hampstead.  For some weeks Burton was prostrated again by his old enemy, the gout, but Lord Stanley of Alderley, F. F. Arbuthnot, and other friends went and sat with him, so the illness had its compensations.  A visit to Mr. John Payne, made, as usual, at tea time, is next recorded, and there was to have been another visit, but Burton, who was anxious to get to Folkestone to see his sister, had to omit it.

On January 10th 1887, he writes to Mr. Payne as follows: 

“That last cup of tea came to grief, I ran away from London abruptly, feeling a hippishness gradually creep over my brain; longing to see a sight of the sun and so forth.  We shall cross over next Thursday (if the weather prove decent) and rush up to Paris, where I shall have some few days’ work in the Bibliotheque Nationale.  Thence to Cannes, the Riviera, &c.  At the end of my 5th Vol. (Supplemental) I shall walk in to Edin[burgh] Review.[FN#545] ...  I hope you like Vol. x. and its notices of your work.  I always speak of it in the same terms, always with the same appreciation and admiration.”

On January 13th 1887, the Burtons reached Paris, where Sir Richard had the pleasure of meeting Herr Zotenberg, discoverer of the Arabic originals of Alaeddin and Zayn al Asnam; and thence they proceeded to Cannes, where the state of Burton’s health gave his wife great uneasiness.  She says, “I saw him dripping his pen anywhere except into the ink.  When he tried to say something he did not find his words.”  An awful fit of “epileptiform convulsions,” the result of suppressed gout, followed, and the local doctors who were called in came to the conclusion that Burton could not recover.  They thought it better, however, that their opinion should be conveyed to him by a perfect stranger, so they deputed Dr. Grenfell Baker, a young man who was then staying at Cannes, to perform the painful duty.

Dr. Baker entered the sick room and broke the news to Burton as best he could.

“Then you suppose I am going to die?” said Burton.

“The medical men who have been holding a consultation are of that opinion.”

Shrugging his shoulders, Burton said, “Ah, well!—­sit down,” and then he told Dr. Baker a story out of The Arabian Nights.  Dr. Baker remained a fortnight, and then Sir Richard, who decided to have a travelling medical attendant, sent to England for Dr. Ralph Leslie, who a little later joined him at Trieste.

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To his circle of friends Burton now added Mr. A. G. Ellis, already referred to, Professor James F. Blumhardt, of the British Museum, and Professor Cecil Bendall, of University College, London.[FN#546] His first communication with Mr. Ellis seems to have been a post-card dated Trieste, 8th May 1887.  He says “The Perfumed Garden is not yet out nor will it be for six months.  My old version is to be had at —–­’s, Coventry Street, Haymarket.  The Supplemental Nights you can procure from the agent, -----, Farleigh Road, Stoke Newington.”

As we have seen, Burton’s first and second supplemental volumes of the Nights correspond with Mr. Payne’s three volumes of Tales from the Arabic.  He also wished to include the eight famous Galland Tales:—­“Zayn Al-Asnam,” “Alaeddin,” “Khudadad and his Brothers,” “The Kaliph’s Night Adventure,” “Ali Baba,” “Ali Khwajah and the Merchant of Baghdad,” “Prince Ahmad and the Fairy Peri-Banu,” and “The Two Sisters who Envied their Cadette;” but the only Oriental text he could find was a Hindustani version of Galland’s tales “Orientalised and divested of their inordinate Gallicism.”  As Burton was at this time prostrated by illness, Professor Blumhardt kindly undertook “to English the Hindustani for him.  While the volume was going forward, however, M. Zotenberg, of Paris, discovered a Ms. copy of The Nights containing the Arabic originals of ‘Zayn Al-Asnam’ and ‘Alaeddin,’ and Burton, thanks to the courtesy of Zotenberg, was able to make use of it.”

150.  Dr. Leslie and Dr. Baker:  Anecdotes.  April 1887.

From June 19th to 22nd there were rejoicings at Trieste on account of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee.  At the banquet, which took place at the Jager, Sir Richard occupied the chair, and he and the Rev. C. F. Thorndike, the chaplain, made speeches.  During the summer Sir Richard’s health continued to cause grave anxiety, but he was well enough by July 15th to set out for the usual summer holiday.  Accompanied by Lady Burton, Dr. Leslie and Lisa, he first visited Adelsburg, and then Sauerbrunn, where he got relief by drinking daily a cup of very hot water.  In a letter to Mr. Ellis written from Sauerbrunn, 14th September 1887, Burton refers to Professor Blumhardt’s contribution to his Supplementary Nights, and finishes:  “Salute for me Mr. Bendall and tell him how happy I shall be to see him at Trieste if he pass through that very foul part.”

After the Burtons’ return to Trieste (at the end of September) Dr. Leslie obtained another post, and Dr. Baker was invited to take his place.

Dr. Baker consented to do so, only on the condition that Sir Richard would not dispute his medical orders.  This, Dr. Baker explained to me, was a very necessary stipulation, for Sir Richard now looked upon the time spent over his meals as so many half-hours wasted.  He never ate his food properly, but used to raven it up like an animal in order to get back quickly to his books.  So a treaty was made, and Dr. Baker remained a member of the household the rest of Burton’s life.

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To this period belong the following unpublished anecdotes.  Of Burton’s interest in Ancient Etruria and especially in the archaeological discoveries at Bologna[FN#547] we have already spoken.  Once when he and Dr. Baker were visiting Bologna they took a long walk outside the town and quite lost their bearings.  Noticing a working man seated on the roadside, Burton asked him in French the way back.  In reply the man “only made a stupid noise in his throat.”  Burton next tried him with the Bolognese[FN#548] dialect, upon which the man blurted out, “Je don’t know savez.”  Sir Richard then spoke in English, and the man finding there was no further necessity for Parisian, explained in his own tongue that he was an English sailor who had somehow got stranded in that part.

To Burton’s delight in shocking people we have already alluded.  Nor did age sober him.  He would tell to open-mouthed hearers stories of his hair-breadth escapes, and how some native plotted against his life.  “Another moment,” he would say, “and I should have been a dead man, but I was too quick for my gentleman.  I turned round with my sword and sliced him up like a lemon.”  Dr. Baker, who had heard many tales about the Austrians and duelling, was exercised in his mind as to what ought to be done if he were “called out.”  “Now,” said Burton, “this is one of the things in life worthy of remembrance.  Never attack a man, but if he attacks you, kill him.”  Sometimes the crusted tale about the Arab murder would come up again.  “Is it true, Sir Richard,” a young curate once innocently inquired, “that you shot a man near Mecca?” “Sir,” replied Burton, tossing his head haughtily, “I’m proud to say that I have committed every sin in the Decalogue.”

In after years Dr. Baker was often asked for reminiscences of Burton.  “Can you remember any of his sayings?” enquired one interlocutor.  “Yes,” replied Dr. Baker.  “He once said, ’Priests, politicians and publishers will find the gate of Heaven extremely narrow.’” “I’m sorry for that,” followed the interlocutor, “for I’ve just been elected M.P. for the ——­ Division of Yorkshire.”

For Mrs. Lynn Linton, the novelist, whom he described as a “sweet, womanly woman,” Burton had a sincere regard, but he used to say that though she was an angel in the drawing-room, she was a raging, blood-thirsty tigress on the platform.  One day, while Sir Richard, Mrs. Linton and Dr. Baker were chatting together, a lady to whom Mrs. Linton was a stranger joined the group and said “Sir Richard, why don’t you leave off writing those heavy books on Bologna and other archaeological subjects, and do something lighter?  Couldn’t you write some trash—­novels, I mean?” Sir Richard look sideways at Mrs. Linton, and kept his countenance as well as he could.  On another occasion when Sir Richard, Lady Burton, Dr. Baker and an aged Cambridge Professor were chatting together, Burton unconsciously glided into Latin—­in which he asked the professor a question.  The old man began a laboured reply in the same language—­and then, stopping suddenly, said, “If you don’t mind, Sir Richard, we’ll continue the conversation in English.”

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Believing that Burton was overworking himself, Dr. Baker recommended him to order “a little rubbish in the shape of novels,” from London, and so rest his brain for an hour just before bedtime.  Burton demurred, but the novels were ultimately sent for, they duly arrived, and Burton went through a course of “chou-chou,” as he called it.  After a while, however, he gave up what he had never taken to kindly, and henceforward he nightly “rested his brain,” by reading books in the modern Greek dialects.

151.  Three Months at Abbazia. 1st Dec. 1887-5th March 1888.

On the 1st of December 1887, in order to avoid the fearful boras of Trieste, and to shelter in the supposed mild climate of “the Austrian Riviera,” Burton, accompanied, as always, by his wife, Dr. Baker, and Lisa, went to stay at Abbazia.  The subscriptions for his Supplemental Nights were now pouring in, and they put him in great jollity.  Jingling his money in his pockets, he said to Dr. Baker, “I’ve always been poor, and now we’ll enjoy ourselves.”  Henceforth he spent his money like a dissipated school-boy at a statute fair.  Special trains, the best rooms in the best hotels, anything, everything he fancied—­and yet all the while he worked at his books “like a navvy.”  Abbazia was a disappointment.  Snow fell for two months on end, and all that time they were mewed up in their hotel.  Burton found the society agreeable, however, and he read German with the Catholic priest.  Most of his time was spent in finishing the Supplemental Nights, and Lady Burton was busy preparing for the press and expurgated edition of her husband’s work which, it was hoped, would take its place on the drawing-room table.  Mr. Justin Huntly McCarthy, son of the novelist, gave her considerably assistance, and the work appeared in 1888.  Mr. Kirby’s notes were to have been appended to Lady Burton’s edition of the Nights as well as to Sir Richard’s, but ultimately the idea was abandoned.  “My wife and I agreed,” writes Burton, “that the whole of your notes would be far too learned for her public,"[FN#549] so only a portion was used.  Lady Burton’s work consisted of six volumes corresponding with Burton’s first ten, from which 215 pages were omitted.

Owing to the stagnation of Abbazia, and the martyrdom which he endured from the gout, Burton was very glad to get back to Trieste, which was reached on March 5th.  When his pain was acute he could not refrain from groaning, and at such times, Lady Burton, kneeling by his bedside, use to say “Offer it up, offer it up”—­meaning that prayer alone would bring relief.

To Mr. Payne, 14th March 1888, Burton writes, “I have been moving since yours of March 5th reached me, and unable to answer you. ...  Delighted to hear that in spite of cramp,[FN#550] Vo.  V.[FN#551] is finished, and shall look forward to the secret[FN#552] being revealed.  You are quite right never to say a word about it.  There is nothing I abhor so much as a man intrusting me with a secret.”

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On March 19th, Sir Richard finished his last volume of the Supplemental Nights, and in May he was visited at Trieste by his old friend, F. F. Arbuthnot.

On the 15th of April (1888) occurred the death of Matthew Arnold, who had for some years enjoyed a Civil List pension of (pounds)250 a year; and the event had scarcely been announced before Lady Burton, without consulting her husband,[FN#553] telegraphed to the Government to “give Burton Arnold’s pension.”  This step, characteristic as it was indiscreet, naturally did not effect its purpose.

Chapter xxxiii 19th March 1888-15th October 1888 The Last Visit to England “The Supplemental Nights”

Bibliography: 

76. 1st Vol.  Supplemental Nights, 1st December 1886. 6th Vol. 1st August 1888.

152.  Meeting with Mr. Swinburne and others, 18th July 1888-15th October 1888.

Burton’s health continuing weak, he again endeavoured to induce the Government to release him from his duties.  Instead of that, they gave him what he calls “an informal sick certificate,” and from the following letter to his sister (26th May 1888) we may judge that it was not given gracefully.

“Yesterday,” he says, “I got my leave accompanied by some disagreeable expressions which will be of use to me when retiring.  We leave Trieste in June and travel leisurely over the St. Gothard and expect to be in England about the 10th. ...  The meteorologists declare that the heat is going to equal the cold.  Folky[FN#554] folk are like their neighbours, poor devils who howl for excitement—­want of anything better to do.  The dreadful dull life of England accounts for many British madnesses.  Do you think of the Crystal Palace this year?  We have an old friend, Aird, formerly the Consul here, who has taken up his abode somewhere in Sydenham.  I don’t want cold water bandages, the prospect of leave makes me sleep quite well.  With love and kisses to both,[FN#555] Your affectionate brother, R. F. B.”

Burton and his wife reached Folkestone on July 18th.  Next day they went on to London, where they had the pleasure of meeting again Commander Cameron, Mr. Henry Irving, M. Du Chaillu, Mr. A. C. Swinburne, and Mr. Theodore Watts[-Dunton].  What Burton was to Mr. Swinburne is summed up in the phrase—­“the light that on earth was he."[FN#556]

153.  H. W. Ashbee.

His principal place of resort, however, during this visit was the house of Mr. H. W. Ashbee, 54, Bedford Square, where he met not only Mr. Ashbee, but also Dr. Steingass, Mr. Arbuthnot, Sir Charles Wingfield and Mr. John Payne, all of whom were interested, in different ways, in matters Oriental.  Ashbee, who wrote under the name of Pisanus Fraxi (Bee of an ash), was a curiously matter-of-fact, stoutish, stolid, affable man, with a Maupassantian taste for low life, its humours and laxities.  He was familiar with it everywhere, from the sordid purlieus of Whitechapel

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154.  A Bacon Causerie.

The serenity of these gatherings, whether at Mr. Ashbee’s or at Mr. Arbuthnot’s, was never ruffled unless somebody happened to introduce politics or the Shakespere-Bacon Question.  Arbuthnot the Liberal was content to strike out with his back against the wall, so to speak, when attacked by the Conservative Burton, Ashbee and Payne; but Arbuthnot the Baconian frequently took the offensive.  He would go out of his way in order to drag in this subject.  He could not leave it out of his Life of Balzac even.  These controversies generally resolved themselves into a duel between Mr. Arbuthnot and Mr. Payne—­Burton, who loved a fight between any persons and for any reasons, looking on approvingly.  Mr. Ashbee and Dr. Steingass were inclined to side with Mr. Payne.  On one of these occasions Mr. Payne said impatiently that he could not understand “any sensible man taking the slightest interest in the sickening controversy,” and then he pointed out one by one the elements that in his opinion made the Baconian theory ridiculous.

“But,” followed Mr. Arbuthnot, “Shakespere had no education, and no person without an extremely good education could have written the play erroneously published under the name of William Shakespere.”

“If,” retorted Mr. Payne, “Shakespere had been without education, do you think the fact would have escaped the notice of such bitter and unscrupulous enemies as Nash, Greene, and others, who hated him for his towering superiority?”

Upon Mr. Arbuthnot admitting that he studies Shakespere merely from a “curio” point of view, and that for the poetry he cared nothing, Mr. Payne replied by quoting Schopenhauer:  “A man who is insensible to poetry, be he who he may, must be a barbarian.”

Burton, who regarded himself as a poet, approved of the sentiment; Dr. Steingass, who wrote execrable verses in English which neither rhymed nor scanned, though they were intended to do both, was no less satisfied; Mr. Ashbee, who looked at matters solely from a bibliographical point of view, dissented; and Mr. Arbuthnot sweetly changed the conversation to Balzac; with the result, however, of another tempest, for on this subject Burton, who summed up Balzac as “a great repertory of morbid anatomy,” could never see eye to eye with Balzac’s most enthusiastic English disciple.

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At Oxford, Burton met Professor Sayce, and did more literary work “under great difficulties” at the Bodleian, though he escaped all the evil effects; but against its wretched accommodation for students and its antediluvian methods he never ceased to inveigh.  Early in August he was at Ramsgate and had the amusement of mixing with a Bank Holiday crowd.  But he was amazingly restless, and wanted to be continually in motion.  No place pleased him more than a day or two.

155.  The Gypsy, August 1888.

Among the deal tables in Burton’s rooms at Trieste was one devoted to a work on the Gypsies, a race concerning whom, as we have seen, he had long been curious.  He had first proposed to himself to write on the subject when he was in Sind, where he had made investigations concerning the affinity between the Jats and the Gypsies; and now with abundance of leisure he set about the work in earnest.  But it was never finished, and the fragment which was published in 1898[FN#557] contains, Mr. Watts-Dunton[FN#558] assures me, many errors.  Burton’s idea was to describe the Gypsy in all lands.  Perhaps he is happiest in his account of the Spanish Gypsy woman.  “Their women,” he says, “sell poultry and old rags. ... and find in interpreting dreams, in philter selling, and in fortune-telling the most lucrative industries.  They sing, and play various instruments, accompanying the music with the most voluptuous and licentious dances and attitudes; but woe to the man who would obtain from these Bayaderes any boon beyond their provocative exhibition.  From the Indus to Gibraltar, the contrast of obscenity in language and in songs with corporal chastity has ever been a distinctive characteristic. ...  Gypsy marriages, like those of the high caste Hindus, entail ruinous expense; the revelry lasts three days, the ‘Gentile’ is freely invited, and the profusion of meats and drinks often makes the bridgegroom a debtor for life.  The Spanish Gypsies are remarkable for beauty in early youth; for magnificent eyes and hair, regular features, light and well-knit figures.  Their locks, like the Hindus, are lamp black, and without a sign of wave:[FN#559] and they preserve the characteristic eye.  I have often remarked its fixity and brilliance, which flashes like phosphoric light, the gleam which in some eyes denotes madness.  I have also noticed the ‘far-off look’ which seems to gaze at something beyond you and the alternation from the fixed stare to a glazing or filming of the pupil."[FN#560]

This peculiarity of the gypsy’s eyes, Burton had himself, for which reason alone, some writers, as we have already observed, have claimed him for the tribe.  But he shared other peculiarities with them.  For example, there was his extraordinary restlessness—­ a restlessness which prevented him from every settling long in any one place.  Then, like the gypsies, he had an intense horror of a corpse—­even of pictures of corpses.  Though brave to temerity he avoided churchyards,

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On 13th August 1888, Burton writes to Mr. A. G. Ellis from “The Langham,” Portland Place, and sends him the Preface to the last Supplemental Volume with the request that he would run his eye over it.  “You live,” he continues, “in a magazine of learning where references are so easy, and to us outsiders so difficult.  Excuse this practical proof that need has no law.”  On September 26th he sent a short note to Mr. Payne.  “Arbuthnot,” he said, “will be in town on Tuesday October 2nd.  What do you say to meeting him at the Langham 7 p.m. table d’hote hour? ....  It will be our last chance of meeting.”

Sir Richard and Lady Burton, Dr. Baker, Arbuthnot, and Payne dined together on the evening appointed; and on October 15th Burton left London, to which he was never to return alive.

156.  The Supplemental Nights. 1st December 1886-1st August 1888.

The translation of the Supplemental Nights, that is to say, the collection of more or less interesting Arabian tales not included in the Nights proper, was now completed.  The first volume had appeared in 1886, the last was to be issued in 1888.  Although containing old favourites such as “Alaeddin,” “Zayn Al Asnam,” “Ali Baba,” and the “Story of the Three Princes,” the supplemental volumes are altogether inferior to the Nights proper.  Then, too, many of the tales are mere variants of the versions in the more important work.  Burton’s first two supplemental volumes are from the Breslau text, and, as we said, cover

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Burton’s Third Volume [FN#563] consists of the tales in Galland’s edition which are not in the Nights proper.  All of them, with the exception of “Alaeddin” and “Zayn Al Asnam,” are reproductions, as we said, from a Hindustani translation of the French text—­the Arabic originals of the tales being still (1905) undiscovered.

His Fourth and Fifth Volumes [FN#564] are from the Wortley-Montague Text.  His sixth and last [FN#565] contains the Chavis and Cazotte Text—­the manuscript of which is reputed to have been brought to France by a Syrian priest named Shawish (Frenchlifted into Chavis), who collaborated with a French litterateur named Cazotte.  The work appeared in 1788.  “These tales,” says Mr. Payne, “seem to me very inferior, in style, conduct, and diction, to those of ’the old Arabian Nights,’ whilst I think ‘Chavis and Cazotte’s continuation’ utterly unworthy of republication whether in part or ’in its entirety.’  It is evident that Shawish (who was an adventurer of more than doubtful character) must in many instances have utterly misled his French coadjutor (who had no knowledge of Arabic), as to the meaning of the original.”—­Preface to Alaeddin, &c., xv., note.  Mr. Payne adds, “I confess I think the tales, even in the original Arabic, little better than rubbish, and am indeed inclined to believe they must have been, at least in part, manufactured by Shawish."[FN#566]

157.  Comparison.

Burton’s supplementary volume containing “Alaeddin” and “Zayn Al Asnam,” appeared, as we have seen, in 1887; and in 1889 Mr. Payne issued a Translation from Zotenberg’s text.  When dealing with the Nights proper we gave the reader an opportunity of comparing Burton’s translation with Payne’s which preceded it.  We now purpose placing in juxtaposition two passages from their supplemental volumes, and we cannot do better than choose from either “Alaeddin” or “Zayn Al Asnam,” as in the case of both the order is reversed, Burton’s translation having preceded Payne’s.  Let us decide on the latter.  Any passage would do, but we will take that describing the finding of the ninth image: 

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         Payne Burton

Then he set out and             Then he set out nor
gave not over journeying        ceased travelling till such
till he came to Bassora,        time as he reached Bassorah,
and entering his palace,        when he entered
saluted his mother and          his palace; and after
told her all that had           saluting his mother, he
befallen him; whereupon         apprized her of all things
quoth she to him “Arise,        that had befallen him. 
O my son, so thou mayst         She replied, “Arise, O
see this ninth image, for       my son, that we may look
that I am exceedingly           upon the Ninth statue,
rejoiced at its presence with   for I rejoice with extreme
us.   So they both               joy at its being in our
descended into the underground  possession.”   So both
hall wherein were               descended into the pavilion
the eight images, and           where stood the eight
found there a great marvel;     images of precious gems,
to wit, instead of the          and here they found a
ninth image, they beheld        mighty marvel.   ’Twas
the young lady resembling       this:  In lieu of seeing the
the sun in her loveliness.       Ninth Statue upon the
The prince knew her             golden throne, they found
when he saw her, and            seated thereon the young
she said to him, “Marvel        lady whose beauty suggested
not to find me here in          the sun.   Zayn
place of that which thou        al-Asnam knew her at
soughtest; me thinketh          first sight and presently
thou wilt not repent thee       she addressed him saying,
an thou take me in the          “Marvel not for that
stead of the ninth image.”      here thou findest me
“No, by Allah, Oh my            in place of that wherefor
beloved!” replied Zein          thou askedst; and I
ul Asnam.   “For that thou       deem that thou shalt not
art the end of my seeking,      regret nor repent when
and I would not exchange        thou acceptest me instead
thee for all the jewels in      of that thou soughtest.”
the world.   Didst thou          Said he, “No, verily,
but know the grief which        thou art the end of every
possessed me for thy            wish of me nor would
separation, thou whom I         I exchange thee for all the
took from thy parents           gems of the universe.
by fraud and brought thee       Would thou knew what
to the King of the Jinn!”       was the sorrow which
surcharged me on account of
our separation and of my
reflecting that I took thee
from thy parents by fraud
and I bore thee as a present
to the King of the Jinn.

Indeed I had well nigh determined to forfeit all my profit of the Ninth Statue and to bear thee away to Bassorah as my own bride, when my comrade and councillor dissuaded me from so doing lest I bring about my death."[FN#567]

Scarce had the prince           Nor had Zayn al Asnam
made an end of his speech       ended his words ere they
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when they heard a noise         heard the roar of thunderings
of thunder rending the          that would rend a
mountains and shaking           mount and shake the
the earth, and fear gat         earth, whereat the Queen
hold upon the queen, the        Mother was seized with
mother of Zein ul Asnam,        mighty fear and affright. 
Yea and sore trembling;         But presently appeared
but, after a little, the        the King of the Jinn,
King of the Jinn                who said to her, “O my
appeared and said to her,       lady, fear not!   Tis I, the
“O Lady, fear not, it is        protector of thy son, whom
I who am thy son’s              I fondly affect for the
protector and I love him        affection borne to me by
with an exceeding love          his sire.   I also am he who
for the love his father         manifested myself to him
bore me.   Nay, I am he          in his sleep, and my object
who appeared to him in          therein was to make trial
his sleep and in this I         of his valiance and to learn
purposed to try his             an he could do violence to
fortitude, whether or not       his passions for the sake
he might avail to subdue        of his promise, or whether
himself for loyalty’s           the beauty of this lady
sake.”                          would so tempt and allure
him that he could not
keep his promise to me
with due regard.”

Here, again, Payne is concise and literal, Burton diffuse and gratuitously paraphrastic as appears above and everywhere, and the other remarks which we made when dealing with the Nights proper also apply, except, of course, that in this instance Burton had not Payne’s version to refer to, with the consequence that in these two tales ("Alaeddin” and “Zayn Al Asnam”) there are over five hundred places in which the two translators differ as to the rendering, although they worked from the same Ms. copy, that of M. Houdas, lent by him to Burton and afterwards to Payne.  Arabists tell us that in practically every instance Payne is right, Burton wrong.  The truth is that, while in colloquial Arabic Burton was perfect, in literary Arabic he was far to seek,[FN#568] whereas Mr. Payne had studied the subject carefully and deeply for years.  But Burton’s weakness here is not surprising.  A Frenchman might speak excellent English, and yet find some difficulty in translating into French a play of Shakespeare or an essay of Macaulay.  Burton made the mistake of studying too many things.  He attempted too much.

But in the Supplemental Nights, as in the Nights proper, his great feature is the annotating.  Again we have a work within a work, and the value of these notes is recognised on all sides.  Yet they are even less necessary for elucidating the text than those in the Nights proper.  Take for example the tremendous note in Vol. i. on the word “eunuchs.”  As everybody knows what a eunuch is, the text is perfectly clear.  Yet what a mass of curious knowledge he presents to us!  If it be urged that the bulk of Burton’s notes, both to the Nights proper and the Supplemental Nights, are out of place in a work of this kind—­all we can say is “There they are.”  We must remember, too, that he had absolutely no other means of publishing them.

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Chapter XXXIV “The Scented Garden”

Bibliography: 

77.  The Scented Garden.  “My new Version,” translated 1888-1890.

158.  Nafzawi.

As we learn from a letter to Mr. Payne, 8th November 1888, Burton began his “new version” of The Scented Garden, or as it is sometimes called, The Perfumed Garden, in real earnest early in that month, and Lady Burton tells us that it “occupied him seriously only six actual months,"[FN#569] that is, the last six months of his life.

The Scented Garden, or to give its full title, “The Scented Garden for the Soul’s Recreation” was the work of a learned Arab Shaykh and physician named Nafzawi, who was born at Nafzawa, a white,[FN#570] palm-encinctured town which gleamed by the shore of the Sebkha—­that is, salt marsh—­Shot al Jarid; and spent most of his life in Tunis.  The date of his birth is unrecorded, but The Scented Garden seems to have been written in 1431.[FN#571] Nafzawi, like Vatsyayana, from whose book he sometimes borrows, is credited with having been an intensely religious man, but his book abounds in erotic tales seasoned to such an extent as would have put to the blush even the not very sensitive “Tincker of Turvey."[FN#572] It abounds in medical learning,[FN#573] is avowedly an aphrodisiac, and was intended, if one may borrow an expression from Juvenal, “to revive the fire in nuptial cinders."[FN#574] Moslems read it, just as they took ambergrised coffee, and for the same reason.  Nafzawi, indeed, is the very antithesis of the English Sir Thomas Browne, with his well-known passage in the Religio Medici,[FN#575] commencing “I could be content that we might procreate like trees.”  Holding that no natural action of a man is more degrading than another, Nafzawi could never think of amatory pleasures without ejaculating “Glory be to God,” or some such phrase.  But “Moslems,” says Burton, “who do their best to countermine the ascetic idea inherent in Christianity,[FN#576] are not ashamed of the sensual appetite, but rather the reverse."[FN#577] Nafzawi, indeed, praises Allah for amorous pleasures just as other writers have exhausted the vocabulary in gratitude for a loaded fruit tree or an iridescent sunset.  His mind runs on the houris promised to the faithful after death, and he says that these pleasures are “part of the delights of paradise awarded by Allah as a foretaste of what is waiting for us, namely delights a thousand times superior, and above which only the sight of the Benevolent is to be placed.”  We who anticipate walls of jasper and streets of gold ought not, perhaps, to be too severe on the Tunisian.  It must also be added that Nafzawi had a pretty gift of humour.[FN#578]

159.  Origin of The Scented Garden.

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The origin of the book was as follows:  A small work, The Torch of the World,[FN#579] dealing with “The Mysteries of Generation,” and written by Nafzawi, had come into the hands of the Vizier of the Sultan of Tunis.  Thereupon the Vizier sent for the author and received him “most honourably.”  Seeing Nafzawi blush, he said, “You need not be ashamed; everything you have said is true; no one need be shocked at your words.  Moreover, you are not the first who has treated of this matter; and I swear by Allah that it is necessary to know this book.  It is only the shameless boor and the enemy of all science who will not read it, or who will make fun of it.  But there are sundry things which you will have to treat about yet.”  And he mentioned other subjects, chiefly of a medical character.

“Oh, my master,” replied Nafzawi, “all you have said here is not difficult to do, if it is the pleasure of Allah on high.”

“I forthwith,” comments Nafzawi, “went to work with the composition of this book, imploring the assistance of Allah (May He pour His blessing on the prophet)[FN#580] and may happiness and pity be with him.”

The most complete text of The Scented Garden is that now preserved in the library at Algiers, and there are also manuscripts in the libraries of Paris, Gotha and Copenhagen.  In 1850 a manuscript which seems to have corresponded practically with The Torch of the World was translated into French by a Staff Officer of the French Army in Algeria, and an edition of thirty-five copies was printed by an autographic process in Algiers in the year 1876.[FN#581] In 1886 an edition of 220 copies was issued by the French publisher Isidore Liseux, and the same year appeared a translation of Liseux’s work bearing the imprint of the Kama Shastra Society.  This is the book that Burton calls “my old version,"[FN#582] which, of course, proves that he had some share in it.[FN#583]

There is no doubt that the average Englishman[FN#584] would be both amazed and shocked on first opening even the Kama Shastra Society’s version; unless, perchance, he had been prepared by reading Burton’s Arabian Nights or the Fiftieth Chapter of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall with the Latin Notes, though even these give but a feeble idea of the fleshiness of The Scented Garden.  Indeed, as Ammianus Marcellinus, referring to the Arabs, says:  “Incredible est quo ardore apud eos in venerem uterque solvitur sexus.”

160.  Contents of The Scented Garden.

Nafzawi divided his book into twenty one-chapters “in order to make it easier reading for the taleb (student).”  It consists of descriptions of “Praiseworthy Men” and “Praiseworthy Women” from a Nafzawin point of view, interpretations of dreams, medical recipes for impotence, &c., lists of aphrodisiacs, and stories confirmatory of Ammianus’s remark.  Among the longer tales are those of Moseilma, “Bahloul[FN#585] and Hamdonna,” and “The Negro Al Dhurgham"[FN#586]—­all furiously

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In the tale entitled “Djoaidi and Fadehat el Djemal"[FN#591] appears that hoary poet, philosopher and reprobate, Abu Nowas[FN#592] of The Arabian Nights.  Like the Nights, The Scented Garden has a cycle of tales illustrative of the cunning and malice of women.  But all the women in those days and countries were not bad, just as all were not plain.  Plumpness seems to have been the principal attraction of sex, and the Kama Shastra version goes so far as to assure us that a woman who had a double chin,[FN#593] was irresistible.  If so, there were probably no words in the language good enough to describe a woman with three chins.  According, however, to the author of the recent Paris translation[FN#594] this particular rendering is a mistake.  He considers that the idea Nafzawi wished to convey was the tower-like form of the neck,[FN#595] but in any circumstances the denizens of The Scented Garden placed plumpness in the forefront of the virtues; which proves, of course, the negroid origin of at any rate some of the stories,[FN#596] for a true Arab values slenderness.  Over and over again in the Nights we are told of some seductive lady that she was straight and tall with a shape like the letter Alif or a willow wand.  The perfect woman, according to Mafzawi, perfumes herself with scents, uses ithmid[FN#597] (antimony) for her toilet, and cleans her teeth with bark of the walnut tree.  There are chapters on sterility, long lists of the kind to be found in Rabelais, and solemn warnings against excess, chiefly on account of its resulting in weakness of sight, with other “observations useful for men and women.”

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While chapters i. to xx. concern almost entirely the relations between the opposite sexes, Chapter xxi.[FN#598] which constitutes more than one-half of the book, treats largely of those unspeakable vices which as St. Paul and St. Jude show, and the pages of Petronius and other ancient authors prove, were so common in the pagan world, and which, as Burton and other travellers inform us, are still practised in the East.

“The style and language in which the Perfumed Garden is written are,” says the writer of the Foreword to the Paris edition of 1904, “of the simplest and most unpretentious kind, rising occasionally to a very high degree of eloquence, resembling, to some extent, that of the famous Thousand Nights and a Night; but, while the latter abounds in Egyptian colloquialisms, the former frequently causes the translator to pause owing to the recurrence of North African idioms and the occasional use of Berber or Kabyle words, not generally known.”  In short, the literary merits or the work are trifling.

Although Nafzawi wrote his extended Scented Garden for scholars only, he seems afterwards to have become alarmed, and to have gone in fear lest it might get into the hands of the ignorant and do harm.  So he ended it with: 

   “O you who read this, and think of the author
    And do not exempt him from blame,
    If you spare your good opinion of him, do not
    At least fail to say ‘Lord forgive us and him.’"[FN#599]

161.  Sir Richard Burton’s Translation.

It was in the autumn of 1888, as we have seen, that Sir Richard Burton, who considered the book to take, from a linguistic and ethnological point of view, a very high rank, conceived the idea of making a new translation, to be furnished with annotations of a most elaborate nature.  He called it at first, with his fondness for rhyming jingle, The Scented Garden-Site for Heart’s Delight, and finally decided upon The Scented Garden—­Man’s Heart to Gladden.  Sir Richard’s Translation was from the Algiers manuscript, a copy of which was made for him at a cost of eighty pounds, by M. O. Houdas, Professor at the Ecole des Langues Orientales Vivantes.  This was of the first twenty chapters.  Whether a copy of the 21st Chapter ever reached Sir Richard we have not been able to ascertain.  On 31st March 1890, he wrote in his Journal:  “Began, or rather resumed, Scented Garden,"[FN#600] and thenceforward he worked at it sedulously.  Now and again the Berber or Kabyle words with which the manuscript was sprinkled gave him trouble, and from time to time he submitted his difficulties to M. Fagnan, “the erudite compiler of the Catalogue of Arabic books and MSS. in the Bibliotheque Nationale d’Alger” and other Algerian correspondents.  Lady Burton describes her husband’s work as “a translation from Arabic manuscripts very difficult to get in the original” with “copious notes and explanations” of Burton’s own—­the result, indeed,

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Mr. Payne protested again and again against the whole scheme, and on the score that Burton had given the world quite enough of this kind of information in the Nights.  But the latter could not see with his friend.  He insisted on the enormous anthropological and historical importance of these notes—­and that the world would be the loser were he to withold them; in fact, his whole mind was absorbed in the subject.

   Chapter xxxv
   15th October 1888 to 21st July 1890
   Working at the “Catullus” and “The Scented Garden”

Bibliography: 

78.  Catullus translated 1890, printed 1894. 79.  The Golden Ass and other works left unfinished.

162.  Switzerland 15th October 1888.

From London the Burtons proceeded first to Boulogne where Sir Richard visited the haunts of his early manhood and called upon his old fencing master, Constantin, who was hale and well, though over eighty; and then to Geneva, where he delivered before the local Geographical Society what proved to be his last public lecture.  From Geneva he wrote several letters to Mr. Payne.  In that of November 21st, his mind running on the Bandello, he says, “You would greatly oblige me by jotting down when you have a moment to spare the names of reverends and ecclesiastics who have written and printed facetious books.[FN#603] In English I have Swift and Sterne; in French Rabelais, but I want one more, also two in Italian and two in German.”

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In reply, Mr. Payne sent him some twenty or thirty names in half a dozen literatures.  From Geneva the Burtons made their way first to Vevey, where Sir Richard revelled in its associations with Ludlow, the English regicide, and Rousseau; and then to Lausanne for the sake of his great hero, Edward Gibbon; and on 12th March (1889) they were back again at Trieste.

Writing to Mr. A. G. Ellis on May 8th, Burton enquires respecting some engravings in the Museum brought over from Italy by the Duke of Cumberland, and he finished humorously with, “What news of Mr. Blumhardt?  And your fellow-sufferer from leather emanations, the Sanskiritist?"[FN#604]—­an allusion to the Oriental Room, under which, in those days, was the book-binding department.

163.  Mr. Letchford, August and September 1889.

In July, for Burton found it impossible to content himself long in any place, the Burtons made another journey, this time through Western Austria, being accompanied as usual by Dr. Baker and Lisa.  After their return, on September 13th, it was necessary for Burton to undergo two operations; and Lady Burton, racked with anxiety and fearing the worst, seemed, when all was successfully over, to have recovered from a horrible nightmare.  Then followed acquaintance with the gifted young artist, Mr. Albert Letchford, and his beautiful and winning sister, Daisy.  Mr. Letchford became the Burtons’ Court Painter, as it were—­frequently working in their house—­and both he and his sister admired—­nay, worshipped Sir Richard down to the ground.  Even as a child, Albert Letchford was remarkable for his thoughtful look, and his strong sense of beauty.  In church one day he begged his mother to let him run home and get his little sword, as there was such an ugly woman there and he wished to cut her head off.  As a youth he drew and studied from morning to night, living in a world of his own creation—­a world of books and pictures.  His letters were those of a poet and an artist.  Beauty of the mind, however, attracted him even more than beauty of the body.  Thus, he fell in love with his cousin Augusta, “though she had the toothache, and her head tied up in a handkerchief.”  At seventeen he studied art in Venice.  From Venice he went to Florence, where he met the Burtons and got from them introductions to all the best people, including the Countess Orford and Mlle. de la Ramee (Ouida).  We then find him in Paris, in London, in Egypt, where he acquired that knowledge of the East which helped him later when he illustrated The Arabian Nights.  Finally he settled at Trieste.  “That wonderful man, Sir Richard Burton, with the eyes of a tiger and the voice of an angel,” writes Miss Letchford, “loved my brother, for he found something more in him than in others—­he found a mind that could understand his own, and he often said that Mr. Albert Letchford was about the only man that he was pleased to see—­the only one who never jarred on his nerves.  To him did Sir Richard, proud and arrogant to most people, open his soul, and from his lips would come forth such enchanting conversation—­such a wonderful flow of words and so marvellous in sound that often I have closed my eyes and listened to him, fancying, thus—­that some wonderful learned angel had descended from Heaven unto Earth.”

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Among the friends of the Burtons was the Princess of Thurn and Taxis, who with her husband became one of Letchford’s best patrons.  The princess won Sir Richard’s heart by her intelligence, her beauty and grace; and “his conversation was never so brilliant, and his witticisms were never so sparkling as in her presence.”  One day another princess—­a foolish, vain woman—­after making a number of insipid remarks, shook hands with Sir Richard, lifting high her arm and elbow in the fashion which was then just coming into vogue, but which has now lost acceptance.[FN#605] Sir Richard, while giving her his right hand, quietly with his left put down her arm and elbow.  The princess turned scarlet, but she never after practised “the high shake.”  Miss Letchford sums up Lady Burton as “a most beautiful and charming woman, with many lovely ideas, but many foolish ones.”  Unfortunately she was guided entirely by her confessor, a man of small mental calibre.  One of the confessor’s ideas was to convert Sir Richard by dropping small charms into his pockets.  Sir Richard got quite used to finding these little images about him; but they invariably made their way out of the window into the garden.  One of Lady Burton’s little failings was the fear lest anybody should come to the house in order to steal, and the servants had special commands to admit none who did not look “a perfect gentleman or lady,” with the result that one day they slammed the door in the face of the Archduke Louis Salvator, simply because he did not happen to have a card with him.  After that Lady Burton’s orders were less strict.

Mr. Letchford’s paintings include views of the neighbourhood, a portrait of Burton which was exhibited in the Stanley Gallery, and a full-length portrait of Burton fencing,[FN#606] but he is best known by his series of illustrations to The Arabian Nights.

164.  To Dr. Tuckey.

On April 24th we find Burton writing to thank Dr. Charles Tuckey for the gift of a copy of his Psycho-Therapeutics.  “An old pupil of Dr. Elliotson,"[FN#607] he says, “I am always interested in these researches, and welcome the appearance of any addition to our scanty knowledge of an illimitable field.  Suggestion (what a miserable name!) perfectly explains the stigmata of St. Francis and others without preter-natural assistance, and the curative effect of a dose of Koran (a verset written upon a scrap of paper, and given like a pill of p.q.).  I would note that the “Indian Prince"[FN#608] was no less a personage than Ranjit Singh, Rajah of the Punjab, that the burial of the Fakir was attested by his German surgeon-general, and that a friend and I followed Colonel Boileau’s example in personally investigating the subject of vivi-sepulture.  In p. 10:  The throngs of pilgrims to Mecca never think of curing anything but their ‘souls,’ and the pilgrimage is often fatal to their bodies.  I cannot but take exception to such terms as ‘psychology,’ holding

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165.  To Mr. Kirby 15th May 1889.

In a letter to Mr. W. F. Kirby, 15th May 1889, Burton, after referring to a translation of the Kalevala,[FN#611] upon which Mr. Kirby was then engaged, says:  “We shall not be in England this year.  I cannot remove myself so far from my books, and beside, I want a summer in Austria, probably at Closen or some place north of Vienna.  We had a long ten months’ holiday and must make up for time lost.  The Scented Garden is very hard work, and I have to pay big sums to copyists and so forth.  Yet it will, I think, repay the reader.  What a national disgrace is this revival of Puritanism with its rampant cant and ignoble hypocrisy!  I would most willingly fight about it, but I don’t see my way.”  Writing again on 6th November (1889) he says, “I like very much your idea of visiting Sweden in the interests of the Kalevala.  Perhaps you might date the Preface from that part of the world.  The Natural History of The Nights would be highly interesting.  Have you heard that Pickering and Chatto, of Haymarket, London, are going to print 100 (photogravure) illustrations of the Nights?  When last in London I called on them.  On Friday week, 15th November, we start upon our winter’s trip.  From here to Brindisi, await the P. and O., then to Malta (ten days), Tunis (month), Tripoli and Algiers, where I hope at last to see the very last of The Scented Garden.”

166.  Tunis and Algiers, November 1889 to March 1890.

At the time stated, Burton, Lady Burton, Dr. Baker and Lisa took steamer for Brindisi, where they visited Virgil’s house, and then made for Malta.  On December 20th they were at Tunis, and Sir Richard ransacked the bazaar and button-holed people generally in order to get manuscripts of The Scented Garden, but without success.  Nobody had ever heard of it.[FN#612] At Carthage he recalled that rosy morning when Dido in “flowered cymar with golden fringe” rode out with Aeneas to the hung, read Salammbo, and explored the ruins; but Lady Burton had no eyes for anything but convents, monks and nuns, though she certainly once took Lisa to a harem, where they learnt how to make Tunisian dishes.  The biblical appearance of everything reminded Burton of his Damascus days. 

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From Algiers he wrote to Mr. Payne (28th January 1890).  After recording his failure to obtain manuscripts of The Scented Garden at Tunis he says:  “To-day I am to see M. Macarthy, of the Algiers Bibliotheque Musee; but I am by no means sanguine.  This place is a Paris after Tunis and Constantine, but like all France (and Frenchmen) in modern days dirty as ditchwater.  The old Gaulois is dead and damned, politics and money getting have made the gay nation stupid as Paddies.  In fact the world is growing vile and bete, et vivent les Chinois![FN#613] A new Magyar irruption would do Europe much good.”

In a letter to Mr. A. G. Ellis, dated 12th February, 1890, he refers to the anecdote of the famous Taymor al Wahsh, who, according to a Damascus tradition, played polo with the heads of his conquered enemies.  “Every guide book,” he continues, “mentions my Lord Iron’s nickname ‘The Wild Beast,’ and possibly the legend was invented by way of comment.  He drove away all the Persian swordsmiths, and from his day no ‘Damascus blade’ has been made at Damascus.  I have found these French colonies perfectly casual and futile.  The men take months before making up their minds to do anything.  A most profligate waste of time!  My prime object in visiting Tunis was to obtain information concerning The Scented Garden, to consult MSS. &c.  After a month’s hard work I came upon only a single copy, the merest compendium, lacking also Chapter 21, my chief Righah (the absurd French R’irha) for a week or ten days [for the sake of the baths] then return to Algiers, steam for Marseilles and return to Trieste via the Riviera and Northern Italy—­a route of which I am dead sick.  Let us hope that the untanned leather bindings have spared you their malaria.  You will not see me in England next summer, but after March 1891, I shall be free as air to come and go.”  At Hammam R’irha, Burton began in earnest his translation of Catullus, and for weeks he was immersed in it night and day.  The whole of the journey was a pleasurable one, or would have been, but for the cruelty with which animals were treated; and Burton, who detested cruelty in all forms, and had an intense horror of inflicting pain, vented his indignation over and over again against the merciless camel and donkey drivers.

As the party were steaming from Algiers to Toulon, a curious incident occurred.  Burton and Dr. Baker having sauntered into the smoke room seated themselves at a table opposite to an old man and a young man who looked like, and turned out to be, an Oxford don.  Presently the don, addressing the old man, told him with dramatic gesticulations the venerable story about Burton killing two Arabs near Mecca, and he held out his hand as if he were firing a pistol.

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Burton, who had long known that the tale was in circulation but had never before heard anyone relate it as fact, here interrupted with, “Excuse me, but what was the name of that traveller?”

“Captain Burton,” replied the don, “now Sir Richard Burton.”

“I am Burton,” followed Sir Richard, “and I remember distinctly every incident of that journey, but I can assure you I do not remember shooting anybody.”

At that, the don jumped up, thanked him for giving the story denial, and expressed his happiness at being able to make the great traveller’s acquaintance.[FN#614]

On March 26th (1890) a week after his return to Trieste, Burton wrote to Mr. A. G. Ellis:  “It is very kind and friendly of you to write about The Scented Garden MSS.  I really rejoice to hear that you and Mr. Bendall have escaped alive from those ground floor abominations stinking of half rotten leather.  I know the two Paris MSS. [of The Scented Garden] (one with its blundering name):  they are the merest abridgments, both compressing Chapter 21 of 500 pages (Arabic) into a few lines.  I must now write to Gotha and Copenhagen in order to find out if the copies there be in full.  Can you tell me what number of pages they contain?  Salam to Mr. Bendall, and best wishes to you both.  You will see me in England some time after March 19th 1891.”

At no work that he had ever written did Sir Richard labour so sedulously as at The Scented Garden.  Although in feeble health and sadly emaciated, he rose daily at half-past five, and slaved at it almost incessantly till dusk, begrudging himself the hour or two required for meals and exercise.  The only luxury he allowed himself while upon his laborious task was “a sip of whiskey,” but so engrossed was he with his work that he forgot even that.  It was no uncommon remark for Dr. Baker to make:  “Sir Richard, you haven’t drunk your whiskey.”  One day, as he and Dr. Baker were walking in the garden he stopped suddenly and said:  “I have put my whole life and all my life blood into that Scented Garden, and it is my great hope that I shall live by it.  It is the crown of my life.”

“Has it ever occurred to you, Sir Richard,” enquired Dr. Baker, “that in the event of your death the manuscript might be burnt?  Indeed, I think it not improbable.”

The old man turned to the speaker his worn face and sunken eyes and said with excitement, “Do you think so?  Then I will at once write to Arbuthnot and tell him that in the event of my death the manuscript is to be his.”

He wrote the letter the same day.  Arbuthnot duly received it, and several letters seem to have passed between them on the subject; but we do not know whether Lady Burton was aware of the arrangement.  All we can say is that Arbuthnot believed she knew all about it.

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It seems to have been at this time that Lady Burton prevailed upon her husband to range himself nominally among the Catholics.  “About a year before her death,” Mr. T. Douglas Murray writes to me, “Lady Burton showed me a paper of considerable length, all of it in Sir R. Burton’s writing and signed by himself, in which he declared that he had lived and would die a Catholic, adhering to all the rites and usages of the Church."[FN#615] Curiously enough, while bringing forward all the evidence she could adduce to prove that Burton was a Christian, Lady Burton makes no reference in her book to this paper.  Perhaps it was because Sir Richard continued to gibe at the practices of her church just as much after his “conversion” as before.  However, it gratified her to know that if he was not a good Catholic, he was, at any rate, the next best thing—­a Catholic.  An intimate friend of Burton to whom I mentioned this circumstance observed to me, “I am sure, that Burton never in any way accepted the idea of a personal God; but, rather than be perpetually importuned and worried, he may have pretended to give in to Lady Burton, as one does to a troublesome child.”

Lady Burton tells us that during the last few years of his life he used to lock the outer doors of his house twice a day and then engage in private prayer; on the other hand, friends of Burton who knew him and were with him almost to the last have received this statement with skepticism.

Lady Burton’s happiness was further increased by the present of a very beautiful oil painting representing the Virgin Mary, done by Miss Emily Baker, Dr. Baker’s sister.  It was generally known by the Burtons, from the colour of its drapery, as “the Blue Madonna."[FN#616]

167.  Visit of Arbuthnot, Last Letter to Mr. Payne, May 1890.

On May 11th Mr. Arbuthnot paid a second visit to Trieste, and the pleasure that the vent gave to Sir Richard is reflected in a letter to Mr. Payne written the same month.  “At last!” he says, “Arbuthnot has brought the volume [Payne’s Alaeddin] and the Ms. [Zotenberg’s Ms. of Zayn al-Asnam which Burton had lent to Mr. Payne].”  He then goes on to say that he has kicked up “an awful shindy with the Athenaeum Club,” about something, just as if he had not been kicking up awful shindies with all sorts of people ever since his schoolboy days at Tours.  “I am delighted,” he goes on, “with the volume [Payne’s Alaeddin] and especially with the ascription,[FN#617] so grateful in its friendly tone.  I have read every word with the utmost pleasure.  We might agree to differ about Cazotte.[FN#618] I think you are applying to 1750 the moralities of 1890.  Arbuthnot’s visit has quite set me up, like a whiff of London in the Pontine marshes of Trieste.  He goes to-day, d——­ the luck! but leaves us hopes of meeting during the summer in Switzerland or thereabouts.  He is looking the picture of health and we shall return him to town undamaged.  Best of good fortune to Bandello."[FN#619]

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Burton and Arbuthnot had spent many a delightful hour sitting out on Burton’s verandah, smoking, listening to the nightingales, and enjoying sea and landscape.  It must not be supposed that erotic literature was the only subject upon which they conversed, though as hierarchs of the Kama Shastra Society they naturally bestowed upon that and curious learning considerable attention.  Religion was also discussed, and Arbuthnot’s opinions may be gathered from the following citation from his unpublished Life of Balzac which is now in my hands.  “The great coming struggle of the 20th century,” he says, “will be the war between Religion and Science.  It will be a war to the death, for if Science wins it will do away with the personal God of the Jews, the Christians and the Muhammedans, the childish doctrine or dogma of future rewards and punishments, and everything connected with the supernatural.  It will be shown that Law reigns supreme.  The police representing Law and Order will be of more importance than the clergy.  Even now we might do away with the latter, everybody becoming his own priest—­a great economy.  None of us knows what happens to us after death, all we can do is to hope for the best, and follow the three great Laws, viz., 1.  Instruct your mind. 2.  Preserve your health. 3.  Moderate your passions and desires.”  Thus spake the Founder of the Kama Shastra Society.

On May 15th, Burton told Mr. Kirby all about the Algiers trip.  “Plenty to see and do,” he says, “but I was not lucky about my Ms. The Scented Garden.  No one seemed to know anything about it.  Never advise any one to winter in Algiers.  All the settled English are selling their villas.  French mismanagement beats ours holler, and their hate and jealousy of us makes their colonies penal settlements to us.  We stay here [at Trieste] till the weather drives us away—­about the end of June.”  The letter concludes with kindly enquiries respecting Professor Bendall,[FN#620] Mr. A. G. Ellis and Dr. Kirby (Mr. Kirby’s son).

Chapter XXXVI “The Priapeia”

Bibliography: 

80.  Priapeia. 1890.

168.  The Priapeia.

The share that Sir Richard Burton had in the translation of the Priapeia has been the subject of dispute; but we are able to state positively that he was the author of the metrical portion.  Indeed, he made no secret of it among his intimates.  For some reason or other, however, he did not wish to have his name publicly associated with it; so the following passage was inserted in the preface:  “The name of Sir Richard Burton has been inadvertently connected with the present work.  It is, however, only fair to state that under the circumstances he distinctly disclaims having taken any part in the issue.”  We have no other ground for the assumption, but this passage seems to point to a quarrel of some kind.  It certainly does not alter the fact that every page

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The Priapeia, in its Latin form Priapeia sine Diversoreun poetarum in Priapum Lusus, is a work that has long been well known to scholars, and in the 16th and 17th centuries editions were common.  The translation under consideration is entitled “Priapeia, or the Sportive Epigrams of divers Poets on Priapus:  the Latin text now for the first time Englished in verse and prose (the metrical version by Outidanos) [Good for Nothing], with Introduction, Notes, Explanatory and Illustrative and Excursus, by Neaniskos [a young man],” whose name, we need hardly say, is no secret.

The image of Priapus, the god of fruitfulness, was generally a grotesque figure made of rough wood painted red and carrying a gardener’s knife and a cornucopia.  Placed in a garden it was supposed to be a protection against thieves.  “In the earliest ages,” observes the writer of the preface, “the worship of the generative energy was of the most simple and artless character ... the homage of man to the Supreme Power, the Author of Life. ...  Afterwards the cult became depraved.  Religion became a pretext for libertinism.”  Poets wrote facetious and salacious epigrams and affixed them to the statues of the god—­even the greatest writers lending their pens to the “sport”—­and eventually some nonentity collected these scattered verses and made them into a book.  Everybody knows Catullus’s contribution, which begins: 

   “A log of oak, some rustic’s blade
    Hewed out my shape; grotesquely made
    I guard this spot by night and day,
    Scare every vagrant knave away,
    And save from theft and rapine’s hand
    My humble master’s cot and land.”

The chief complaint to be made against the writers of these verses is that they so rarely strayed from their subject.  The address entitled “A Word to the Reader,” is padded with citations from Burton’s Camoens and his Supplemental Nights, including the well-known passage concerning his estimate of a translator’s office,[FN#622] and the whole work bears evidence of extreme haste.  We are assured that it will be “most interesting to anthropologists and humanists.”

169.  Catullus and the Last Trip, July—­September 1890.

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Burton, as we have seen, had commenced his translation of Catullus, 18th February 1890, at Hammam R’irha.  He finished the first rough copy of Trieste March 31st, and commenced a second copy on May 23rd.  “He would bring his Latin Catullus,” says Lady Burton, “down to the table d’hote with him, and he used to come and sit by me, but the moment he got a person on the other side who did not interest him he used to whisper to me ‘Talk, that I may do my Catullus.’” “Sir Richard,” says Mr. Leonard Smithers, upon whom had devolved the task of making the prose translation that was to accompany it, “laid great stress on the necessity of thoroughly annotating each translation from an erotic and especially pederastic point of view."[FN#623]

On July 1st the Burtons, accompanied as usual by Dr. Baker, Lisa and the magpie trunk, set out on what proved to be their last trip—­ a journey through the Tyrol and Switzerland.  They arrived at Zurich just in time for “the great Schiefs-Statte fete, the most important national function of Switzerland,” which was held that year at the neighbouring town of Frauenfeld.  Seven thousand pounds had been set aside for prizes for shooing, and forty thousand persons were present.  Next day there was a grand Consular dinner, to which Burton was invited.  Dr. Baker having expressed regret that he also had not been included, Burton remarked, “Oh, I’ll manage it.  Write a letter for me and decline.”  So a letter was written to the effect that as Sir Richard Burton made it a rule not to go anywhere without his medical attendant he was obliged to decline the honour, &c., &c.  Presently, as had been expected, came another invitation with Dr. Baker’s name added.  Consequently they went, and a very grand dinner it proved—­lasting, by Lady Burton’s computation, six hours on end.  At St. Mortiz-Kulm, and often after, they met Canon Wenham of Mortlake, with whom both Sir Richard and Lady Burton had long been on terms of friendship.

170.  At Maloja, July 1890.

At Davos they found John Addington Symonds, and at Maloja Mr. Francis R. S. Wyllie, Mr. and Mrs. (Sir and Lady) Squire Bancroft, the Rev. Dr. Welldon and Mr. and Mrs. (Sir and Lady) Henry Stanley.  Mrs. Stanley, apparently at Lady Burton’s suggestion, took a sheet of paper and wrote on it, “I promise to put aside all other literature, and, as soon as I return to Trieste, to write my autobiography.”  Then doubling the paper she asked for Burton’s autograph; and her request having been complied with, she showed him what he had put his hand to.  The rest of the company signed as witnesses.

For some days, though it was early autumn, the party was snow-bound, and Burton relieved the wearisomeness of the occasion by relating some of his adventures.  Mrs. Bancroft told him many amusing stories as they walked together in a sheltered covered way.

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“He had interested me so greatly,” writes Lady Bancroft to me,[FN#624] “that I felt myself in his debt, and so tried by that means to make it up to him.  He laughed heartily at them.  Indeed, I never knew anyone who more enjoyed my stories.  One morning early I played a practical joke upon him.  He politely raised his hat and said:  ’I will forgive you, dear friend, on one condition.  Play the same trick on Stanley when he comes down and I will watch.’  I agreed, and fortunately brought down my second bird.  Both victims forgave me.  One day I posed the Burtons, the Stanleys, Captain Mounteney Jephson (Stanley’s friend and companion), with Salah (Stanley’s black servant) for a photograph, which was taken by a young clergyman.  I have the delightful result in my possession.  I remember on a splendid morning, when the weather had mended and the sun was dancing over a neighbouring glacier, my husband saying to the black boy, ’Salah, isn’t this a lovely day—­don’t you like to see the beautiful sun again?’ ‘No, sir,’ was the answer, ’ice makes him cold.’  Both Stanley and Sir Richard interested me more than I can say; they were wonderful personalities, and those were, indeed, happy days.”

Almost every day during the trip Sir Richard brought the Catullus to the table d’hote, and on 21st July he had finished his second copy.  He then wrote in the margin, “Work incomplete, but as soon as I receive Mr. Smithers’ prose, I will fill in the words I now leave in stars, in order that we may not use the same expressions, and I will then make a third, fair and complete copy."[FN#625] During this trip, too, Burton very kindly revised the first half of Dr. Baker’s work The Model Republic.  The second half was revised by John Addington Symonds after Burton’s death.

Burton was back again at Trieste on 7th September.  He and the magpie trunk were never again to make a journey together.  The melancholy fate of the Catullus, which Burton had put aside in order that he might finish The Scented Garden, will be recorded in a later chapter.

171.  The Golden Ass.

Another work that Burton left unfinished was a translation of The Golden Ass of Apuleius—­a work known to Englishmen chiefly by Bohn’s edition,[FN#626] and the renderings of the episode of Cupid and Psyche by Adlington and Walter Pater (in Marius the Epicurean).  The manuscript of Burton’s translation is now in the possession of M. Charles Carrington, the Paris publisher, who is arranging for its completion by a competent hand.  The portions due to Burton will, of course, be indicated.  These consist of “The Author’s Intent,” about two pages small 4to; nearly all the story of Cupid and Psyche; and fragments of Books 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10 and 11.[FN#627]

On 30th September Burton wrote again to Mr. W. F. Kirby.  “Your collaboration,” he says, “has been most valuable to me.  Your knowledge of Folk Lore is not only ample, it is collected and controlled by the habit of accuracy which Science gives and which I find in all your writings upon imaginative subjects. ...  Let me hope that new scenes will not cause you to forget old subjects, and remind you of the infinite important fact that I am a subscriber to the Kalevala.”

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Chapter XXXVII Death of Sir Richard Burton

173.  Death. 20th October 1890.

As we have seen, Burton had for some months shown signs of bodily decay; and he now daily grew weaker.  His eyes, though still fierce and penetrating, were sunk into hollow cavities.  His body was emaciated, his hands were thin to transparency, his voice was sometimes inarticulate, and he could hardly walk without support.  Still, there seemed no immediate cause for anxiety, and, as will be seen from the following letter[FN#628] (15th October 1890) to Mr. David MacRitchie, he was busy evolving new plans, including a visit to Greece, to be made in the company of Dr. Schliemann,[FN#629] the archaeologist.  “In the spring of next year (Inshallah!) there will be a total disruption of my Lares and Penates.  I shall be ‘retired for age,’ and leave Trieste for ever with my mental eye upon a flat in London which can be locked up at a moment’s notice when the renter wants to go abroad.  Meanwhile we are off to Athens about mid-November.  All luck to the [Gypsy] Society.”  On the same day he wrote to Mr. W. F. Kirby:  “Excuse post-card.  We have no secrets.  Please don’t forget to keep me au courant of your movements in re Jan., &c.  We shall not be in London before early September 1891, I imagine, but then it will be for good.”  Elsewhere he says, almost in the words of Ovid, “My earnest wish is somehow to depart from these regions.”  He was to depart, very soon, but in a manner little expected.

Sir Richard as we have noticed, would never say “Good-bye.”  It was always “Au revoir.”  One day in this October Miss Letchford went to see him with her little sister.  It was tea-time, but Lady Burton was in another room with a visitor.  Never had he appeared so bright or affectionate.  He laughed and joked and teased the child and would not let them go for two hours.  At last he shook hands and said, “Come and see me again very soon.  I like you and your sister.—–­Good-bye, Daisy.”  “I was so startled,” comments Miss Letchford, “by that ‘Good-bye’ that a shiver passed over me.  I felt at that moment that I should never see him again.”  Two days later Mr. Albert Letchford called on Sir Richard, who seemed fairly well, but he remarked “The good Switzerland did me ended this evening.”

Dr. Baker, though himself just then a great sufferer from neuralgic headache, watched with anxious solicitude over his patient.  On the last day of his life Sir Richard seemed better than usual, and all the household remarked his excellent spirits.  It was Sunday October 29th.  After returning from mass and communion at eight in the morning Lady Burton found him engaged upon the last page of the twentieth chapter of The Scented Garden.[FN#630] The work was therefore almost half done.  She kissed him, and he said, “To-morrow I shall have finished this, and then I will begin our biography.”  She commented “What happiness that will be!” Her mind, however, was not quite at ease that morning, for a bird had pecked for the third time at a window that was never opened, and Sir Richard remarked “This is a sign of death.”

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The day was fine, and after breakfast Burton took his usual two hours’ walk with Dr. Baker.  On the way out through the garden he noticed a robin drowning in the basin of a fountain.[FN#631] At his request Dr. Baker rescued it, and Burton, opening his coat and vest—­for he never wore a waistcoat—­warmed the bird at his breast, and then carried it to the house to be cared for by the porter.  The incident carries us back to those old days at Tours, when, as a boy, he often laid himself out to revive unfortunate birds and small beasts.  In the afternoon he wrote some letters and discussed gaily the proposed visit to Greece.  They dined at half-past seven, and talked and laughed as usual, though Burton seemed tired.  As usual, too, he shocked his wife by jesting about scapularies and other sacred things, but the conversation ran chiefly on General Booth’s scheme for relieving the Submerged Tenth; and Burton, who entered into the subject with zest, observed:  “When you and I get to England and are quite free we will give our spare time to that."[FN#632]

In the course of the day Mrs. Victoria Maylor came in with the manuscript of The Scented Garden and the copy of it which she had made for the printers,[FN#633] and from this we may deduce that Sir Richard intended to go to press at once with the first twenty chapters of the work.  He may have intended to publish the twenty-first chapter later as a second volume.  At half-past nine he retired to his bedroom.  Lady Burton then repeated “the night prayers to him,” and while she was speaking “a dog,” to use her own words, “began that dreadful howl which the superstitious regard as the harbinger of death.”

After prayers, Burton asked for “chou-chou;” she game him a paper-covered copy in two volumes of the Martyrdom of Madeline[FN#634] by Robert Buchanan, and he lay in bed reading it.  At midnight he complained of pain in his foot, but said he believed it was only a return of the gout—­the “healthy gout,” which troubled him about every three months.

“Let me call Dr. Baker,” said Lady Burton.

“No,” replied Sir Richard, “don’t disturb him poor fellow, he has been in frightful pain with his head; and has at last got a little sleep.”

At four, however, Lady Burton paid no heed to her husband’s remonstrances, but called up Dr. Baker, who, however, saw no cause for alarm, and after administering some medicine he returned to bed.  Half an hour later Burton complained that there was no air, and Lady Burton, again thoroughly alarmed, rose to call in Dr. Baker once more.

Although Burton was then dying, he said, “Poor chap, don’t disturb him.”

But Lady Burton instantly summoned Dr. Baker, who on entering pronounced the situation grave.  Lady Burton at once roused the servants and sent in all directions for a priest; while, assisted by Dr. Baker and Lisa, she “tried every remedy and restorative,” but in vain.

“Oh, Puss,” cried Burton, “chloroform—­ether—­quick!”

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“My darling,” replied Lady Burton in anguish.  “Dr. Baker says it would kill you.  He is doing everything possible.”

His breathing then became laboured, and after a brief struggle for air he cried, “I am dying, I am dead.”  Lady Burton held him in her arms, but he got heavier, and presently became insensible.  Dr Baker applied an electric battery to the heart, and Lady Burton kneeling at the bedside, and holding her husband’s hand, prayed her “heart out to God to keep his soul there (though he might be dead in appearance) till the priest arrived.”  But it was in vain.  The priest, a Slavonian, named Pietro Martelani, came in about half-past six.  We may regret what followed, but no one would judge harshly the actions of an agonised woman.  Pity for human suffering must drown all other feelings.  The priest looked at the dead but warm body and asked whether there was still any life.  That the heart and pulsed had ceased to beat, Lady Burton herself afterwards admitted to her relations, but deceiving herself with the belief that life still continued in the brain, she cried:  “He is alive, but I beseech you, lose not a moment, for the soul is passing away.”

“If,” said the Priest, “he is a Protestant, he cannot receive the Holy Sacrament in this way.”

Lady Burton having declared that her husband “had abjured the heresy and belonged to the Catholic Church,” the priest at once administered “the last comforts.”

It was certainly a kind of consolation to the poor lady to feel that her husband had not departed unhouselled; but it is equally evident that her mind had given way, for the scenes that presently followed can be explained only on this assumption.[FN#635]

Dr. Baker at once sent a brief note to Mr. Letchford.  Singularly enough the night before—­that is the terrible Sunday night—­ Miss Daisy Letchford experienced “a strange instance of telepathy.”  “My brother,” she says, “had gone out, and I waited alone for him.  Suddenly I fancied I heard footsteps in the passage and stopping at the door of the room where I was reading.  I felt drops of cold sweat on my forehead.  I was afraid, yet I knew that no one was about at that time of the night.  The door opened slowly, and I felt the impression of some one looking at me.  I dared not raise my eyes.  The footsteps seemed to approach.  In a fit of fear I looked up and saw Sir Richard standing before me.  He started, waved his hand and disappeared.  Early in the morning came a ring at the bell.  I jumped out of bed and burst into tears as I said, ’This is to tell us that Sir Richard is dead.’  At that moment the maid brought in the letter for my brother from Dr. Baker.  I ran with it into his room.  ‘Albert, Albert,’ I cried, ‘Sir Richard is dead.’  He opened the letter.  It was only too true.”

The same morning, Mr. P. P. Cautley, the Vice Consul, was called up to the house.

The undertaker, who was already there, asked in Mr. Cautley’s presence to what religion Sir Richard belonged.

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Turning to Mr. Cautley, Lady Burton asked:  “What religion shall I say?”

“Tell him Sir Richard’s true religion,” replied Mr. Cautley.[FN#636]

She then said, “Catholic.”

“But!” interjected Mr. Cautley.

“Yes,” followed Lady Burton, “he was a Catholic.”

Lady Burton still nursed the hope that Sir Richard was not quite dead.  There was life in the brain, she persisted in saying.  Would he revive?  “For forty-eight hours,” she tells us, “she knelt watching him.”  She could not shed a tear.  Then she “had the ulnar nerve opened and strong electricity applied to make sure of his death.”

Some months after, when her mind had regained its equilibrium, she observed to Major St. George Burton.[FN#637] “To a Protestant, Dick’s reception into the Holy Church must seem meaningless and void.  He was dead before extreme unction was administered; and my sole idea was to satisfy myself that he and I would be buried according to the Catholic rites and lie together above ground in the Catholic cemetery.  He was not strictly received, for he was dead, and the formula Si es capax, &c., saved the priest’s face and satisfied the church.”  When mortification began to set in, the body, which was found to be covered with scars, the witnesses of a hundred fights, was embalmed, laid out in uniform, and surrounded with candles and wreaths.  “He looked so sweet,” says Lady Burton, “such an adorable dignity, like a sleep."[FN#638] Behind the bed still hung the great map of Africa.  On his breast Lady Burton had placed a crucifix, and he still wore the steel chain and the “Blessed Virgin Medal,” which she had given him just before the Tanganyika journey.

Priests, pious persons, and children from the orphanage of St. Joseph, in which Lady Burton had taken so much interest, watched and prayed, recited the office for the dead, and sang hymns.

There were three distinct funerals at Trieste, and there was to be another nine months onward in England.  All that can be said is that Lady Burton seemed to draw comfort from pageantry and ceremonial that to most mourners would have been only a long-drawn agony.

The procession was a royal one.  The coffin was covered with the Union Jack, and behind it were borne on a cushion Burton’s order and medals.  Then followed a carriage with a pyramid of wreaths, and lastly, the children of St. Joseph’s orphanage, a regiment of infantry and the governor and officials of Trieste.

Every flag in the town was half-mast high, multitudes thronged the streets, and every window and balcony was crowded.  Every head was uncovered.  The procession wound its way from the Palazzo Gosleth down the declivity into the city under a bright sun pouring down its full beams, and so onward through the serried masses of spectators to the cemetery.  Writing to Lady Stisted,[FN#639] Lady Burton says, “I did not have him buried, but had a private

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   “While England sees not her old praise dim,
    While still her stars through the world’s night swim,
      A fame outshining her Raleigh’s fame,
    A light that lightens her loud sea’s rim: 
    Shall shine and sound as her sons proclaim
    The pride that kindles at Burton’s name,
      And joy shall exalt their pride to be
    The same in birth if in soul the same."[FN#640]

“Our affairs,” Lady Burton tells Lady Stisted, in a heartrending letter,[FN#641] “are so numerous and we belonged to so many things that I have not strength enough to get them carried out before eight weeks, and I could not bear to arrive in Xmas holidays, but immediately after they are over, early January, I shall arrive, if I live, and pass through Folkestone on my way to Mortlake with the dear remains to make a tomb there for us two; and you must let me know whether you wish to see me or not.

“I wish to go into a convent for a spiritual retreat for fifteen days, and after that I should like to live very quietly in a retired way in London till God show me what I am to do or, as I hope, will take me also; and this my belief that I shall go in a few months is my only consolation.  As to me, I do not know how anyone can suffer so much and live.  While all around me had to go to bed ill, I have had a supernatural strength of soul and body, and have never lost my head for one moment, but I cannot cry a tear.  My throat is closed, and I sometime cannot swallow.  My heart swelled to bursting.  It must go snap soon, I think.  I have not forgotten you, and what it means to you who loved each other so much.  I shall save many little treasures for you.  His and your father’s watch, &c.  There are hundreds of telegrams and letters and cards by every post from all parts of the world, and the newspapers are full.  The whole civilized world ringing with his praise, and appreciative of his merits—­every one deeming it an honour to have known him.  Now it will be felt what we have lost.  I shall pass the remainder of my short time in writing his life and you must help me.  Best love to dearest Georgy.  I will write to her.  Your affectionate and desolate Isabel.”

To Mr. Arbuthnot, Lady Burton also wrote a very long and pitiful letter.[FN#642] As it records in other words much that has already been mentioned we will quote only a few sentences.

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“Dear Mr. Arbuthnot, “Your sympathy and that of Mrs. Arbuthnot is very precious to me and I answer you both in one.  I cannot answer general letters, but you were his best friend.  I should like to tell you all if I saw you but I have no heart to write it. ...  I am arranging all his affairs and when finished I bring him to England. ...  I shall be a little slow coming because I have so much to do with his books and MSS., and secondly because the rent is paid to the 24th February and I am too poor to pay two places.  Here I cannot separate from his body, and there it will be in the earth.  I am so thoroughly stunned that I feel nothing outside, but my heart is crucified.  I have lost all in him.  You will want to know my plans.  When my work is done, say 1st of March, I will go into a long retreat in a convent and will offer myself to a Sister of Charity.  I do not think I shall be accepted for my age and infirmities, but will try. ...  The world is for me a dead letter, and can no more touch me.  No more joy—­ no further sorrow can affect me.  Dr. Baker is so good to me, and is undertaking my affairs himself as I really cannot care about them now.  Love to both.  God bless you both for unvarying friendship and kindness.  Your affectionate and desolate friend, Isabel Burton.

“I have saved his gold watch-chain as a memorial for you.”

So passed from human ken the great, noble and learned Richard Francis Burton, “wader of the seas of knowledge,” “cistern of learning of our globe,” “exalted above his age,” “opener by his books of night and day,” “traveller by ship and foot and horse."[FN#643] No man could have had a fuller life.  Of all travellers he was surely the most enthusiastic.  What had he not seen?  The plains of the Indus, the slopes of the Blue Mountains, the classic cities of Italy, the mephitic swamps of Eastern Africa, the Nilotic cataracts, Brazil, Abeokuta, Iceland, El Dorado—­all knew well—­him, his star-sapphire, and his congested church service:  lands fertile, barren, savage, civilized, utilitarian, dithyrambic.  He had worshipped at Mecca and at Salt Lake City.  He had looked into the face of Memnon, and upon the rocks of Midian, ’graven with an iron pen,’ upon the head waters of the Congo, and the foliate columns of Palmyra; he had traversed the whole length of the Sao Francisco, crossed the Mississippi and the Ganges.  Then, too, had not the Power of the Hills been upon him!  With what eminence indeed was he not familiar, whether Alp, Cameroon or Himalaya!  Nor did he despise the features of his native land.  If he had climbed the easy Andes, he had also conquered, and looked down from the giddy heights of Hampstead.  Because he had grubbed in the Italian Pompeii he did not, on that account, despise the British Uriconium.[FN#644] He ranks with the world’s most intrepid explorers—­with Columbus, Cabot, Marco Polo, Da Gama and Stanley.  Like another famous traveller, he had been “in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in weariness and painfullness.”  In the words of his beloved Camoens, he had done

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   “Deeds that deserve, like gods, a deathless name."[FN#645]

He had lived almost his three score and ten, but, says one of his friends, “in the vigour, the vehemence indeed with which he vented his indignation over any meanness or wrong, or littleness, he was to the last as youthful as when he visited Mecca and Harar.  If, however, the work he did, the hardships he endured, and the amazing amount of learning which he acquired and gave forth to the world are to be taken as any measure of his life, he lived double the term of most ordinary men.”  Like Ovid, for the parallelism preserved itself to the end, he died in the land of his exile.

“It has been said of him that he was the greatest Oriental scholar England ever had and neglected.”  He was a mighty writer of books—­ some fifty works, to say nothing of multitudinous articles in the journals of the learned societies, having proceeded from his pen.  If it be conceded that he was wanting in the literary faculty and that no one of his books is entirely satisfactory, it should be borne in mind that he added enormously to the sum of human knowledge.  We go to him, not for style, but for facts.  Again, if his books are not works of art, they contain, nevertheless, many passages that cling to the memory.  Take him as linguist, traveller and anthropologist, he was certainly one of the greatest men that modern England has produced.

   Chapter xxxviii
   20th October 1890-December 1890
   The Fate of “The Scented Garden”

173.  The Fate of The Scented Garden.

Burton wad dead.  All that was mortal of him lay cold and motionless in the chapelle ardente.  But his spirit?  The spirits of the departed, can they revive us?  The Roman poet Propertius answers: 

   “Yes; there are ghosts:  death ends not all, I ween.”

and Lady Burton was just as thoroughly imbued with that belief.  Hereby hangs a curious story, now to be told as regards its essentials for the first time; and we may add that Lady Burton particularly wished these essentials to be made public after her decease.[FN#646]

For sixteen days after her husband’s death Lady Burton shut herself up in the house in order to examine and classify his manuscripts, pack up books, &c., ready for the journey to England, and “carry out his instructions.”  To the goodness—­the sweetness—­of her character we have several times paid tributes.  We have spoken of the devotion to her husband which surrounds her with a lambent glory; but we have also shown that she was indiscreet, illiterate,[FN#647] superstitious and impulsive; and that she was possessed of a self-assurance that can only be described as colossal.  We have also shown that her mind was unhinged by her sad trouble.  Such, then, was the woman and such the condition of the woman upon whom devolved the duty of considering the manuscripts of one of the most original men of the 19th century.  Which of them were valuable and which mere lumber she was quite incapable of judging.  Her right course would have been to call in some competent person; but she thought she was competent.

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At Lady Burton’s request, Mr. Albert Letchford and Miss Letchford had come to stay with her “for the remembrance of the love her husband bore them.”  It fell to Miss Letchford to sort Sir Richard’s clothes and to remove the various trifles from his pockets.  She found, among other things, the little canvas bags containing horse-chestnuts, which, as we have already noticed, he used “to carry about with him against the Evil Eye—­as a charm to keep him from sickness.”

Lady Burton now commenced with the manuscripts—­and let it be conceded, with the very best intentions.  She would have nobody in the room but Miss Letchford.  “I helped Lady Burton to sort his books, papers, and manuscripts,” says Miss Letchford.  “She thought me too young and innocent to understand anything.  She did not suspect that often when she was not near I looked through and read many of those MSS. which I bitterly repent not having taken, for in that case the world would not have been deprived of many beautiful and valuable writings.  I remember a poem of his written in the style of ‘The House that Jack built,’ the biting sarcasm of which, the ironical finesse—­is beyond anything I have ever read.  Many great people still living found their way into these verses.  I begged Lady Burton to keep it, but her peasant confessor said ‘Destroy it,’ so it was burnt along with a hundred other beautiful things.”  She destroyed valuable papers,[FN#648] she carefully preserved and docketed as priceless treasures mere waste paper.[FN#649]

There now remained only the manuscript of The Scented Garden and a few other papers.  By this time Lady Burton had discovered that Miss Letchford was “not so ignorant as she thought,” and when the latter begged her not to destroy The Scented Garden she promised that it should be saved; and no doubt, she really intended to save it.  Miss Letchford having gone out for the evening, Lady Burton returned again to her task.  Her mind was still uneasy about The Scented Garden, and she took out the manuscript to examine it.  Of the character of the work she had some idea, though her husband had not allowed her to read it.  Fifteen hundred persons had promised subscriptions; and she had also received an offer of six thousand guineas for it from a publisher.[FN#650] She took out the manuscript and laid it on the floor, “two large volumes worth."[FN#651] When she opened it she was perfectly bewildered and horrified.  The text alone would have staggered her, but, as we have seen, Burton had trebled the size of the book with notes of a certain character.  Calming herself, she reflected that the book was written only for scholars and mainly for Oriental students, and that her husband “never wrote a thing from the impure point of view.  He dissected a passion from every point of view, as a doctor may dissect a body, showing its source, its origin, its evil, and its good."[FN#652]

Then she looked up, and there, before her, stood her husband just as he had stood in the flesh.  He pointed to the manuscript and said “Burn it!” Then he disappeared.

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As she had for years been a believer in spirits, the apparition did not surprise her, and yet she was tremendously excited.  “Burn it!” she echoed, “the valuable manuscript?  At which he laboured for so many weary hours?  Yet, doubtless, it would be wrong to preserve it.  Sin is the only rolling stone that gathers moss; what a gentleman, a scholar, a man of the world may write, when living, he would see very differently as a poor soul standing naked before its God, with its good or evil deeds alone to answer for, and their consequences visible to it from the first moment, rolling on to the end of time.  Oh, he would cry, for a friend on earth to stop and check them!  What would he care for the applause of fifteen hundred men now—­ for the whole world’s praise, and God offended?  And yet the book is for students only.  Six thousand guineas, too, is a large sum, and I have great need of it.”

At this moment the apparition again stood before her, and in a sterner and more authoritative voice said:  “Burn it!” and then again disappeared.  In her excitement she scarcely knew where she was or what she did.  Still she hesitated.  Then she soliloquised:  “It is his will, and what he wishes shall be done.  He loved me and worked for me.  How am I going to reward him?  In order that my wretched body may be fed and warmed for a few miserable years, shall I let his soul be left out in cold and darkness till the end of time—­ till all the sins which may be committed on reading those writings have been expiated, or passed away, perhaps, for ever?  Nafzawi, who was a pagan, begged pardon of God and prayed not to be cast into hell fire for having written it, and implored his readers to pray for him to Allah that he would have mercy on him."[FN#653]

Still she hesitated.  “It was his magnum opus,” she went on, “his last work that he was so proud of, that was to have been finished[FN#654] on the awful morrow that never came.  If I burn it the recollection will haunt me to my dying day,” and again she turned over the leaves.

Then for the third time Sir Richard stood before her.  Again he sternly bade her burn the manuscript, and, having added threatenings to his command, he again disappeared.

By this time her excitement had passed away, and a holy joy irradiated her soul.  She took up the manuscript, and then sorrowfully, reverently, and in fear and trembling, she burnt it sheet after sheet, until the whole was consumed.  As each leaf was licked up by the fire, it seemed to her that “a fresh ray of light and peace” transfused the soul of her beloved husband.

That such were the facts and that the appearance of her husband was not mere hallucination, Lady Burton stiffly maintained until her dying day.  She told Mr. T. Douglas Murray[FN#655] that she dared not mention the appearances of her husband in her letter to The Morning Post[FN#656] or to her relatives for fear of ridicule.  Yet in the Life of her husband—­almost the closing words—­she does give a hint to those who could understand.  She says:  “Do not be so hard and prosaic as to suppose that our dead cannot, in rare instances, come back and tell us how it is with them."[FN#657]

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That evening, when Miss Letchford, after her return, entered Sir Richard’s room, she saw some papers still smouldering in the grate.  They were all that remained of The Scented Garden.  On noticing Miss Letchford’s reproachful look, Lady Burton said, “I wished his name to live for ever unsullied and without a stain.”

174.  Discrepancies in Lady Burton’s Story.

Some have regarded this action of Lady Burton’s—­the destruction of The Scented Garden manuscript—­as “one of rare self-sacrifice prompted by the highest religious motives and the tenderest love for one whom she looked to meet again in heaven, to which her burnt offering and fervent prayers might make his entrance sure.”  If the burning of the Ms. of The Scented Garden had been an isolated action, we might have cheerfully endorsed the opinion just quoted, but it was only one holocaust of a series.  That Lady Burton had the best of motives we have already admitted; but it is also very evident that she gave the matter inadequate consideration.  The discrepancies in her account of the manuscript prove that at most she could have turned over only three or four pages—­ or half-a-dozen at the outside.[FN#658]

Let us notice these discrepancies: 

(1) In her letter to the Morning Post (19th June 1891) she says of The Scented Garden:  “It was his magnum opus, his last work that he was so proud of.”  Yet in the Life (ii., 243) she calls it the only book he ever wrote that was not valuable to the world and in p. 445 of the same work she alludes to it “as a few chapters which were of no particular value to the world.”  So it was at once the most valuable book he ever wrote and also of no value whatever. (2) In Volume ii. of the Life (p. 441) she says the only value in the book at all consisted in his annotations, and there was no poetry.  This remark proves more than anything else how very superficial must have been her examination of the manuscript, for even the garbled edition of 1886 contains nearly 400 lines of verse, while that of 1904 probably contains over a thousand.[FN#659] For example, there are twenty-three lines of the poet Abu Nowas’s. (3) On page 444 of the Life she says:  “It was all translation except the annotations on the Arabic work”—­which gives the impression that the translation was the great feature, and that the notes were of secondary importance; but on p. 441 she says, “The only value in the book at all consisted in the annotations.”  As a matter of fact, the annotations amounted to three-quarters of the whole. [See Chapter xxxiv.] (4) In the Life, page 410 (Vol. ii.), she says the work was finished all but one page; and on page 444 that only 20 chapters were done.  Yet she much have known that the whole work consisted of 21 chapters, and that the 21st chapter was as large as the other twenty put together, for her husband was always talking about and trying to obtain an Arabic manuscript of this chapter (See chapter 35).

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All this, of course, proved indubitably that Lady Burton actually knew next to nothing about the whole matter.  Perhaps it will be asked, What has been lost by this action of Lady Burton’s?  After carefully weighing the pros and cons we have come to the conclusion that the loss could not possibly have been a serious one.  That Burton placed a very high value on his work, that he considered it his masterpiece, is incontrovertible, but he had formed in earlier days just as high an opinion of his Camoens and his Kasidah; therefore what he himself said about it has not necessarily any great weight.  We do not think the loss serious for four reasons:  First, because the original work, whatever its claims on the anthropologist, has little, if any, literary merit;[FN#660] secondly, because Sir Richard Burton’s “old version"[FN#661] of The Scented Garden is public property, and has been reprinted at least three times; thirdly, because only half was done; and fourthly, because the whole of the work has since been translated by a writer who, whatever his qualifications or disqualifications, has had access to manuscripts that were inaccessible to Sir Richard Burton.  Practically then, for, as we have already shown, Sir Richard did not particularly shine as a translator, nothing has been lost except his notes.  These notes seem to have been equivalent to about 600 pages of an ordinary crown octavo book printed in long primer.  Two-thirds of this matter was probably of such a character that its loss cannot be deplored.  The remainder seems to have been really valuable and to have thrown light on Arab life and manners.  Although the translation was destroyed in October 1890, the public were not informed of the occurrence until June 1891—­nine months after.

Copies of the Kama Shastra edition of The Scented Garden issued in 1886[FN#662] are not scarce.  The edition of 1904, to which we have several times referred, is founded chiefly on the Arabic Manuscript in the Library at Algiers, which a few years ago was collated by Professor Max Seligsohn with the texts referred to by Burton as existing in the Libraries of Paris, Gotha and Copenhagen.

175.  The Fate of the Catullus.

The fate of the Catullus was even more tragic than that of The Scented Garden.  This work, like The Scented Garden, was left unfinished.  Burton had covered his Latin copy and his manuscript with pencil notes looking like cobwebs, and on one page was written “Never show half finished work to women or fools.”  The treatment meted to his manuscript would, if Burton had been a poet of the first order, have drawn tears from a milestone.  But it must be borne in mind that Lady Burton did consider him a poet of the first order, for she ranked his Camoens and his Kasidah with the work of Shakespere.  And this is how she treated a work which she considered a world-masterpiece.  First she skimmed it over, then she expurgated it, and finally she either typed

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“To me,” observes Mr. Smithers piteously, “has fallen the task of editing Sir Richard’s share in this volume from a type-written copy literally swarming with copyist’s errors.[FN#664] Lady Burton has without any reason constantly refused me even a glance at his Ms.”  The book, such as it was, appeared in 1894.  If Burton had not been embalmed he would have turned in his coffin.  We may or may not pardon Lady Burton for destroying the Ms. of The Scented Garden, but it is impossible not to pass upon her at any rate a mild censure for having treated in that way a translation of Catullus after it had been expurgated to her own taste.  Whether Burton would have considerably improved the poetry of his version we cannot say; but as it stands no single poem is superior to the work of his predecessors.  One need only compare his rendering of the lines “To the Peninsula of Sirmio” with the Hon. George Lamb’s[FN#665]

   “Sirmio of all the shores the gem,”

or Leigh Hunt’s

   “O, best of all the scattered spots that lie,”

to see what a fall was there, and yet neither Lamb’s version nor Hunt’s is satisfactory.  His “Atys” pales before Cranstoun’s, and his “Epithalamium,” is almost unreadable; while the lines “On the death of Lesbia’s Sparrow” naturally compel comparison with Byron’s version.  Nor will readers of the translations by Sir Theodore Martin or Robinson Ellis gain anything by turning to Burton.

On the other hand, we can well believe that his work, considered as a commentary on Catullus—­for nearly all his loose notes have perished—­would have been as valuable to us as, viewed in the same light, is his edition of Camoens.  He had explored all the Catullus country.  Verona, the poet’s birthplace, “Sweet Sirmio,” his home on the long narrow peninsula that cleaves Garda’s “limpid lake,” Brescia, “below the Cycnaean peak,"[FN#666] the “dimpling waters” of heavenly Como, and the estate of Caecilius;[FN#667] all were familiar to him.  He knew every spot visited by the poet in his famous voyage in the open pinnance[FN#668] from Bithynia “through the angry Euxine,” among the Cyclades, by “purple Zante,” up the Adriatic, and thence by river and canal to ‘Home, sweet home.’  He was deep in every department of Catullian lore.  He had taken enormous pains; he had given his nights and days to the work.  The notes at the end of the printed volume are a mere drop compared with the ocean he left.  However, the manuscript with its pencilled cobwebs, the voluminous “loose notes”—­all—­good and bad—­went up the chimney.

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Personally we have never expended a sigh over the loss of The Scented Garden, and we should not have minded one straw if Lady Burton had burnt also her typewritten travesty of the Catullus; but her destruction of Sir Richard’s private journals and diaries was a deed that one finds it very hard to forgive.  Just as Sir Richard’s conversation was better than his books, so, we are told, his diaries were better than his conversation.  Says Mr. W. H. Wilkins,[FN#669] referring to Sir Richard, “He kept his diaries and journals, not as many keep them, with all the ugly things left out, but faithfully and fully,” and again, “the private journals and diaries which were full of the secret thoughts and apologia of this rare genius have been committed to the flames.”  Dr. Baker, who was favoured with the sight of portions of these diaries, tells me that Sir Richard used to put in them not only an epitome of every important letter written or received by him, and of every conversation he had with persons of consequence; but also any remarks that struck him, uttered by no matter whom.[FN#670]

176.  Lisa Departs, November 1890.

Like Chico, like Khamoor, Lisa, the Baroness lady-companion, had through injudicious treatment grown well-nigh unendurable.  While Burton was alive she still had some dim notion of her place, but after his death she broke the traces, and Lady Burton had, with deep regret, to part with her.  They separated very good friends, however, for Lady Burton was generosity itself.  By this time she had been pretty well cured of lady’s maid and servant pets, at any rate we hear of no other.

Lady Burton was also distressed by an attack make in The Times upon the memory of her husband by Colonel Grant, who declared that Burton had treated both Speke and their native followers with inhumanity.  Lady Burton replied with asperity—­giving the facts much as we have given them in Chapter ix.  Grant died 10th February 1892.

   Chapter xxxix
   January 1891 to July 1891
   Lady Burton in England

Bibliography (Posthumous works): 

81.  Morocco and the Moors, by Henry Leared, edited by Burton. 1891. 82.  Il Pentamerone, published 1893. 83.  The Kasidah (100 copies only). 1894.
    [Note.—­In 1900 an edition of 250 copies appeared].

177.  Lady Burton in England.

By the new year Lady Burton had completed all her arrangements.  The swarms of servants and parasites which her good nature had attracted to her had been paid, or thrown, off; and the books and the mutilated manuscripts packed up.  Every day she had visited her “beloved in the chapelle ardente.”  “I never rested,” she says, “and it was a life of torture.  I used to wake at four, the hour he was taken ill, and go through all the horrors of his three hours’ illness until seven.”

On January 20th, Burton’s remains were taken to England by the steamer “Palmyra.”  Lady Burton then walked round and round to every room, recalling all her life in that happy home and all the painful events that had so recently taken place.  She gazed pensively and sadly at the beautiful views from the windows and went “into every nook and cranny of the garden.”  The very walls seemed to mourn with her.

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On arriving in England on February 9th her first concern was to call on Lady Stisted and Miss Stisted, in order to “acquaint them with the circumstances of her husband’s death and her intentions.”  The meeting was a painful one both to them and to her.  They plainly expressed their disapproval of the scenes that had been enacted in the death chamber and at the funerals at Trieste; and they declared that as Protestants they could not countenance any additional ceremonial of a like nature.  Lady Burton next visited Ilkeston, in Derbyshire, where she had implored “Our Lady of Dale” to bring about her husband’s conversion.  Entering the Catholic Church there, she knelt before the altar and cried “Here I asked!  Here I obtained!  Our Lady of Dale, deliver his soul from Purgatory!"[FN#671]

Burton’s remains arrived—­by “long sea”—­in England on February 12th (1891) and were placed temporarily in the crypt of the Catholic Church at Mortlake; and Lady Burton then devoted the whole of her time to arranging for a public funeral in England.

To Mrs. E. J. Burton she wrote (23rd March 1891):  “You must have thought me so ungrateful for not answering your sweet letter of five months ago, but, indeed, I have felt it deeply.  Losing the man who had been my earthly God for thirty-five years, was like a blow on the head, and for a long time I was completely stunned."[FN#672]

178.  The Funeral at Mortlake, 15th June 1891.

The sum of (pounds)700 having been raised by Burton’s admirers, a mausoleum, made of dark Forest of Dean stone and white Carrara marble, and shaped like an Arab tent, was erected in the Catholic Cemetery at Mortlake.  Over the door is an open book inscribed with the names of Sir Richard and Lady Burton, and below the book runs a ribbon with the words “This monument is erected to his memory by his loving countrymen.”  Among those present at the funeral were Major St. George Burton, Dr. E. J. Burton, Mr. Mostyn Pryce, Lord Arundell, Mr. Gerald Arundell, Lord Gerard, Lord Northbrook, Mr. Van Zeller, Dr. Baker, Dr. Leslie, Mr. F. F. Arbuthnot, Commander Cameron, and Mr. Justin Huntley McCarthy; and Canon Wenham officiated.

The coffin was laid in the middle of the church upon trestles, which were covered by “a cramoisie velvet pall.”  Tall silver candlesticks with wax candles surrounded it.  An unseen choir sang solemn chants.  Lady Burton, “a pathetic picture of prayerful sorrow,” occupied a prie-dieu at the coffin’s side.  When the procession filed out priests perfumed the coffin with incense and sprinkled it with holy water, acolytes bore aloft their flambeaux, and the choir, now seen to be robed in black, sang epicedial hymns.  The service had all been conducted in Latin, but at this point Canon Wenham, turning to the coffin, said in English, “with a smile and a voice full of emotion,[FN#673] ‘Enter now into Paradise.’”

Lady Burton then laid on the coffin a bunch of forget-me-nots, and said, “Here lies the best husband that ever lived, the best son, the best brother, and the truest staunchest friend.”

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The bystanders were moved according to their temperaments and religious views, but all were touched by the tempestuousness of Lady Burton’s grief.  She seemed as “one of the Eumenides.”  To some the pomp and scenic effects were gratifying.  Others were affected by the reflection that the great traveller, after roaming through almost every known land, had at last been laid in a quiet nook in an English graveyard.  Others who were familiar with Burton’s religious views considered “the whole ceremony an impertinence.”  All, however, whatever their opinions, were united in the desire to honour the great Englishman whose motto had been “Honour not Honours.”  So at last, after four funerals, Sir Richard Burton was left in peace.

The interior of the tomb remains much as it did on that day.  Facing the entrance is an altar with pictures, vases and the other customary appurtenances.  Sir Richard’s sarcophagus lies to one’s left, and on the right has since been placed the coffin of Lady Burton, while over all hang ropes of camel bells, which when struck give out the old metallic sound that Sir Richard heard so often in the desert.

The ceremony over, Lady Burton went to spend ten days in the convent of the canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre at Chelmsford—­“my convent,” as she called it, because she was educated there.  She then hired longing at No. 5, Baker Street, London, until a house—­No. 67—­in the same street could be made ready for her.  By the kindness of Queen Victoria she was allowed a pension of (pounds)150 a year.

179.  The Scented Garden Storm, June 1891.

In the meantime, the fifteen hundred subscribers to The Scented Garden kept writing to Lady Burton to ask when the promised work was to be in their hands.  As she could not possibly reply to so many persons, and as the nature of some of the letters cast her into a state of wild perturbation, there seemed only one course open to her—­namely, to write to the press.  So she sent to The Morning Post the well-known letter which appeared 19th June, 1891, mentioning some of her reasons for destroying the manuscript, the principal being her belief that out of fifteen hundred men, fifteen would probably read it in the spirit of science in which it was written, the other fourteen hundred and eighty-five would read it “for filth’s sake.”  The principal cause, the apparition of her husband, she did not mention.[FN#674]

The letter in The Morning Post had no sooner appeared than a cry arose against her from one end of the country to the other.  The Press castigated her, private persons expressed their indignation by post.  Burton’s family in particular bitterly resented what they considered a “foolish, mad act, insulting alike to the dead and the living.”

Page 116

Lady Burton then wrote a second letter, which she sent to The Echo.  She said that if Burton had lived “he would have been perfectly justified in carrying out his work.  He would have been surrounded by friends to whom he could have explained any objections or controversies, and would have done everything to guard against the incalculable harm of his purchasers lending it to their women friends and to their boyish acquaintances, which I could not guarantee. ...  My husband did no wrong, he had a high purpose[FN#675] and he thought no evil of printing it, and could one have secured the one per cent. of individuals to whom it would have been merely a study, it would probably have done no harm.”  Later she made some further defence in the New Review.

The opinions of Burton’s friends and intimate acquaintances on the matter were as follows:  Mr. Payne and Mr. Watts-Dunton[FN#676] thought that Lady Burton did quite rightly, considering the circumstances, in destroying the work.  Mr. W.F.  Kirby thought that, though from her own point of view she was justified in so doing, she would have done better to present it to the College of Surgeons, where it would have been quite harmless and might have been consulted by bona-fide students.

Mr. Arbuthnot considered that in fulfilment of Burton’s promise it should have been given to him.  He would, of course, have published it as a volume of the Kama Shastra Society, taking the usual precautions to prevent it from falling into unsuitable hands.

   Chapter XL
   July 1891-December 1893
   O Tomb, O Tomb!

Bibliography: 

84.  Life of Sir Richard Burton, 2 vols. 1893. 85.  Translation of Catullus. 1894. 86.  The Library Edition of The Arabian Nights, 12 vols. 1894.

180.  A Letter to Miss Stisted.

In July 1891 there appeared in Temple Bar an article by Miss Stisted, entitled “Reminiscences of Sir Richard Burton,” and upon reading it, Lady Burton, who headed her letter “5 or 67 Baker Street, Portman Square,” wrote as follows: 

“Dearest Georgy,[FN#677] I read last night your clever and well-written article on my darling, and send you a little notice out of The Daily News.  I congratulate you on it and on being able to write again.  I was very sorry you and Maria [Lady Stisted] would not come to the funeral.  When you come in August I shall give you a photo of the monument and a list of the people who were invited. ...  There were 850 asked, 400 influenza refusals and over 500 were present, counted by the police at the gates. ...  When you come I shall be I trust at No. 67.[FN#678] Your loving aunt Zoo.”

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But the comic always treads on the heels of the pathetic for it is not probable that Miss Stisted valued very much the photograph of what in her “True Life,” she thought fit to call “an eccentric tomb” in a “shabby sectarian cemetery."[FN#679] The removal into 67, Baker Street, took place in September 1891, and a little later Lady Burton hired a cottage at Wople End, near Mortlake, where she spent her summer months.  During the last decade of her husband’s life she had become, to use her own words, coarse and rather unwieldy, but her sorrow had the effect of restoring to her some of the graces of person that had marked her early days.  That this is no figment of our imagination may easily be seen by anyone who compares her portrait in the group taken by Miller in 1888 with the photograph by Gunn and Stuart,[FN#680] where she is in her widow’s cap with its long white streamers.  In this photograph and others taken at the time she looks handsome and stately.  She is once more “Empress of Damascus.”  The house in baker Street has thus been described:  “No sooner have you crossed Lady Burton’s threshold than you are at once transported, as if by magic, to Eastern climes.  You are greeted by a handsome woman whose black dress and white widow’s cap present a striking contrast to the glow of rich but subdued colour which surrounds her.  Opposite the fireplace is a full length and very characteristic portrait of Burton in fencing costume.[FN#681] Among the curiosities are the necklace[FN#682] of human bones given to Burton by Gelele, some specimens of old Istrian china picked up in the cottages near Trieste, and a three-sided mirror and two crystals with which Burton used to mesmerise his wife.  From the ceiling hung a quaint Moorish lamp with many branches, and its softened rays often fall on a Damascene silver gilt coffee service studded with turquoises.”  At the top of the house and approached by a narrow staircase and a ladder was a large loft, built by herself, for storing her husband’s manuscripts and books.  On one side glittered a “small but tastefully decorated altar,” while scattered around were the many relics which have since drifted to Camberwell.

181.  The writing of the Life August 1892-March 1893.

In this loft Lady Burton spent many hours examining her husband’s papers, and in the autumn of 1902 she commenced in earnest to write his life—­a work that occupied her about eight months.  That she was absolutely unfitted for the task must be clear to all who have any knowledge of Burton.  Indeed, she was quite incapable of doing literary work of any kind properly.  The spirit in which she wrote may be gauged both from the book itself, with its frequent offences against good taste, and the following citation from a letter to a friend:  “I do not know,” she said, “if I can harden my heart against the curs, but I can put out my tongue and point my pen and play pussy cat about their eyes and ears.”  By “curs” she means those who rated her for burning her husband’s manuscripts, but in justice to her, let it be borne in mind that she had received some letters that were quite unworthy of the writers.

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The great questions was, Would she live to complete her task?  Owing to an incurable complaint she could give only a limited portion of her time to the work, and there were whole days in which no progress was made.  Every page bears evidences of hurry.  We have already told the story of the three appearances of Sir Richard just before the burning of The Scented Garden Ms. Lady Burton persistently declared that after the third appearance her husband came again and never left her until she had finished her work.  “He was constantly with me,” she said to Mr. Murray, “appearing exactly as in life, and he advised and comforted me.  He helped me most materially towards the compilation of his own biography, and gave me references to books and manuscripts so that the biography came comparatively easy to my hand.  He gave me absolutely the position of the book in the shelf and the page and reference itself which I required.”

A letter[FN#683] of one of Burton’s friends contains the following comments on the work.  “I plainly see that the objects of writing the Life were two-fold.  First to prove Sir Richard a Roman Catholic, and thus fit him to be buried with her, and secondly to whitewash his escapades and insubordination.  As to the first, I know he despised[FN#684] the Roman Catholic religion; and if any very deep sense of religious feeling existed at all, it was of the Mohammedan rather than anything else; but his religion was not very apparent, though he was fundamentally an honest and conscientious man, and I think he had but one enemy—­himself.  He was a very great man; very like a magnificent machine one part of which had gone wrong—­and that was his hot temper.”

Lady Burton’s book was finished at Mortlake on 24th March 1893, and appeared in the autumn of that year.  She then commenced the issue of the Memorial Edition of her husband’s works.  The Pilgrimage to Al Medinah and Meccah (2 vols.), The Mission to Gelele (2 vols.), and Vikram and the Vampire appeared in 1893, First Footsteps in East Africa in 1894.  The venture, however, proved a failure, so no more volumes were issued.  She published her husband’s Pentameron in 1893, and the Catullus in 1894.

Writing 11th July 1893 to Mrs. E. J. Burton just before a visit to that lady, Lady Burton says—­and it must be borne in mind that her complaint often made her feel very ill—­“Send me a line to tell me what is the nearest Roman Catholic Church to you, as I must drive there first to make all arrangements for Sunday morning to get an early confession, communion and mass (after which I am at liberty for the rest of the day) because, as you know, I have to fast from midnight till I come back, and I feel bad for want of a cup of tea. ...The Life is out to-day.”

The reception accorded to her work by the Press, who, out of regard to Sir Richard’s memory, spoke of it with the utmost kindness, gave Lady Burton many happy hours.  “It is a great pleasure to me,” she says, “to know how kind people are about my book, and how beautifully they speak of darling Richard."[FN#685]

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Most of Lady Burton’s remaining letters are full of gratitude to God, tender and Christian sentiment, faulty English and bad spelling.[FN#686] “I did see The Times,” she says, “and was awfully glad of it.  Kinder still is The Sunday Sun, the 1st, the 8th and the 15th of October, five columns each, which say that I have completely lifted any cloud away from his memory, and that his future fame will shine like a beacon in all ages.  Thank God!” St. George Burton was wicked enough to twit her for her spelling, and to say that he found out as many as seventeen words incorrectly spelt in one letter.  But she deftly excused herself by saying that she used archaic forms.  “Never mind St. George,” she writes good-humouredly, to Mrs. E. G. Burton, “I like old spelling.”  She did not excuse her slang by calling it old, or refer her friends to Chaucer for “awfully glad.”

The greatest pleasure of her life was now, as she oddly expresses it, to “dress the mausoleum” on “darling Dick’s anniversary.”  She says (21st October 1893 to Mrs. E. J. Burton),[FN#687] “I received your dear flowers, and the mausoleum was quite lovely, a mass of lights and flowers sent by relations and affectionate friends.  Yours stood in front of the altar.”  Then follows a delicious and very characteristic sample of Lady Burton’s English:  “We had mass and communion,” she says, “and crowds of friends came down to see the mausoleum and two photographers.”

She was glad to visit and decorate the Mortlake tomb certainly, but the pleasure was a very melancholy one, and she could but say, borrowing a thought from The Arabian Nights: 

“O tomb, O tomb, thou art neither earth nor heaven unto me."[FN#688]

When Lady Stisted died (27th December 1893), Lady Burton felt the blow keenly, and she wrote very feelingly on the subject, “Yes,” she says, in a letter to Mrs. E. J. Burton, “I was very shocked at poor Maria’s death, and more so because I wish nothing had come between us.”  “Poor Maria,” she wrote to St. George Burton, “You would be surprised to know, and I am surprised myself, how much I feel it.”  In a letter to Madame de Gutmansthal-Benvenuti (10th January 1894), Lady Burton refers to the Burton tableau to Madame Tussaud’s.  She says, “They have now put Richard in the Meccan dress he wore in the desert.  They have given him a large space with sand, water, palms; and three camels, and a domed skylight, painted yellow, throws a lurid light on the scene.  It is quite life-like.  I gave them the real clothes and the real weapons, and dressed him myself.”

“I am so glad,” she writes to Miss Stisted,[FN#689] “you went to Tussaud’s, and that you admired Dick and his group.  I am not quite content with the pose.  The figure looks all right when it stands up properly, but I have always had a trouble with Tussaud about a certain stoop which he declares is artistic, and which I say was not natural to him.”

182.  The Library Edition of The Nights 1894.

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Lady Burton now authorised the publication of what is called the Library Edition of The Arabian Nights.  According to the Editorial Note, while in Lady Burton’s Edition no fewer than 215 pages of the original are wanting[FN#690] in this edition the excisions amount only to about 40 pages.  The Editor goes on:  “These few omissions are rendered necessary by the pledge which Sir Richard gave to his subscribers that no cheaper edition of the entire work should be issued; but in all other respects the original text has been reproduced with scrupulous fidelity.”

By this time Lady Burton had lost two of her Trieste friends, namely Lisa, the baroness-maid who died in 1891, and Mrs. Victoria Maylor, Burton’s amanuensis, who died in 1894.

Chapter XLI Death of Lady Burton

Bibliography: 

87.  The Jew, the Gypsy, and El Islam. 1898. 88.  Wanderings in Three Continents. 1901.

183.  Lady Burton at Eastbourne.

Lady Burton spent the year 1894 and part of 1895 at Baker Street and Mortlake, making occasional visits to friends.  As at Trieste, she surrounded herself with a crowd of servants and other idle people whom, in her good nature, she systematically pampered, and who in their turn did their best to make her life unendurable.  She could, however, easily afford these luxuries, for thanks to the large sums received for her Life of Sir Richard, the Library Edition, &c., she was now in affluent circumstances.  She won to herself and certainly deserved the character of “a dear old lady.”  In politics she was a “progressive Conservative,” though what that meant neither she nor those about her had any clear notion.  She dearly loved children—­at a safe distance—­and gave treats, by proxy, to all the Catholic schools in the neighbourhood.  She took an active interest in various charities, became an anti-vivisectionist, and used very humanely to beat people about the head with her umbrella, if she caught them ill-treating animals.  If they remonstrated, she used to retort, “Yes, and how do you like It?” “When she wanted a cab,” says Mr. W. H. Wilkins, “she invariably inspected the horse carefully first, to see if it looked well fed and cared for; if not, she discharged the cab and got another; and she would always impress upon the driver that he must not beat his horse under any consideration.”  On one occasion she sadly forgot herself.  She and her sister, Mrs. FitzGerald, had hired a cab at Charing Cross Station and were in a great hurry to get home.  Of course, as usual, she impressed upon the cabman that he was not to beat his horse.  “The horse, which was a wretched old screw, refused, in consequence, to go at more than a walking pace,” and Lady Burton, who was fuming with impatience, at last so far forgot herself as to put her head out of the window and cry to the driver, “Why don’t you beat him?  Why don’t you make him go?"[FN#691] She occasionally met her husband’s friends, Mr. and Mrs. Arbuthnot and Mr. Payne.  One day at some dinner it transpired in the course of conversation that Mr. Payne had all his life been an habitual sufferer from insomnia.

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“I can tell you how to cure that,” said Lady Burton.

“How?” said Mr. Payne.  “Say your prayers,” said she.

After an attack of influenza Lady Burton hired a cottage—­Holywell Lodge—­at Eastbourne[FN#692] where she stayed from September to March 1896, busying herself composing her autobiography.[FN#693] Two letters which she wrote to Miss Stisted from Holywell Lodge are of interest.  Both are signed “Your loving Zoo.”  The first contains kindly references to Mr. and Mrs. Arbuthnot, who had been visiting her, and to the widow of Professor Huxley[FN#694] who was staying at Eastbourne; and the second, which is amusing enough, records her experiences among some very uncongenial people at Boscombe.  Wherever she went, Lady Burton, as we have seen, was always thrusting her opinions, welcome or not, upon other persons; but at Boscombe the tables were turned, and she experienced the same annoyance that she herself had so often excited in others.

“I went,” she says, “to a little boarding-house called. ...  The house was as comfortable as it could be, the food plain, but eatable, but the common table was always chock full of Plymouth Brethren and tract-giving old maids, and we got very tired of it.”

Then follows an account of her establishment at Eastbourne.  “It consists,” she says, “of my secretary (Miss Plowman) and nurse, and we have our meals together, and drive out together whenever I am able.  Then my servants are a maid, house-parlour-maid, a housemaid and a cook (my Baker Street lot).  The cottage [at Mortlake] is in charge of a policeman, and Baker Street a caretaker.  My friend left three servants in the house, so we are ten altogether, and I have already sent one of mine back, as they have too much to eat, too little to do, and get quarrelsome and disagreeable.”  Thus it was the same old story, for Lady Burton, though she had the knack of living, was quite incapable of learning, or at any rate of profiting by experience.

The letter concludes sadly, “As to myself, I am so thin and weak that I cannot help thinking there must be atrophy, and in any case my own idea is that I may be able to last till March.”

184.  Death of Lady Burton, 22nd Mar. 1896.

Lady Burton from that time gradually grew weaker; but death, which “to prepared appetites is nectar,” had for her no terrors.  To her it meant release from pain and suffering, ultimate reception into the presence of an all-merciful God, re-union with her beloved husband.  She did, however, last, as she had anticipated, till March.  Early in that month she returned to Baker Street, where she died rather suddenly on Sunday the 22nd.

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By her will dated, 28th December 1895, she left some (pounds)12,000 to her sister, Mrs. FitzGerald,[FN#695] and the following persons also benefitted:  her sister, Mrs. Van Zeller, (pounds)500; her secretary, Miss Plowman (pounds)25; Khamoor (pounds)50; her nephew Gerald Arthur Arundell, the cottage at Mortlake; the Orphanage at Trieste, (pounds)105.  She directed that after her heart had been pierced with a needle her body was to be embalmed in order that it might be kept above ground by the side of her husband.  She stated that she had bought a vault close to the tent, and that two places were to be reserved in it in order that if a revolution should occur in England, and there should be fear of the desecration of the dead, the coffins of her husband and herself might be lowered into it.  She provided for 3,000 masses to be said for her at once at Paris, and left an annuity to pay for a daily mass to be said there perpetually.  The attendance of priests at her funeral was to be “as large as possible.”

Lady Burton was buried on Friday March 27th, the service taking place in the Catholic church at Mortlake where five years previous she had knelt beside the coffin of her husband; and a large number of mourners was present.  After mass her remains were carried to the Arab Tent, and so she obtained her wish, namely, that in death she and her husband might rest in the same tomb.

185.  Miss Stisted’s “True Life.”

As might have been expected, Lady Burton’s Life of her husband gave umbrage to the Stisted family—­and principally for two reasons; first its attempt to throw a flood of Catholic colour on Sir Richard, and secondly because it contained statements which they held to be incorrect.  So after Lady Burton’s death, Miss Stisted wrote and published a small work entitled The True Life of Sir Richard Burton.  It is written with some acerbity, for Lady Burton as a Catholic was not more militant than Miss Stisted as a Protestant.  It throws additional and welcome light on Sir Richard’s early days, but as we have elsewhere remarked, the principal charge that it made against Lady Burton, namely that she was the main cause of her husband’s downfall at Damascus, is unsupported by sufficient evidence.

186.  Mr. Wilkins’s Work, 1897.

That there should be a counterblast to The True Life was inevitable, and it came in the shape of The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton, which consists of Lady Burton’s unfinished autobiography and a continuation by Mr. W. H. Wilkins.  The work is a valuable addition to Burton lore, but Mr. Wilkins’s friendship for Lady Burton led him to place her on a far higher pedestal than we have been able to give her.  Perhaps it was natural that in dealing with the True Life he should have betrayed some heat.  However, death has now visited Miss Stisted[FN#696] as well as Lady Burton, and the commotion made by the falling of the stone into the pool is at this distance represented only by the faintest of circles.  In 1898, Mr. Wilkins published, with an acceptable preface, three of Burton’s unfinished works in one volume, with the title of The Jew, the Gypsy, and El Islam, and in 1901 he placed the public under further obligation to him by editing and issuing Burton’s Wanderings in Three Continents.

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187.  Burton’s Friends.

Most of Burton’s friends have followed him to the tomb.  Edward Rehatsek died at a ripe age at Worli on 11th December 1891, and was cremated in Hindu fashion.  At the time of his death he was working at the translation of the third part of The Rauzat-us-Safa.[FN#697] In his last letter to Mr. Arbuthnot, after referring to his declining health, he finished by saying, “Hope, however, never dies; and as work occupies the mind, and keeps off despair, I am determined to translate for you, though slowly, the third part of the Rauzat-us-Safa, so as to make the history of the Khalifahs complete."[FN698]

Mr. Arbuthnot continued to take interest in Oriental matters and wrote prefaces for several translations by Rehatsek and Dr. Steingass, including the First Part of Rehatsek’s Rauzat-us-Safa (1891) and Steingass’s Assemblies of Al Haririr (1898).  His Arabic Authors appeared in 1890, his Mysteries of Chronology in 1900.  He died in May 1901, and was buried at Shamley Green, Guildford.  He left money for the Oriental Translation Fund, of which, it will be remembered, he was the founder, and his memory will always be honoured by Orientalists.  A memorial of him—­the Arbuthnot Institute—­was opened at Shamley Green on 31st May 1905.

Mr. Ashbee died in 1900, Dr. F. J. Steingass in January, 1903.

After Burton’s death, Mr. Letchford went to Bohemia as the guest of the Prince of Thurn and Taxis.  At Vienna his next resort, he painted many beautiful pictures, one of the best being founded on Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, “Silence.”  Finally he went to Naples, where he produced the series of pictures that has given him immortality—­the illustrations to The Arabian Nights.  Then followed days of darkness and trouble, but he was always courageous.  “He felt that what he had striven for so long was now within his reach; he had the presentiment that he was about to take those flights of art which are permitted to very few.”  His portrait of the son of Sir William Wollcock is a work of genius.

In July 1905, hearing that Mr. Letchford was ill, I wrote to his sister, Daisy,[FN#699] who lived with him.  The letter was received, and Mr. Letchford intended replying to it himself.  “He was only waiting to feel a little stronger,” wrote Miss Letchford, “he never thought the end was near.  On Monday morning of the 24th of July he still kept making wonderful plans for the future.  He had the room in which he spent his last hours crowded with flowers, and as he felt his powers failing him he recited Swinburne’s beautiful poem, ‘The Garden of Proserpine’: 

   “Though one were fair as roses
    His beauty clouds and closes.”

“Suddenly he lost consciousness, and he awoke from his comatose state only to repeat the identical words which were Sir Richard Burton’s last—­’I am dying—­I am dead.’  His beautiful soul had left this world for ever, for it was indeed a beautiful soul."[FN#700]

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Major Edward Burton, Sir Richard’s brother, died 31st October 1895—­after his terrible silence of nearly forty years.  He was never married.  Miss Stisted died in 1904.  So of Burton’s parents there are now no descendants.  Within fifteen years of his death, the family was extinct.

Of the friends and intimate acquaintances of Burton who still survive we must first mention Mr. A. C. Swinburne, Mr. Watts-Dunton and Mr. John Payne.  Mr. Swinburne has, year after year, it is scarcely necessary to say, added to his fame, and all Englishmen are proud of his genius.  The Definitive Edition of his works has delighted all his admirers; and just as we are going to press everyone is reading with intense interest his early novel Love’s Cross Currents.  Mr. Watts-Dunton is in excellent health, and his pen is as vigorous as ever.  He enjoys the proud position of being our greatest living literary critic.

Mr. Payne, who is still hard at work, ahs published since Burton’s death translations of The Novels of Matteo Bandello (six vols. 1890), the Quatrains of Omar Kheyyam (1898), and—­Atlantean task—­ the Poems of Hafiz (3 vols. 1901).  His Collected Poems (1862-1902) in two handsome volumes, appeared in 1902; and he has since issued Vigil and Vision (1903), Songs of Consolation, and Hamid the Luckless (1904).  In the last he returns to his old love, The Arabian Nights, most of the poems being founded on tales in that work.

Mr. W. F. Kirby, Dr. Grenfell Baker, Mrs. E. J. Burton, Major St. George Burton, Mr. Frederick Burton, Mr. P. P. Cautley, Mr. A. G. Ellis, and Professor Blumhardt are also living.  His excellency Yacoub Artin Pasha is still Minister of Instruction at Cairo; Mr. Tedder is still at the Athenaeum.

Our task is ended.  Sir Richard Burton was inadequately regarded in his lifetime, and even now no suitable memorial of him exists in the capital of the Empire, which is so deeply indebted to him.  Let us hope that this omission will soon be rectified.  His aura, however, still haunts the saloons of his beloved Athenaeum, and there he may be seen any day, by those who have eyes latched[FN#701] over, busily writing at the round table in the library—­white suit, shabby beaver, angel forehead, demon jaw, facial scar, and all.  He is as much an integral part of the building as the helmeted Minerva on the portico; and when tardy England erects a statue to him it ought to select a site in the immediate neighbourhood of his most cherished haunt.

Our task, we repeat, is ended.  No revolution, so far as we are aware, has distracted modern England, and Sir Richard and Lady Burton still sleep in sepulchral pomp in their marmorean Arab Tent at Mortlake.  More than fifteen years have now elapsed since, to employ a citation from The Arabian Nights, there came between them “the Destroyer of Delights and the Sunderer of Companies and glory be to Him who changeth not, neither ceaseth, and in whom all things have their term."[FN#702]

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   The end.

Verses on the Death of Richard Burton[FN#703] By Algernon Charles Swinburne

Night of light is it now, wherein
Sleeps, shut out from the wild world’s din,
   Wakes, alive with a life more clear,
One who found not on earth his kin?

Sleep were sweet for awhile, were dear
Surely to souls that were heartless here,
   Souls that faltered and flagged and fell,
Soft of spirit and faint of cheer.

A living soul that had strength to quell
Hope the spectre and fear the spell,
   Clear-eyed, content with a scorn sublime
And a faith superb, can it fare not well?

Life, the shadow of wide-winged time,
Cast from the wings that change as they climb,
   Life may vanish in death, and seem
Less than the promise of last year’s prime.

But not for us is the past a dream
Wherefrom, as light from a clouded stream,
   Faith fades and shivers and ebbs away,
Faint as the moon if the sundawn gleam.

Faith, whose eyes in the low last ray
Watch the fire that renews the day,
   Faith which lives in the living past,
Rock-rooted, swerves not as weeds that sway.

As trees that stand in the storm-wind fast
She stands, unsmitten of death’s keen blast,
   With strong remembrance of sunbright spring
Alive at heart to the lifeless last.

Night, she knows, may in no wise cling
To a soul that sinks not and droops not wing,
   A sun that sets not in death’s false night
Whose kingdom finds him not thrall but king.

Souls there are that for soul’s affright
Bow down and cower in the sun’s glad sight,
   Clothed round with faith that is one with fear,
And dark with doubt of the live world’s light.

But him we hailed from afar or near
As boldest born of his kinsfolk here
   And loved as brightest of souls that eyed
Life, time, and death with unchangeful cheer,

A wider soul than the world was wide,
Whose praise made love of him one with pride
   What part has death or has time in him,
Who rode life’s list as a god might ride?

While England sees not her old praise dim,
While still her stars through the world’s night swim
   A fame outshining her Raleigh’s fame,
A light that lightens her loud sea’s rim,

Shall shine and sound as her sons proclaim
The pride that kindles at Burton’s name. 
   And joy shall exalt their pride to be
The same in birth if in soul the same.

But we that yearn for a friend’s face,—­we
Who lack the light that on earth was he,—­
   Mourn, though the light be a quenchless flame
That shines as dawn on a tideless sea.

   Appendices

Appendix I Bibliography of Richard Burton

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1.  Grammar of the Jataki or Belochi Dialect. (Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.) 1849. 2.  Remarks on Dr. Dorn’s Chrestomathy of the Afghan Tongue. (Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.) 1849. 3.  Reports addressed to the Bombay Government.
   (1.) General Notes on Sind.
   (2.) Notes on the Population of Sind.
4.  Grammar of the Mooltanee Language. 5.  Goa and the Blue Mountains. 1851. 6.  Scinde, or the Unhappy Valley. 2 vols., 1851. 7.  Sindh, and the Races that inhabit the Valley of the Indus. 1851. 8.  Falconry in the Valley of the Indus. 1852. 9.  Commencement (with Dr. Steinhauser) of The Arabian Nights. 1852. 10.  A Complete System of Bayonet Exercise. 1853. 11.  The Kasidah. (Written.  Published in 1880.) 12.  El Islam. (Written.  Published with The Jew and the Gypsy in 1898.) 13.  Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah. 3 vols. 1855-6. 2nd edition, 1857; 3rd edition, 1879. 14.  First Footsteps in East Africa, or an Exploration of Harar. 1856. 15.  Lake Regions of Equatorial Africa. 2 vols., 1860. 16.  Volume 33 of the Royal Geographical Society. 1860. 17.  The City of the Saints and across the Rocky Mountains to California. 1861. 18.  Wanderings in West Africa. 2 vols., 1863. 19.  Prairie Traveller, by R. B. Marcy.  Edited by Burton, 1863. 20.  Abeokuta and the Cameroons. 2 vols., 1863. 21.  A Day among the Fans. 17th February 1863. 22.  The Nile Basin. 1864. 23.  A Mission to the King of Dahome. 2 vols., 1864. 24.  Marcy’s Prairie Traveller.  Notes by Burton, (Anthropological Review), 1864. 25.  Speech at Farewell Dinner given by the Anthropological Society to R. F. B. before his departure for South America, 4th April 1865.  (Anthropological Review, iii., 167-182.) 26.  Wit and Wisdom from West Africa. 1865. 27.  Pictorial Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina. 1865. 28.  Psychic Facts.  Stone Talk, by Francis Baker [Burton]. 1865. 29.  Notes on Certain Matters connected with the Dahoman. 1865. 30.  On an Hermaphrodite from the Cape de Verde Islands. 1866. 31.  Exploration of the Highlands of the Brazil. ... also Canoeing down 1,500 Miles of the great River Sao Francisco, from Sabara to the Sea. 2 vols., 1869. 32.  Vikram and the Vampire. (Adapted from the Baital Pachisi.) 1870. 33.  Letters from the Battlefields of Paraguay. 1870. 34.  Proverba Communia Syriaca. (Royal Asiatic Society.) 1871.  (See No. 37.) 35.  The Jew. (Written 1871.  Published 1898 with The Gypsy and El Islam). 36.  Zanzibar:  City, Island and Coast. 2 vols., 1872. 37.  Unexplored Syria, by Burton and C. Tyrwhitt Drake. 2 vols., 1872.  No. 24 is included in Vol. i. 38.  On Human Remains, and other Articles from Iceland. 1872. 39.  Medinah and Meccah. 3 vols. in one, 1873. 40.  Minas Geraes and the Occupations of the Present Inhabitants. 7th January 1873. 41.  Lacerda’s Journey to Cazembe in 1798, translated and annotated by Capt.  R. F. Burton. 1873. 42.  The Captivity of Hans Stade of Hesse, in A.D. 1547-1555, among the Wild Tribes

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   Posthumous Publications

81.  Morocco and the Moors.  By Henry Leared.  Edited by Burton.  Printed 1891. 82.  Il Pentamerone; or the Tale of Tales. 2 vols., 1893. 83.  The Kasidah.  An edition of 100 copies. 84.  Life of Sir Richard Burton, by Lady Burton. 1893. 85.  Catullus.  Printed 1894. 86.  Library Edition of The Arabian Nights. 87.  The Jew, the Gypsy, and El Islam.  Printed 1898. 88.  Wanderings in Three Continents. 1901.

Page 128

Appendix II

List of works included in the “Memorial Edition” of Burton’s works.  Only 7 vols. appeared.

1.  Pligrimage to Al Medinah and Meccah.  Vol. i., 1893. 2. " " " Vol. ii. " 3.  Mission to Gelele.  Vol. i., 1893. 4. " " Vol. ii., " 5.  Vikram and the Vampire. 1893. 6.  First Footsteps in East Africa.  Vol. i., 1894. 7. " " Vol. ii.

Appendix III

List of Biographies of Sir Richard Burton and Lady Burton.

By A. B. Richards, A. Wilson and St. Clair Baddeley. 1886. 
By F. Hitchman. 2 vols., 1887. 
By Lady Burton. 2 vols., 1893. 
By Miss G. M. Stisted. 1896. 
By W. J. Wilkins (The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton). 2 vols., 1897. 
By Thomas Wright. 2 vols., 1906.

Appendix IV

Extracts relating to Burton

From the Index to the Publications of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, including the Journal and Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London (1843-1871); the Journal and Memoirs of the Anthropological Society of London (1863-1871); the Anthropological Review; and the Journal of the Anthropological Institute (1871-1891).

On the Akkas.  Title only, with Remarks by E. B. Tylor. 27th March 1888.  J.A.I., [FN#705] xviii., 121.  On Anthropological Collections from the Holy Land.  With Discussion. 20th November 1871. 3 plates.  J.A.I., 300-312, 319, 320.  No.  II.  With Discussion. 4th December 1871. (2 plates).  J.A.I., i., 331-345.  No.  III. (Notes on the Hamah Stones, with Reduced Transcripts.) With Discussion. 4th March 1872. (10 plates.) J.A.I., ii., 41-52, 62, 63.  A Day among the Fans. 17th February 1863.  T.E.S.,[FN#706] iii., 36-47.  A Day among the Fans.  A.R.,[FN#707] i., 43-54.  A Day among the Fans.  Discussion. 24th March, 1863.  A.R., i., 185.  Ethnological Notes on M. du Chaillu’s Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa.  T.E.S. i., 316-326.  Farewell Dinner given by the Anthropological Society to R. F. B. before his departure for South America, 4th April, 1865.  A.R., iii., 167-182.  Flint Flakes from Egypt. 13th November 1877. (Wood cut.) J.A.I., vii., 323, 324.  On an Hermaphrodite from the Cape de Verde Islands.  Notice only. 17th April 1866.  A.R., iv.  J.A.S.,[FN#708] p. cl. xxv.  On Human Remains and other Articles from Iceland.  With Discussion. 19th November 1872.  J.A.I., ii., 342-344, 346, 347.  Kitchen-Midden in Brazil.  Anthrop.[FN#709] 44.  Letter. 15th May 1866.  A.R. iv., J.A.S., pp. cxciii., cxciv.  Letter.  Antrop., 2, 3.  The Long Wall of Salona and the Ruined Cities of Pharia and Gelsa di Lesina.  With Discussion. 8th July 1875. (2 plates and woodcut.) J.A.I., v., 252-299.  A Mission to Dahome.  Review by W. W. Reade. 

Page 129

Appendix V

Bibliography of Foster FitzGerald Arbuthnot

1.  Early Ideas.  A group of Hindoo Stories.  Collected by an Aryan. 1881. 2.  Persian Portraits.  A Sketch of Persian History, Literature and Politics. 1887. 3.  Arabic Authors.  A Manual of Arabian History and Literature. 1890. 4.  The Rauzat-us-safa. ...  By Muhammed ibu Khavendshah bin Mahmud, commonly called Mirkhond.  Edited by F. F. Arbuthnot. 1891. 5.  The Assemblies of Al Hariri. ...  Prefaced and indexed by F. F. Arbuthnot. 8. 1898. 6.  The Mysteries of Chronology. 1900. 7.  Life of Balzac.  Unpublished. 1902.

Appendix VI

Bibliography of F. Steingass

1.  English Arabic Dictionary, for the use of both travelers and students. pp. viii., 466. 1882. 2.  The Student’s Arabic-English Dictionary. pp. xvi., 1242. 1884. 3.  An Arabic Reading Book, by A. R. Birdwood, with preliminary remarks by F. Steingass. 1890. 4.  A Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary. ...  Being Johnson and Richardson’s Dictionary revised by F. Steingass. 1892. 5.  The last twenty-four Makamats of Abu Muhammad al Kasim al Hariri, forming Vol. ii.; Chenery’s translation of the first twenty-four Makamats is sold with it as Vol. i. 1898.

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Appendix VII

Bibliography of John Payne[FN#711]

1.  The Masque of Shadows and other Poems. 1870. 2.  Intaglios; Sonnets. 1871. 3.  Songs of Life and Death. 1872. 4.  Lautrec:  A Poem. 1878. 5.  The Poems of Francois Villon. 1878. 6.  New Poems. 1880. 7.  The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night.  Nine vols. 1882-4. 8.  Tales from the Arabic. 3 vols. 1884. 9.  The Decameron of Boccaccio. 3 vols. 1886. 10.  Alaeddin and Zein ul Asnam. 1889. 11.  The Novels of Matteo Bandello. 6 vols. 1890. 12.  The Quatrains of Omar Kheyyam. 1898. 13.  The Poems of Hafiz. 3 vols. 1901. 14.  Collected Poems. (1862-1902). 2 vols. 1902. 15.  Vigil and Vision.  New Sonnets. 1903. 16.  Songs of Consolation.  New Lyrics. 1904. 17.  Hamid the Luckless and other Tales in Verse. 1904.

Appendix VIII

Notes on Rehatsek’s Translation of the Beharistan

The Beharistan consists of eight chapters:  1.  Aromatic Herbs from the Life of Shaikh Junaid, etc.—­ a glorification of Sufism. 2.  Philosophical Ana. 3.  The Blooming Realms by Wisdom. 4.  The Trees of Liberality and Generosity. 5.  Tender State of the Nightingale of the Garden of Love. 6.  Breezes of Jocular Sallies. 7.  Signing Birds of Rhyme and Parrots of Poetry. 8.  Animal Fables. 
   We give the following as specimens of the Stories: 
   First Garden, pp. 14 and 15.

Story

Bayazid having been asked what the traditional and the divine law amounted to, he replied that the former is to abandon the world, and the latter to associate with the Lord. [These two laws are the Sonna and the Farz.]

Verses

O thou who concerning the law of the men of the period
Askest about the traditional and divine command;
The first is to turn the soul from the world away,
The second is to find the way of proximity to the Lord.

Story

Shebli (may his secret be sanctified) having become demented was taken to the hospital and visited by acquaintances.  He asked who they were, and they replied:  “Thy friends,” whereon he took up a stone and assaulted them.  They all began to run away, but he exclaimed:—­“O pretenders, return.  Friends do not flee from friends, and do not avoid the stones of their violence.”

Verses

He is a friend, who although meeting with enmity
From his friend, only becomes more attached to him. 
If he strikes him with a thousand stones of violence
The edifice of his love will only be made more firm by them.

Appendix IX

Notes on the Nigaristan and Other Unpublished Translations by
Rehatsek, Presented to the Royal Asiatic Society by F. F. Arbuthnot.

1.  The Nigaristan (Picture Gallery), by Mu’in-uddin Jawini.  Faithfully translated from the Persian by E. Rehatsek. 1888.

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The Preface is by Arbuthnot.  He points out that there are three great Persian didactic works, viz.:—­The Gulistan, or Rose Garden, by Sadi; The Nigaristan by Jawini; and The Beharistan by Jami.  The Nigaristan contains 534 stories in prose and verse.  Some particulars of it are given in Arbuthnot’s Persian Portraits (Quaritch, 1887), p. 106.  “These three books,” to use Arbuthnot’s works, “abound in pure and noble sentiments such as are to be found scattered throughout the Sacred Books of the East, the Old and New Testaments, and the Koran.”

The two following extracts will give some idea of the contents and style of the Nigaristan: 

Zohra[FN#712]

If Zohra plays the guitar a thousand years,
The musician’s song will always be this: 
Try to become the subject of a good tale,
Since everyone who lives becomes a tale.

Fath Mousuli’s Prayer

After having been very prosperous and rich, Fath Mousuli fell into poverty and misery.  After a while, however, when he had accustomed himself more to his position, he said, “O Lord, send me a revelation that I may know by what act I have deserved this gift, so that I may offer thanks for this favour.”

2.  Translations from the Persian, by the late E. Rehatsek.
   i.  A Persian Tract on the observances of the Zenanah, pp. 1 to
10.
   ii.  A Persian Essay on Hospitality, or Etiquette of Eating and
Drinking, pp. 20 to 29.
   iii.  A short Persian Manuscript on Physiognomies, pp. 1 to 8.

The last consists of a preface and ten chapters.  “These leaves,” we are told, “are the compendium of a treatise written by the Ema’n Fakhr-al-din Al-Ra’zy—­may God overwhelm him with forgiveness—­ on the Science of Physiognomies.”  We are told how the abode influences character; when the character of a man corresponds with that of a beast; that “the index of the dominant passion is the face;” that “the male is among all animals stronger and more perfect than the female,” and so on.

A short quotation must suffice: 

“When does the character of a man correspond to that of a beast?”

“If a man has a long face, protuberant eyes, and the tip of his nose long, drawn out like the snout of a dog, because as we have explained above, external appearances and internal qualities are closely connected with each other, so that if a man happens to resemble some animal he will possess the nature of it also.”

3.  Translations from the Persian and Arabic, by the late
E. Rehatsek. 
Persian.
   i.  Short anecdotes, stories and fables picked out and translated
from the Nuzhat al Yaman, pp. 1 to 7.
   ii.  The Merzuban Namah, from which animal fables have been
translated, pp. 7 to 21. 
Arabic.
   i.  Selected historical and other extracts from the celebrated
Arabic work, Al Moustairaf, pp. 1 to 5.
   ii.  Some extracts from the well-known Siraj-ul-moluk, pp. 5 to 7.
   iii.  Twenty-five chapters of Extracts from the Arabic Tuhfat
ekhoan us safa, under the title of “Discussion between man and
animals before the King of the Jinns,” pp. 7 to 33.

Page 132

4.  Biography of our Lord Muhammed, Apostle of Allah (Benediction of Allah and peace be on him).

According to the tradition of A’bdu-l-Malik Ebn Hasham, obtained from Muhammed Ebn Esahag.  Translated from the Arabic by Edward Rehatsek.  Preface by F. F. Arbuthnot.

There is some account of this work in F. F. Arbuthnot’s Arabic Authors, pp. 52 and 53.

Appendix X

W. F. Kirby

William Forsell Kirby, F.L.S., F.E.S., is the son of Samuel Kirby, banker, and his wife Lydia, nee Forsell; nephew of William Kirby, well-known in connection with the London Orphan Asylum; and cousin to the popular authoresses, Mary and Elizabeth Kirby.  Born at Leicester, 14th January 1844.  He was assistant in the museum of Royal Dublin Society (later National Museum of Science and Art) from 1867 to 1879, and later was transferred to the Zoological Department of the British Museum.  He is member of several learned societies, and has written a large number of Entomological Works.  He has made a special study of the European editions of the Arabian Nights and its imitations, and has a very fine collection of books relating to this subject.  To his contributions to Sir Richard Burton’s translation we have already alluded.  He has also written Ed-Dimiryaht and other poems (1867); The New Arabian Nights (1883); and The Hero of Esthonia (1905); and his translation of the Kalevala is in the press.  Mr. Kirby married in 1866, Johanna Maria Kappel, who died in 1893, leaving one son, William E. Kirby, M.D.

Appendix 11

Genealogical Table.  The Burtons of Shap

{Unable to reproduce the table.}

Footnotes: 

[FN#1] The few anecdotes that Lady Burton does give are taken from the books of Alfred B. Richards and others.

[FN#2] Lady Burton to Mrs. E. J. Burton, 23rd March 1891.  See Chapter xxxix.

[FN#3] A three days’ visit to Brighton, where I was the guest of Mrs. E. J. Burton, is one of the pleasantest of my recollections.

[FN#4] Mrs. Van Zeller had, in the first instance, been written to, in my behalf, by Mrs. E. J. Burton.

[FN#5] It is important to mention this because a few months ago a report went the round of the newspapers to the effect that the tomb was in ruins.

[FN#6] See Chapter xvii.

[FN#7] It is as if someone were to write “Allah is my shepherd, I shall not want,” &c., &c.,—­here and there altering a word—­ and call it a new translation of the Bible.

[FN#8] See almost any ’Cyclopaedia.  Of the hundreds of person with whom I discussed the subject, one, and only one, guessed how matters actually stood—­Mr. Watts-Dunton.

[FN#9] Between Payne and Burton on the one side and the adherents of E. W. Lane on the other.

Page 133

[FN#10] At the very outside, as before stated, only about a quarter of it can by any stretch of the imagination be called his.

[FN#11] Burton’s work on this subject will be remembered.

[FN#12] 31st July 1905.

[FN#13] See Chapters xxii. to xxix. and xxxv.  He confessed to having inserted in The Arabian Nights a story that had no business there.  See Chapter xxix., 136.

[FN#14] Thus she calls Burton’s friend Da Cunha, Da Gama, and gives Arbuthnot wrong initials.

[FN#15] I mean in a particular respect, and upon this all his friends are agreed.  But no man could have had a warmer heart.

[FN#16] Particularly pretty is the incident of the families crossing the Alps, when the children get snow instead of sugar.

[FN#17] Particularly Unexplored Syria and his books on Midian.

[FN#18] It will be noticed, too, that in no case have I mentioned where these books are to be found.  In fact, I have taken every conceivable precaution to make this particular information useless except to bona-fide students.

[FN#19] I am not referring to “Chaucerisms,” for practically they do not contain any.  In some two hundred letters there are three Chaucerian expressions.  In these instances I have used asterisks, but, really, the words themselves would scarcely have mattered.  There are as plain in the Pilgrim’s Progress.

[FN#20] I have often thought that the passage “I often wonder ... given to the world to-day,” contains the whole duty of the conscientious biographer in a nutshell.

[FN#21] Of course, after I had assured them that, in my opinion, the portions to be used were entirely free from matter to which exception could be taken.

[FN#22] In the spelling of Arabic words I have, as this is a Life of Burton, followed Burton, except, of course, when quoting Payne and others.  Burton always writes ‘Abu Nowas,’ Payne ‘Abu Nuwas,’ and so on.

[FN#23] Conclusion of The Beharistan.

[FN#24] They came from Shap.

[FN#25] Thus there was a Bishop Burton of Killala and an Admira Ryder Burton.  See Genealogical Tree in the Appendix.

[FN#26] Mrs. Burton made a brave attempt in 1875, but could never fill the gap between 1712 and 1750.

[FN#27] Now the residence of Mr. Andrew Chatto, the publisher.

[FN#28] In 1818 the Inspector writes in the Visitors’ Book:  “The Bakers seldom there.”  Still, the Bakers gave occasional treats to the children, and Mrs. Baker once made a present of a new frock to each of the girls.

[FN#29] Not at Elstree as Sir Richard Burton himself supposed and said, and as all his biographers have reiterated.  It is plainly stated in the Elstree register that he was born at Torquay.

[FN#30] The clergyman was David Felix.

[FN#31] Weare’s grave is unmemorialled, so the spot is known only in so far as the group in the picture indicates it.

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[FN#32] He died 24th October 1828, aged 41; his wife died 10th September 1848.  Both are buried at Elstree church, where there is a tablet to their memory.

[FN#33] For a time Antommarchi falsely bore the credit of it.

[FN#34] Maria, 18th March 1823; Edward, 31st August 1824.

[FN#35] Beneath is an inscription to his widow, Sarah Baker, who died 6th March, 1846, aged 74 years.

[FN#36] Her last subscription to the school was in 1825.  In 1840 she lived in Cumberland Place, London.

[FN#37] The original is now in the possession of Mrs. Agg, of Cheltenham.

[FN#38] Wanderings in West Africa, ii.  P. 143.

[FN#39] Life, i. 29.

[FN#40] Goldsmith’s Traveller, lines 73 and 74.

[FN#41] Life, i. 32.

[FN#42] It seems to have been first issued in 1801.  There is a review of it in The Anti-Jacobin for that year.

[FN#43] She was thrown from her carriage, 7th August 1877, and died in St. George’s Hospital.

[FN#44] Life, by Lady Burton, i. 67.

[FN#45] Dr. Greenhill (1814-1894), physician and author of many books.

[FN#46] Vikram and the Vampire, Seventh Story, about the pedants who resurrected the tiger.

[FN#47] He edited successively The Daily Telegraph and The Morning Advertiser, wrote plays and published several volumes of poetry.  He began The Career of R. F. Burton, and got as far as 1876.

[FN#48] City of the Saints, P. 513.

[FN#49] Short died 31st May 1879, aged 90.

[FN#50] In Thomas Morton’s Play Speed the Plough, first acted in 1800.

[FN#51] Grocers.

[FN#52] Life, i. 81.

[FN#53] Or so he said.  The President of Trinity writes to me:  “He was repaid his caution money in April 1842.  The probability is that he was rusticated for a period.”  If so, he could have returned to Oxford after the loss of a term or two.

[FN#54] He died 17th November 1842, aged 65.

[FN#55] Robert Montgomery 1807-1855.

[FN#56] “My reading also ran into bad courses—­Erpenius, Zadkiel, Falconry, Cornelius Agrippa”—­Burton’s Autobiographical Fragment.

[FN#57] Sarah Baker (Mrs. Francis Burton), Georgiana Baker (Mrs. Bagshaw).

[FN#58] Sind Revisited.  Vol. ii. pp. 78-83.

[FN#59] 5th May 1843.  He was first of twelve.

[FN#60] “How,” asked Mr. J. F. Collingwood of him many years after, “do you manage to learn a language so rapidly and thoroughly?” To which he replied:  “I stew the grammar down to a page which I carry in my pocket.  Then when opportunity offers, or is made, I get hold of a native—­preferably an old woman, and get her to talk to me.  I follow her speech by ear and eye with the keenest attention, and repeat after her every word as nearly as possible, until I acquire the exact accent of the speaker and the true meaning of the words employed by her.  I do not leave her before the lesson is learnt, and so on with others until my own speech is indistinguishable from that of the native.”—­Letter from Mr. Collingwood to me, 22nd June 1905.

Page 135

[FN#61] The Tota-kahani is an abridgment of the Tuti-namah (Parrot-book) of Nakhshabi.  Portions of the latter were translated into English verse by J. Hoppner, 1805.  See also Anti-Jacobin Review for 1805, p. 148.

[FN#62] Unpublished letter to Mr. W. F. Kirby, 8th April 1885.  See also Lib.  Ed. of The Arabian Nights, viii., p. 73, and note to Night V.

[FN#63] This book owes whatever charm it possesses chiefly to the apophthegms embedded in it.  Thus, “Even the gods cannot resist a thoroughly obstinate man.”  “The fortune of a man who sits, sits also.”  “Reticence is but a habit.  Practise if for a year, and you will find it harder to betray than to conceal your thoughts.”

[FN#64] Now it is a town of 80,000 inhabitants.

[FN#65] Sind Revisited, i. 100.

[FN#66] “The first City of Hind.”  See Arabian Nights, where it is called Al Mansurah, “Tale of Salim.”  Burton’s A. N., Sup. i., 341.  Lib Ed. ix., 230.

[FN#67] Mirza=Master.  Burton met Ali Akhbar again in 1876.  See chapter xviii., 84.

[FN#68] Yoga.  One of the six systems of Brahmanical philosophy, the essence of which is meditation.  Its devotees believe that by certain ascetic practices they can acquire command over elementary matter.  The Yogi go about India as fortune-tellers.

[FN#69] Burton used to say that this vice is prevalent in a zone extending from the South of Spain through Persia to China and then opening out like a trumpet and embracing all aboriginal America.  Within this zone he declared it to be endemic, outside it sporadic.

[FN#70] Burton’s Arabian Nights, Terminal Essay, vol. x. pp. 205, 206, and The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton, by W. H. Wilkins, ii., 730.

[FN#71] Married in 1845.

[FN#72] She died 6th March 1846, aged 74.

[FN#73] He died 5th October 1858.  See Sind Revisited, ii. 261.

[FN#74] Camoens, born at Lisbon in 1524, reached Goa in 1553.  In 1556 he was banished to Macao, where he commenced The Lusiads.  He returned to Goa in 1558, was imprisoned there, and returned to Portugal in 1569.  The Lusiads appeared in 1572.  He died in poverty in 1580, aged 56.

[FN#75] The Arabian Nights.

[FN#76] Who was broken on the wheel by Lord Byron for dressing Camoens in “a suit of lace.”  See English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.

[FN#77] Begun at Goa 1847, resumed at Fernando Po 1860-64, continued in Brazil and at Trieste.  Finished at Cairo 1880.

[FN#78] Napier was again in India in 1849.  In 1851 he returned to England, where he died 29th August 1853, aged 71.

[FN#79] Life of Sir Charles Napier, by Sir W. Napier.

[FN#80] The Beharistan, 1st Garden.

[FN#81] She married Col.  T. Pryce Harrison.  Her daughter is Mrs. Agg, of Cheltenham.

[FN#82] She died 10th September 1848, and is buried at Elstree.

[FN#83] Elisa married Colonel T. E. H. Pryce.

Page 136

[FN#84] That is from Italy, where his parents were living.

[FN#85] Sir Henry Stisted, who in 1845 married Burton’s sister.

[FN#86] India, some 70 miles from Goa.

[FN#87] His brother.

[FN#88] The Ceylonese Rebellion of 1848.

[FN#89] See Chapter iii., 11.

[FN#90] See Arabian Nights, Terminal Essay D, and The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton, vol. ii., p. 730.

[FN#91] His Grandmother Baker had died in 1846.

[FN#92] The Pains of Sleep.

[FN#93] Byron:  Childe Harold, iv. 56.

[FN#94] Ariosto’s Orlando was published in 1516; The Lusiads appeared in 1572.

[FN#95] Temple Bar, vol. xcii., p. 335.

[FN#96] As did that of the beauty in The Baital-Pachisi—­Vikram and the Vampire.  Meml.  Ed., p. 228.

[FN#97] Tale of Abu-el-Husn and his slave girl, Tawaddud.—­The Arabian Nights.

[FN#98] Life, i., 167.

[FN#99] She became Mrs. Segrave.

[FN#100] See Burton’s Stone Talk, 1865.  Probably not “Louise” at all, the name being used to suit the rhyme.

[FN#101] Mrs. Burton was always very severe on her own sex.

[FN#102] See Stone Talk.

[FN#103] See Chapter x.

[FN#104] The original, which belonged to Miss Stisted, is now in the possession of Mr. Mostyn Pryce, of Gunley Hall.

[FN#105] Of course, since Arbuthnot’s time scores of men have taken the burden on their shoulders, and translations of the Maha-Bharata, the Ramayana, and the works of Kalidasa, Hafiz, Sadi, and Jami, are now in the hands of everybody.

[FN#106] Preface to Persian Portraits.

[FN#107] Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah, Memorial Ed., vol. i., p. 16.

[FN#108] Burton dedicated to Mr. John Larking the 7th volume of The Arabian Nights.

[FN#109] Haji Wali in 1877 accompanied Burton to Midian.  He died 3rd August 1883, aged 84.  See Chapter xx.

[FN#110] He died at Cairo, 15th October 1817.

[FN#111] That is, in the direction of Mecca.

[FN#112] Pilgrimage, Memorial Ed., i., 116.

[FN#113] See Preface to The Kasidah, Edition published in 1894.

[FN#114] Pilgrimage, Memorial Ed., i., 165.

[FN#115] A chieftain celebrated for his generosity.  There are several stories about him in The Arabian Nights.

[FN#116] An incrementative of Fatimah.

[FN#117] Burton says of the Arabs, “Above all their qualities, personal conceit is remarkable; they show it in their strut, in their looks, and almost in every word.  ’I am such a one, the son of such a one,’ is a common expletive, especially in times of danger; and this spirit is not wholly to be condemned, as it certainly acts as an incentive to gallant actions.”—­Pilgrimage, ii, 21., Memorial Ed.

[FN#118] Pilgrimage to Meccah, Memorial Ed., i., 193.

[FN#119] A creation of the poet Al-Asma’i.  He is mentioned in The Arabian Nights.

Page 137

[FN#120] How this tradition arose nobody seems to know.  There are several theories.

[FN#121] It is decorated to resemble a garden.  There are many references to it in the Arabian Nights.  Thus the tale of Otbah and Rayya (Lib.  Ed., v., 289) begins “One night as I sat in the garden between the tomb and the pulpit.”

[FN#122] Pilgrimage to Meccah (Mem.  Ed., i., 418).

[FN#123] Mohammed’s son-in-law.

[FN#124] Mohammed’s wet nurse.

[FN#125] Son of Mohammed and the Coptic girl Mariyah, sent to Mohammed as a present by Jarih, the Governor of Alexandria.

[FN#126] Khadijah, the first wife, lies at Mecca.

[FN#127] Known to us chiefly through Dr. Carlyle’s poor translation.  See Pilgrimage, ii., 147.

[FN#128] Here am I.

[FN#129] Readers of The Arabian Nights will remember the incident in the Story of the Sweep and the Noble Lady.  “A man laid hold of the covering of the Kaaba, and cried out from the bottom of his heart, saying, I beseech thee, O Allah, etc.”

[FN#130] See Genesis xxi., 15.

[FN#131] The stone upon which Abraham stood when he built the Kaaba.  Formerly it adjoined the Kaaba.  It is often alluded to in The Arabian Nights.  The young man in The Mock Caliph says, “This is the Place and thou art Ibrahim.”

[FN#132] See also The Arabian Nights, The Loves of Al-Hayfa and Yusuf, Burton’s A.N. (Supplemental), vol. v.; Lib.  Ed., vol. xi., p. 289.

[FN#133] Burton’s A.N., v., 294; Lib.  Ed., iv., 242.

[FN#134] See Chapter ix.

[FN#135] Sporting Truth.

[FN#136] The reader may believe as much of this story as he likes.

[FN#137] The man was said to have been killed in cold blood simply to silence a wagging tongue.

[FN#138] See Shakespeare’s King John, act i., scene i.

[FN#139] Burton’s translation of the Lusiads, vol. ii., p. 425.

[FN#140] Although Burton began El Islam about 1853, he worked at it years after.  Portions of it certainly remind one of Renan’s Life of Jesus, which appeared in 1863.

[FN#141] To some of the beauties of The Arabian Nights we shall draw attention in Chapter 27.

[FN#142] Of course both Payne and Burton subsequently translated the whole.

[FN#143] First Footsteps in East Africa. (The Harar Book.) Memorial Ed., p. 26.

[FN#144] Esther, vi., 1.

[FN#145] Boulac is the port of Cairo.  See Chapter xi..

[FN#146] Zeyn al Asnam, Codadad, Aladdin, Baba Abdalla, Sidi Nouman, Cogia Hassan Alhabbal, Ali-Baba, Ali Cogia, Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Peri-Banou, The two Sisters who were jealous of their Cadette.

[FN#147] Edward William Lane (1801-1876).  He is also remembered on account of his Arabic Lexicon.  Five volumes appeared in 1863-74, the remainder by his grand-nephew Stanley Lane-Poole, in 1876-1890.

Page 138

[FN#148] Every student, however, must be grateful to Lane for his voluminous and valuable notes.

[FN#149] Lady Burton states incorrectly that the compact was made in the “winter of 1852,” but Burton was then in Europe.

[FN#150] My authorities are Mr. John Payne, Mr. Watts-Dunton and Burton’s letters.  See Chapter 22, 104, and Chapter 23, 107.

[FN#151] It was prophesied that at the end of time the Moslem priesthood would be terribly corrupt.

[FN#152] Later he was thoroughly convinced of the soundness of this theory.  See Chapters xxii. to xxx.

[FN#153] In the Koran.

[FN#154] Burton’s A.N., ii. 323; Lib.  Ed., ii., p. 215.

[FN#155] When the aloe sprouts the spirits of the deceased are supposed to be admitted to the gardens of Wak (Paradise).  Arabian Nights, Lib.  Ed., i. 127.

[FN#156] To face it out.

[FN#157] First Footsteps in East Africa, i., 196.

[FN#158] First Footsteps in East Africa, ii., 31.

[FN#159] The legend of Moga is similar to that of Birnam Wood’s March, used by Shakespeare in Macbeth.

[FN#160] The story of these adventures is recorded in First Footsteps in East Africa, dedicated to Lumsden, who, in its pages, is often apostrophised as “My dear L.”

[FN#161] Afterwards Lord Strangford.  The correspondence on this subject was lent me by Mr. Mostyn Pryce, who received it from Miss Stisted.

[FN#162] The Traveller.

[FN#163] Burton’s Camoens, ii., 445.

[FN#164] The marriage did not take place till 22nd January 1861.  See Chapter x.

[FN#165] This is now in the public library at Camberwell.

[FN#166] In England men are slaves to a grinding despotism of conventionalities.  Pilgrimage to Meccah, ii., 86.

[FN#167] Unpublished letter to Miss Stisted, 23rd May 1896.

[FN#168] We have given the stanza in the form Burton first wrote it—­beginning each line with a capital.  The appearance of Mombasa seems to have been really imposing in the time of Camoens.  Its glory has long since departed.

[FN#169] These little bags were found in his pocket after his death.  See Chapter xxxviii.

[FN#170] This story nowhere appears in Burton’s books.  I had it from Mr. W. F. Kirby, to whom Burton told it.

[FN#171] The Lake Regions of Central Africa, 1860.

[FN#172] Subsequently altered to “This gloomy night, these grisly waves, etc.”  The stanza is really borrowed from Hafiz.  See Payne’s Hafiz, vol. i., p.2.

  “Dark the night and fears possess us, Of the waves and whirlpools
     wild: 
   Of our case what know the lightly Laden on the shores that
     dwell?”

[FN#173] The ruler, like the country, is called Kazembe.

[FN#174] Dr. Lacerda died at Lunda 18th October 1798.  Burton’s translation, The Lands of the Cazembe, etc., appeared in 1873.

Page 139

[FN#175] The Beharistan. 1st Garden.

[FN#176] J. A. Grant, born 1827, died 10th February, 1892.

[FN#177] The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton, i., 149.

[FN#178] He is, of course, simply endorsing the statement of Hippocrates:  De Genitura:  “Women, if married, are more healthy, if not, less so.”

[FN#179] The anecdotes in this chapter were told me by one of Burton’s friends.  They are not in his books.

[FN#180] This letter was given by Mrs. FitzGerald (Lady Burton’s sister) to Mr. Foskett of Camberwell.  It is now in the library there, and I have to thank the library committee for the use of it.

[FN#181] Life, i., 345.

[FN#182] 1861.

[FN#183] Vambery’s work, The Story of my Struggles, appeared in October 1904.

[FN#184] The first edition appeared in 1859.  Burton’s works contain scores of allusions to it.  To the Gold Coast, ii., 164.  Arabian Nights (many places), etc., etc.

[FN#185] Life of Lord Houghton, ii., 300.

[FN#186] Lord Russell was Foreign Secretary from 1859-1865.

[FN#187] Wanderings in West Africa, 2 vols., 1863.

[FN#188] The genuine black, not the mulatto, as he is careful to point out.  Elsewhere he says the negro is always eight years old—­ his mind never develops.  Mission to Gelele, i, 216.

[FN#189] Wanderings in West Africa, vol. ii., p. 283.

[FN#190] See Mission to Gelele, ii., 126.

[FN#191] Although the anecdote appears in his Abeokuta it seems to belong to this visit.

[FN#192] Mrs. Maclean, “L.E.L.,” went out with her husband, who was Governor of Cape Coast Castle.  She was found poisoned 15th October 1838, two days after her arrival.  Her last letters are given in The Gentleman’s Magazine, February 1839.

[FN#193] See Chapter xxii.

[FN#194] Lander died at Fernando Po, 16th February 1834.

[FN#195] For notes on Fernando Po see Laird and Oldfield’s Narrative of an Expedition into the Interior of Africa, etc. (1837), Winwood Reade’s Savage Africa, and Rev. Henry Roe’s West African Scenes (1874).

[FN#196] Told me by the Rev. Henry Roe.

[FN#197] Life, and various other works.

[FN#198] See Abeokuta and the Cameroons, 2 vols., 1863.

[FN#199] Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo, 2 vols., 1876.

[FN#200] “Who first bewitched our eyes with Guinea gold.”  Dryden, Annus Mirabilis, 67.

[FN#201] Incorporated subsequently with a Quarterly Journal, The Anthropological Review.

[FN#202] See Chapter xxix., 140.

[FN#203] Foreword to The Arabian Nights, vol. 1.  The Arabian Nights, of course, was made to answer the purpose of this organ.

[FN#204] See Wanderings in West Africa, vol. 2, p. 91. footnote.

[FN#205] Burton.

[FN#206] Afa is the messenger of fetishes and of deceased friends.  Thus by the Afa diviner people communicate with the dead.

Page 140

[FN#207] This was Dr. Lancaster’s computation.

[FN#208] Communicated to me by Mr. W. H. George, son of Staff-Commander C. George, Royal Navy.

[FN#209] Rev. Edward Burton, Burton’s grandfather, was Rector of Tuam.  Bishop Burton, of Killala, was the Rev. Edward Burton’s brother.

[FN#210] The copy is in the Public Library, High Street, Kensington, where most of Burton’s books are preserved.

[FN#211] Spanish for “little one.”

[FN#212] The Lusiads, 2 vols., 1878.  Says Aubertin, “In this city (Sao Paulo) and in the same room in which I began to read The Lusiads in 1860, the last stanza of the last canto was finished on the night of 24th February 1877.”

[FN#213] Burton dedicated the 1st vol. of his Arabian Nights to Steinhauser.

[FN#214] Dom Pedro, deposed 15th November 1889.

[FN#215] This anecdote differs considerably from Mrs. Burton’s version, Life, i., 438.  I give it, however, as told by Burton to his friends.

[FN#216] Lusiads, canto 6, stanza 95.  Burton subsequently altered and spoilt it.  The stanza as given will be found on the opening page of the Brazil book.

[FN#217] He describes his experiences in his work The Battlefields of Paraguay.

[FN#218] Unpublished.  Told me by Mrs. E. J. Burton.  Manning was made a cardinal in 1875.

[FN#219] Mr. John Payne, however, proves to us that the old Rashi’d, though a lover of the arts, was also a sensual and bloodthirsty tyrant.  See Terminal Essay to his Arabian Nights, vol. ix.

[FN#220] She thus signed herself after her very last marriage.

[FN#221] Mrs. Burton’s words.

[FN#222] Life i., p. 486.

[FN#223] Arabian Nights.  Lib.  Ed, i., 215.

[FN#224] Burton generally writes Bedawi and Bedawin.  Bedawin (Bedouin) is the plural form of Bedawi.  Pilgrimage to Meccah, vol. ii., p. 80.

[FN#225] 1870.  Three months after Mrs. Burton’s arrival.

[FN#226] It contained, among other treasures, a Greek manuscript of the Bible with the Epistle of Barnabas and a portion of the Shepherd of Hermas.

[FN#227] 1 Kings, xix., 15; 2 Kings, viii., 15.

[FN#228] The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton, ii., 386.

[FN#229] 11th July 1870.

[FN#230] E. H. Palmer (1840-1882).  In 1871 he was appointed Lord Almoner’s Professor of Arabic at Cambridge.  He was murdered at Wady Sudr, 11th August 1882.  See Chapter xxiii.

[FN#231] Renan.  See, too, Paradise Lost, Bk. 1.  Isaiah (xvii., 10) alludes to the portable “Adonis Gardens” which the women used to carry to the bier of the god.

[FN#232] The Hamath of Scripture. 2.  Sam., viii., 9; Amos, vi., 2.

[FN#233] See illustrations in Unexplored Syria, by Burton and Drake.

[FN#234] The Land of Midian Revisited, ii., 73.

[FN#235] Life of Edward H. Palmer, p. 109.

Page 141

[FN#236] Chica is the feminine of Chico (Spanish).

[FN#237] Mrs. Burton’s expression.

[FN#238] District east of the Sea of Galilee.

[FN#239] Job, chapter xxx.  “But now they that are younger than I have me in derision ... who cut up mallows by the bushes and juniper roots for their meat.”

[FN#240] Greek Geographer. 250 B.C.

[FN#241] Burton’s words.

[FN#242] Published in 1898.

[FN#243] Life, i., 572.

[FN#244] The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton, ii., 504.

[FN#245] The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton, ii., 505.

[FN#246] Temple Bar, vol. xcii., p. 339.

[FN#247] Near St. Helens, Lancs.

[FN#248] Life of Sir Richard Burton, by Lady Burton, i., 591.

[FN#249] 2nd November 1871.

[FN#250] The fountain was sculptured by Miss Hosmer.

[FN#251] 27th February 1871.  Celebration of the Prince of Wales’s recovery from a six weeks’ attack of typhoid fever.

[FN#252] Her husband’s case.

[FN#253] Of course, this was an unnecessary question, for there was no mistaking the great scar on Burton’s cheek; and Burton’s name was a household word.

[FN#254] February 1854.  Sir Roger had sailed from Valparaiso to Rio Janeiro.  He left Rio in the “Bella,” which was lost at sea.

[FN#255] Undated.

[FN#256] Knowsley is close to Garswood, Lord Gerard’s seat.

[FN#257] Letter, 4th January 1872.

[FN#258] Garswood, Newton-le-Willows, Lancashire.

[FN#259] Unpublished letter.

[FN#260] The True Life, p. 336.

[FN#261] It had just been vacated by the death of Charles Lever, the novelist.  Lever had been Consul at Trieste from 1867 to 1872.  He died at Trieste, 1st June 1872.

[FN#262] Near Salisbury.

[FN#263] Burton’s A.N. iv.  Lib.  Ed., iii., 282.  Payne’s A.N. iii., 10.

[FN#264] Told me by Mr. Henry Richard Tedder, librarian at the Athenaeum from 1874.

[FN#265] Burton, who was himself always having disputes with cab-drivers and everybody else, probably sympathised with Mrs. Prodgers’ crusade.

[FN#266] Of 2nd November 1891.

[FN#267] Lake Regions of Equatorial Africa (2 vols. 1860).  Vol. 33 of the Royal Geographical Society, 1860, and The Nile Basin, 1864.

[FN#268] A portion was written by Mrs. Burton.

[FN#269] These are words used by children.  Unexplored Syria, i., 288.  Nah really means sweetstuff.

[FN#270] Afterwards Major-General.  He died in April 1887.  See Chapter ix., 38.

[FN#271] Mrs. Burton and Khamoor followed on Nov. 18th.

[FN#272] Burton’s works contain many citations from Ovid.  Thus there are two in Etruscan Bologna, pp. 55 and 69, one being from the Ars Amandi and the other from The Fasti.

[FN#273] Stendhal, born 1783.  Consul at Trieste and Civita Vecchia from 1830 to 1839.  Died in Paris, 23rd March 1842.  Burton refers to him in a footnote to his Terminal Essay in the Nights on “Al Islam.”

Page 142

[FN#274] These are all preserved now at the Central Library, Camberwell.

[FN#275] Now in the possession of Mrs. St. George Burton.

[FN#276] In later times Dr. Baker never saw more than three tables.

[FN#277] Mrs. Burton, was, of course, no worse than many other society women of her day.  Her books bristle with slang.

[FN#278] It is now in the possession of Mrs. E. J. Burton, 31, Whilbury Road, Brighton.

[FN#279] Later Burton was himself a sad sinner in this respect.  His studies made him forget his meals.

[FN#280] His usual pronunciation of the word.

[FN#281] 12th August 1874.

[FN#282] Letter to Lord Houghton.

[FN#283] Dr. Grenfell Baker, afterwards Burton’s medical attendant.

[FN#284] Hell.

[FN#285] A.E.I. (Arabia, Egypt, Indian).

[FN#286] Burton’s A. N., v., 304.  Lib.  Ed., vol. 4., p. 251.

[FN#287] About driving four horses.

[FN#288] I do not know to what this alludes.

[FN#289] See Chapter i.

[FN#290] Its population is now 80,000.

[FN#291] Sind Revisited, i., 82.

[FN#292] See Sind Revisited, vol. ii., pp. 109 to 149.

[FN#293] Where Napier with 2,800 men defeated 22,000.

[FN#294] Romance of Isabel Lady Burton, ii., 584.

[FN#295] Dr. Da Cunha, who was educated at Panjim, spent several years in England, and qualified at the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons.  He built up a large practice in Goa.

[FN#296] There are many English translations, from Harrington’s, 1607, to Hoole’s, 1783, and Rose’s, 1823.  The last is the best.

[FN#297] Sir Henry Stisted died of consumption in 1876.

[FN#298] Robert Bagshaw, he married Burton’s aunt, Georgiana Baker.

[FN#299] His cousin Sarah, who married Col.  T. Pryce Harrison.  See Chapter iv. and Chapter xix.

[FN#300] Burton’s brother.

[FN#301] Romance of Isabel Lady Burton, ii., 656.

[FN#302] Romance of Isabel Lady Burton.

[FN#303] Burton’s A.N., Suppl., ii., 61.  Lib.  Ed. ix., p. 286, note.

[FN#304] Thus, Balzac, tried to discover perpetual motion, proposed to grow pineapples which were to yield enormous profits, and to make opium the staple of Corsica, and he studied mathematical calculations in order to break the banks at Baden-Baden.

[FN#305] We are telling the tale much as Mrs. Burton told it, but we warn the reader that it was one of Mrs. Burton’s characteristics to be particularly hard on her own sex and also that she was given to embroidering.

[FN#306] Preface to Midian Revisited, xxxiv.

[FN#307] Ex Ponto iii., i., 19.

[FN#308] The Gold Mines of Midian and the Ruined Midianite Cities (C.  Kegan Paul and Co.) It appeared in 1878.

[FN#309] The Land of Midian Revisited, ii., 254.

Page 143

[FN#310] Kindly copied for me by Miss Gordon, his daughter.

[FN#311] They left on July 6th (1878) and touched at Venice, Brindisi, Palermo and Gibraltar.

[FN#312] November 1876.

[FN#313] From the then unpublished Kasidah.

[FN#314] The famous Yogis.  Their blood is dried up by the scorching sun of India, they pass their time in mediation, prayer and religious abstinence, until their body is wasted, and they fancy themselves favoured with divine revelations.

[FN#315] The Spiritualist. 13th December 1878.

[FN#316] In short, she had considerable natural gifts, which were never properly cultivated.

[FN#317] See Chapter xxxviii.

[FN#318] Arabia, Egypt, India.

[FN#319] Letter to Miss Stisted.

[FN#320] She says, I left my Indian Christmas Book with Mr. Bogue on 7th July 1882, and never saw it after.

[FN#321] Burton dedicated to Yacoub Pasha Vol. x. of his Arabian Nights.  They had then been friends for 12 years.

[FN#322] Inferno, xix.

[FN#323] Canto x., stanza 153.

[FN#324] Canto x., stanzas 108-118.

[FN#325] Between the Indus and the Ganges.

[FN#326] A Glance at the Passion Play, 1881.

[FN#327] The Passion Play at Ober Ammergau, 1900.

[FN#328] A Fireside King, 3 vol., Tinsley 1880.  Brit.  Mus. 12640 i. 7.

[FN#329] See Chapter xx., 96.  Maria Stisted died 12th November 1878.

[FN#330] See Chapter xli.

[FN#331] Only an admirer of Omar Khayyam could have written The Kasidah, observes Mr. Justin McCarthy, junior; but the only Omar Khayyam that Burton knew previous to 1859, was Edward FitzGerald.  I am positive that Burton never read Omar Khayyam before 1859, and I doubt whether he ever read the original at all.

[FN#332] For example:—­
   “That eve so gay, so bright, so glad, this morn so dim and sad
     and grey;
   Strange that life’s Register should write this day a day, that
     day a day.”

Amusingly enough, he himself quotes this as from Hafiz in a letter to Sir Walter Besant.  See Literary Remains of Tyrwhitt Drake, p. 16.  See also Chapter ix.

[FN#333] We use the word by courtesy.

[FN#334] See Life, ii., 467, and end of 1st volume of Supplemental Nights.  Burton makes no secret of this.  There is no suggestion that they are founded upon the original of Omar Khayyam.  Indeed, it is probable that Burton had never, before the publication of The Kasidah, even heard of the original, for he imagined like J. A. Symonds and others, that FitzGerald’s version was a fairly literal translation.  When, therefore, he speaks of Omar Khayyam he means Edward FitzGerald.  I have dealt with this subject exhaustively in my Life of Edward FitzGerald.

[FN#335] Couplet 186.

[FN#336] Preserved in the Museum at Camberwell.  It is inserted in a copy of Camoens.

Page 144

[FN#337] Italy having sided with Prussia in the war of 1866 received as her reward the long coveted territory of Venice.

[FN#338] Born 1844.  Appointed to the command of an East Coast expedition to relieve Livingstone, 1872.  Crossed Africa 1875.

[FN#339] “Burton as I knew him,” by V. L. Cameron.

[FN#340] Nearly all his friends noticed this feature in his character and have remarked it to me.

[FN#341] The number is dated 5th November 1881.  Mr. Payne had published specimens of his proposed Translation, anonymously, in the New Quarterly Review for January and April, 1879.

[FN#342] This was a mistake.  Burton thought he had texts of the whole, but, as we shall presently show, there were several texts which up to this time he had not seen.  His attention, as his letters indicate, was first drawn to them by Mr. Payne.

[FN#343] In the light of what follows, this remark is amusing.

[FN#344] See Chapter xxiii, 107.

[FN#345] In the Masque of Shadows.

[FN#346] New Poems, p. 19.

[FN#347] The Masque of Shadows, p. 59.

[FN#348] Published 1878.

[FN#349] New Poems, p. 179.

[FN#350] Published 1871.

[FN#351] Mr. Watts-Dunton, the Earl of Crewe, and Dr. Richard Garnett have also written enthusiastically of Mr. Payne’s poetry.

[FN#352] Of “The John Payne Society” (founded in 1905) and its publications particulars can be obtained from The Secretary, Cowper School, Olney.  It has no connection with the “Villon Society,” which publishes Mr. Payne’s works.

[FN#353] See Chapter xi., 43.

[FN#354] Dr. Badger died 19th February, 1888, aged 73.

[FN#355] To Payne. 20th August 1883.

[FN#356] No doubt the “two or three pages” which he showed to Mr. Watts-Dunton.

[FN#357] This is a very important fact.  It is almost incredible, and yet it is certainly true.

[FN#358] Prospectuses.

[FN#359] Its baths were good for gout and rheumatism.  Mrs. Burton returned to Trieste on September 11th.

[FN#360] This is, of course, a jest.  He repeats the jest, with variation, in subsequent letters.

[FN#361] The author wishes to say that the names of several persons are hidden by the dashes in these chapters, and he has taken every care to render it impossible for the public to know who in any particular instance is intended.

[FN#362] Of course, in his heart, Burton respected Lane as a scholar.

[FN#363] Apparently Galland’s.

[FN#364] Mr. Payne’s system is fully explained in the Introductory Note to Vol. i. and is consistently followed through the 13 volumes (Arabian Nights, 9 vols.; Tales from the Arabic, 3 vols.; Alaeddin and Zein-ul-Asnam, i vol.).

[FN#365] One of the poets of The Arabian Nights.

[FN#366] See Chapter iii. 11.

[FN#367] He published some of this information in his Terminal Essay.

Page 145

[FN#368] Perhaps we ought again to state most emphatically that Burton’s outlook was strictly that of the student.  He was angry because he had, as he believed, certain great truths to tell concerning the geographical limits of certain vices, and an endeavour was being made to prevent him from publishing them.

[FN#369] Burton’s A. N. vi., 180; Lib.  Ed. v., 91, The Three Wishes, or the Man who longed to see the Night of Power.

[FN#370] The Lady and her Five Suitors, Burton’s A. N., vi., 172; Lib.  Ed., v., 83; Payne’s A. N., v., 306.  Of course Mr. Payne declined to do this.

[FN#371] Possibly this was merely pantomime.  Besant, in his Life of Palmer, p. 322, assumes that Matr Nassar, or Meter, as he calls him, was a traitor.

[FN#372] Cloak.

[FN#373] Cursing is with Orientals a powerful weapon of defence.  Palmer was driven to it as his last resource.  If he could not deter his enemies in this way he could do no more.

[FN#374] Burton’s Report and Besant’s Life of Palmer, p. 328.

[FN#375] See Chapter vi., 22.

[FN#376] Palmer translated only a few songs in Hafiz.  Two will be found in that well-known Bibelot, Persian Love Songs.

[FN#377] There were two editions of Mr. Payne’s Villon.  Burton is referring to the first.

[FN#378] Augmentative of palazzo, a gentleman’s house.

[FN#379] We have altered this anecdote a little so as to prevent the possibility of the blanks being filled up.

[FN#380] That which is knowable.

[FN#381] Let it be remembered that the edition was (to quote the title-page) printed by private subscription and for private circulation only and was limited to 500 copies at a high price.  Consequently the work was never in the hands of the general public.

[FN#382] This was a favourite saying of Burton’s.  We shall run against it elsewhere.  See Chapter xxxiv., 159.  Curiously enough, there is a similar remark in Mr. Payne’s Study of Rabelais written eighteen years previous, and still unpublished.

[FN#383] Practically there was only the wearisome, garbled, incomplete and incorrect translation by Dr. Weil.

[FN#384] The Love of Jubayr and the Lady Budur, Burton’s A. N. iv., 234; Lib.  Ed., iii., 350; Payne’s A. N., iv., 82.

[FN#385] Three vols., 1884.

[FN#386] The public were to some extent justified in their attitude.  They feared that these books would find their way into the hands of others than bona fide students.  Their fears, however, had no foundation.  In all the libraries visited by me extreme care was taken that none but the genuine student should see these books; and, of course, they are not purchasable anywhere except at prices which none but a student, obliged to have them, would dream of giving.

[FN#387] He married in 1879, Ellinor, widow of James Alexander Guthrie, Esp., of Craigie, Forfarshire, and daughter of Admiral Sir James Stirling.

Page 146

[FN#388] Early Ideas by an Aryan, 1881.  Alluded to by Burton in A. N., Lib.  Ed., ix., 209, note.

[FN#389] Persian Portraits, 1887.  “My friend Arbuthnot’s pleasant booklet, Persian Portraits,” A. N. Lib.  Ed. x., 190.

[FN#390] Arabic Authors, 1890.

[FN#391] In Kalidasa’s Megha Duta he is referred to as riding on a peacock.

[FN#392] Sir William Jones.  The Gopia correspond with the Roman Muses.

[FN#393] The reader will recall Mr. Andrew Lang’s witty remark in the preface to his edition of the Arabian Nights.

[FN#394] Kalyana Mull.

[FN#395] The hand of Burton betrays itself every here and there.  Thus in Part 3 of the former we are referred to his Vikram and the Vampire for a note respecting the Gandharva-vivaha form of marriage.  See Memorial Edition, p. 21.

[FN#396] This goddess is adored as the patroness of the fine arts.  See “A Hymn to Sereswaty,” Poetical Works of Sir William Jones, Vol. ii., p. 123; also The Hindoo Pantheon, by Major Moor (Edward FitzGerald’s friend).

[FN#397] “Pleasant as nail wounds”—­The Megha Duta, by Kalidasa.

[FN#398] A girl married in her infancy.

[FN#399] The Hindu women were in the habit, when their husbands were away, of braiding their hair into a single lock, called Veni, which was not to be unloosed until their return.  There is a pretty reference to this custom in Kalidasa’s Megha Duta.

[FN#400] Guy de Maupasant, by Leo Tolstoy.

[FN#401] The Kama Sutra.

[FN#402] Richard Monckton Milnes, born 1809, created a peer 1863, died 1885.  His life by T. Wemyss Reid appeared in 1891.

[FN#403] Burton possessed copies of this work in Sanskrit, Mar’athi Guzrati, and Hindustani.  He describes the last as “an unpaged 8vo. of 66 pages, including eight pages of most grotesque illustrations.”  Burton’s A. N., x., 202; Lib.  Ed., viii., 183.

[FN#404] Kullianmull.

[FN#405] Memorial Edition, p. 96.

[FN#406] The book has several times been reprinted.  All copies, however, I believe, bear the date 1886.  Some bear the imprint “Cosmopoli 1886.”

[FN#407] See Chapter xxxii.  It may be remembered also that Burton as good as denied that he translated The Priapeia.

[FN#408] A portion of Miss Costello’s rendering is given in the lovely little volume “Persian Love Songs,” one of the Bibelots issued by Gay and Bird.

[FN#409] Byron calls Sadi the Persian Catullus, Hafiz the Persian Anacreon, Ferdousi the Persian Homer.

[FN#410] Eastwick, p. 13.

[FN#411] Tales from the Arabic.

[FN#412] That is in following the Arabic jingles.  Payne’s translation is in reality as true to the text as Burton’s.

[FN#413] By W. A. Clouston, 8vo., Glasgow, 1884.  Only 300 copies printed.

[FN#414] Mr. Payne understood Turkish.

[FN#415] Copies now fetch from (pounds)30 to (pounds)40 each.  The American reprint, of which we are told 1,000 copies were issued a few years ago, sells for about (pounds)20.

Page 147

[FN#416] He had intended to write two more volumes dealing with the later history of the weapon.

[FN#417] It is dedicated to Burton.

[FN#418] For outline of Mr. Kirby’s career, see Appendix.

[FN#419] Burton read German, but would never speak it.  He said he hated the sound.

[FN#420] We cannot say.  Burton was a fair Persian scholar, but he could not have known much Russian.

[FN#421] See Chapter ix.

[FN#422] This essay will be found in the 10th volume of Burton’s Arabian Nights, and in the eighth volume (p. 233) of the Library Edition.

[FN#423] Mr. Payne’s account of the destruction of the Barmecides is one of the finest of his prose passages.  Burton pays several tributes to it.  See Payne’s Arabian Nights, vol. ix.

[FN#424] Tracks of a Rolling Stone, by Hon. Henry J. Coke, 1905.

[FN#425] Lady Burton’s edition, issued in 1888, was a failure.  For the Library Edition, issued in 1894, by H. S. Nichols, Lady Burton received, we understand, (pounds)3,000.

[FN#426] Duvat inkstand, dulat fortune.  See The Beharistan, Seventh Garden.

[FN#427] Mr. Arbuthnot was the only man whom Burton addressed by a nickname.

[FN#428] Headings of Jami’s chapters.

[FN#429] It appeared in 1887.

[FN#430] Abu Mohammed al Kasim ibn Ali, surnamed Al-Hariri (the silk merchant), 1054 A. D. to 1121 A. D. The Makamat, a collection of witty rhymed tales, is one of the most popular works in the East.  The interest clusters round the personality of a clever wag and rogue named Abu Seid.

[FN#431] The first twenty-four Makamats of Abu Mohammed al Kasim al Hariri, were done by Chenery in 1867.  Dr. Steingass did the last 24, and thus completed the work.  Al Hariri is several times quoted in the Arabian Nights.  Lib.  Ed. iv., p. 166; viii., p. 42.

[FN#432] Times, 13th January 1903.

[FN#433] Lib.  Ed. vol. 8, pp. 202-228.

[FN#434] See Notes to Judar and his Brethren.  Burton’s A. N., vi., 255; Lib.  Ed., v., 161.

[FN#435] Burton’s A. N. Suppl., vi., 454; Lib.  Ed., xii., 278.  Others who assisted Burton were Rev. George Percy Badger, who died February 1888, Mr. W. F. Kirby, Professor James F. Blumhardt, Mr. A. G. Ellis, and Dr. Reinhold Rost.

[FN#436] See Chapter xxx.

[FN#437] This work consists of fifty folk tales written in the Neapolitan dialect.  They are supposed to be told by ten old women for the entertainment of a Moorish slave who had usurped the place of the rightful Princess.  Thirty-one of the stories were translated by John E. Taylor in 1848.  There is a reference to it in Burton’s Arabian Nights, Lib.  Ed., ix., 280.

[FN#438] Meaning, of course, Lord Houghton’s money.

[FN#439] Cf.  Esther, vi., 8 and 11.

[FN#440] Ought there not to be notices prohibiting this habit in our public reference libraries?  How many beautiful books have been spoilt by it!

Page 148

[FN#441] The joys of Travel are also hymned in the Tale of Ala-al-Din.  Lib.  Ed., iii., 167.

[FN#442] Cf.  Seneca on Anger, Ch. xi.  “Such a man,” we cry, “has done me a shrewd turn, and I never did him any hurt!  Well, but it may be I have mischieved other people.”

[FN#443] Payne’s Version.  See Burton’s Footnote, and Payne vol. i., p. 93.

[FN#444] Burton’s A. N. i., 237; Lib.  Ed., i., 218. 
Payne translates it: 
If thou demand fair play of Fate, therein thou dost it wrong;
and blame
   it not, for ’twas not made, indeed, for equity. 
Take what lies ready to thy hand and lay concern aside, for troubled
   days and days of peace in life must surely be.

[FN#445] Burton’s A. N., ii., 1; Lib.  Ed., i., 329; Payne’s A. N., i., 319.

[FN#446] Payne has—­ “Where are not the old Chosroes, tyrants of a bygone day?  Wealth they gathered, but their treasures and themselves have passed away.”  Vol. i., p. 359.

[FN#447] To distinguish it from date honey—­the drippings from ripe dates.

[FN#448] Ja’afar the Barmecide and the Beanseller.

[FN#449] Burton’s A. N., v., 189; Lib.  Ed., iv., 144; Payne’s A. N., iv., 324.

[FN#450] Burton’s A. N., vi., 213; Lib.  Ed., v., 121; Payne’s A. N., vi., 1.

[FN#451] Burton’s A. N., ix., 304; Lib.  Ed., vii., 364; Payne’s A. N., ix., 145.

[FN#452] Burton’s A. N., ix., 134; Lib.  Ed., viii., 208; Payne’s A. N., viii., 297.

[FN#453] Burton’s A. N., ix., 165; Lib.  Ed., vii., 237; Payne’s A. N., viii., 330.

[FN#454] Burton’s A. N., viii., 264 to 349; ix., 1 to 18; Lib.  Ed., vii., 1 to 99; Payne’s A. N., viii., 63 to 169.

[FN#455] Burton’s A. N., vol. x., p. 1; Lib.  Ed., vol. viii., p. 1; Payne’s A. N., vol. ix., p. 180.

[FN#456] Satan—­See Story of Ibrahim of Mosul.  Burton’s A. N., vii., 113; Lib.  Ed., v., 311; Payne’s A. N., vi., 215.

[FN#457] Payne.

[FN#458] “Queen of the Serpents,” Burton’s A. N., v., 298; Lib.  Ed., iv., 245; Payne’s A. N., v., 52.

[FN#459] Burton’s A. N., vi., 160; Lib.  Ed., v., 72; Payne’s A. N., v., 293.

[FN#460] See Arabian Nights.  Story of Aziz and Azizeh.  Payne’s Translation; also New Poems by John Payne, p. 98.

[FN#461] Here occurs the break of “Night 472.”

[FN#462] Burton’s A. N., ii., p. 324-5; Lib.  Ed., ii., p, 217; Payne, ii., p. 247.

[FN#463] The reader may like to compare some other passages.  Thus the lines “Visit thy lover,” etc. in Night 22, occur also in Night 312.  In the first instance Burton gives his own rendering, in the second Payne’s.  See also Burton’s A. N., viii., 262 (Lib.  Ed., vi., 407); viii., 282 (Lib.  Ed., vii., 18); viii., 314 (Lib.  Ed., vii., 47); viii., 326 (Lib.  Ed., vii., 59); and many other places.

[FN#464] Thus in the story of Ibrahim and Jamilah [Night 958], Burton takes 400 words—­that is nearly a page—­verbatim, and without any acknowledgement.  It is the same, or thereabouts, every page you turn to.

Page 149

[FN#465] Of course, the coincidences could not possibly have been accidental, for both translators were supposed to take from the four printed Arabic editions.  We shall presently give a passage by Burton before Payne translated it, and it will there be seen that the phraseology of the one translator bears no resemblance whatever to that of the other.  And yet, in this latter instance, each translator took from the same original instead of from four originals.  See Chapter xxiii.

[FN#466] At the same time the Edinburgh Review (July 1886) goes too far.  It puts its finger on Burton’s blemishes, but will not allow his translation a single merit.  It says, “Mr. Payne is possessed of a singularly robust and masculine prose style. ..  Captain Burton’s English is an unreadable compound of archaeology and slang, abounding in Americanisms, and full of an affected reaching after obsolete or foreign words and phrases.”

[FN#467] “She drew her cilice over his raw and bleeding skin.” [Payne has “hair shirt."]—­“Tale of the Ensorcelled Prince.”  Lib.  Ed., i., 72.

[FN#468] “Nor will the egromancy be dispelled till he fall from his horse.” [Payne has “charm be broken."]—­“Third Kalendar’s Tale.”  Lib.  Ed., i., 130.  “By virtue of my egromancy become thou half stone and half man.” [Payne has “my enchantments."]—­“Tale of the Ensorcelled Prince.”  Lib.  Ed., i., 71.

[FN#469] “The water prisoned in its verdurous walls.”—­“Tale of the Jewish Doctor.”

[FN#470] “Like unto a vergier full of peaches.” [Note.—­O.E. “hortiyard” Mr. Payne’s word is much better.]—­“Man of Al Zaman and his Six Slave Girls.”

[FN#471] “The rondure of the moon.”—­“Hassan of Bassorah.” [Shakespeare uses this word, Sonnet 21, for the sake of rhythm.  Caliban, however, speaks of the “round of the moon.”]

[FN#472] “That place was purfled with all manner of flowers.” [Purfled means bordered, fringed, so it is here used wrongly.] Payne has “embroidered,” which is the correct word.—­“Tale of King Omar,” Lib.  Ed., i., 406.

[FN#473] Burton says that he found this word in some English writer of the 17th century, and, according to Murray, “Egremauncy occurs about 1649 in Grebory’s Chron.  Camd.  Soc. 1876, 183.”  Mr. Payne, however, in a letter to me, observes that the word is merely an ignorant corruption of “negromancy,” itself a corruption of a corruption it is “not fit for decent (etymological) society.”

[FN#474] A well-known alchemical term, meaning a retort, usually of glass, and completely inapt to express a common brass pot, such as that mentioned in the text.  Yellow copper is brass; red copper is ordinary copper.

[FN#475] Fr. ensorceler—­to bewitch.  Barbey d’Aurevilly’s fine novel L’Ensorcelee, will be recalled.  Torrens uses this word, and so does Payne, vol. v., 36.  “Hath evil eye ensorcelled thee?”

[FN#476] Lib.  Ed., ii., 360.

[FN#477] Swevens—­dreams.

Page 150

[FN#478] Burton, indeed, while habitually paraphrasing Payne, no less habitually resorts, by way of covering his “conveyances,” to the clumsy expedient of loading the test with tasteless and grotesque additions and variations (e.g., “with gladness and goodly gree,” “suffering from black leprosy,” “grief and grame,” “Hades-tombed,” “a garth right sheen,” “e’en tombed in their tombs,” &c., &c.), which are not only meaningless, but often in complete opposition to the spirit and even the letter of the original, and, in any case, exasperating in the highest degree to any reader with a sense of style.

[FN#479] Burton’s A. N., v., 135; Lib.  Ed., iv., 95.

         Payne Burton
     Vol.  V. p. 25 Vol.  V. p. 271
                                (Lib.  Ed., vol. iv., p. 220)

The blacksmith who               the blacksmith who
could handle fire                 could handle fire
without hurt                       without hurt

A certain pious man             It reached the ears of
once heard that there           a certain pious man that
abode in such a town a          there abode in such a town
blacksmith who could            a blacksmith who could
put his hand into the fire      put his hand into the fire
and pull out the red-hot        and pull out the iron red-iron, without its doing         hot, without the flames
him any hurt.   So he set        doing him aught of hurt.
out for the town in ques-       So he set out for the town in
tion and enquiring for the      question and asked for
blacksmith, watched him         the blacksmith; and when
at work and saw him do          the man was shown to
as had been reported to         him; he watched him at
him.   He waited till he         work and saw him do as
had made an end of his          had been reported to him.
day’s work, then going          He waited till he had made
up to him, saluted him          an end of his day’s work;
and said to him, “I             then, going up to him,
would fain be thy guest         saluted him with the salam
this night.”   “With all         and said, “I would be thy
my heart,” replied the          guest this night.”   Replied
smith, and carried him to       the smith, “With gladness
his house, where they           and goodly gree!” and
supped together and lay         carried him to his place,
down to sleep.   The guest       where they supped together
watched his host, but           and lay down to sleep.
found no sign of [special]      The guest watched but saw
devoutness in him and           no sign in his host of pray-said to himself.   “Belike       ing through the night or
he concealeth himself from      of special devoutness, and
me.”   So he lodged with         said in his mind, “Haply
him a second and a third        he hideth himself from
night, but found that he        me.”   So he lodged with

[FN#480] Or Karim-al-Din.  Burton’s A. N., v., 299; Lib.  Ed., iv., 246; Payne’s A. N., v. 52.

Page 151

[FN#481] Le Fanu had carefully studied the effects of green tea and of hallucinations in general.  I have a portion of the correspondence between him and Charles Dickens on this subject.

[FN#482] Burton’s A. N., Suppl. ii., 90-93; Lib.  Ed., ix., 307, 308.

[FN#483] Lib.  Ed., iv., 147.

[FN#484] “The Story of Janshah.”  Burton’s A. N., v., 346; Lib.  Ed., iv., 291.

[FN#485] One recalls “Edith of the Swan Neck,” love of King Harold, and “Judith of the Swan Neck,” Pope’s “Erinna,” Cowper’s Aunt.

[FN#486] Burton’s A. N., x., 6; Lib.  Ed., viii., 6.

[FN#487] Burton’s A. N., viii., 275; Lib.  Ed., vii., 12.

[FN#488] Burton’s A. N., vii., 96; Lib.  Ed., v., 294.

[FN#489] Burton’s A. N., Suppl.  Nights, vi., 438; Lib.  Ed., xii., 258.

[FN#490] Burton’s A. N., x., 199; Lib.  Ed., viii., 174; Payne’s A. N., ix., 370.

[FN#491] The writer of the article in the Edinburgh Review (no friend of Mr. Payne), July 1886 (No. 335, p. 180.), says Burton is “much less accurate” than Payne.

[FN#492] New York Tribune, 2nd November 1891.

[FN#493] See Chapter xxxiii.

[FN#494] Still, as everyone must admit, Burton could have said all he wanted to say in chaster language.

[FN#495] Arbuthnot’s comment was:  “Lane’s version is incomplete, but good for children, Payne’s is suitable for cultured men and women, Burton’s for students.”

[FN#496] See Chapter xii., 46.

[FN#497] Burton’s A. N., x., 180, 181; Lib.  Ed., viii., 163.

[FN#498] Burton’s A. N., x., 203; Lib.  Ed., viii., 184.

[FN#499] Of course, all these narratives are now regarded by most Christians in quite a different light from that in which they were at the time Burton was writing.  We are all of us getting to understand the Bible better.

[FN#500] Lady Burton gives the extension in full.  Life, vol. ii, p. 295.

[FN#501] The Decameron of Boccaccio. 3 vols., 1886.

[FN#502] Any praise bestowed upon the translation (apart from the annotations) was of course misplaced—­that praise being due to Mr. Payne.

[FN#503] Lady Burton’s surprise was, of course, only affected.  She had for long been manoeuvering to bring this about, and very creditably to her.

[FN#504] Life, ii., 311.

[FN#505] Dr. Baker, Burton’s medical attendant.

[FN#506] Burton’s Camoens, i., p. 28.

[FN#507] Life, vol. i., p. 396.

[FN#508] Note to “Khalifah,” Arabian Nights, Night 832.

[FN#509] Childe Harold, iv., 31, referring, of course, to Petrarch.

[FN#510] Terminal Essay, Arabian Nights.

[FN#511] It reminded him of his old enemy, Ra’shid Pasha.  See Chap. xiv.

[FN#512] Pilgrimage to Meccah, ii., 77.

[FN#513] Mission to Gelele, ii., 126.

[FN#514] Task, Book i.

Page 152

[FN#515] By A. W. Kinglake.

[FN#516] See Lib.  Ed. Nights, Sup., vol. xi., p. 365.

[FN#517] Chambers’s Journal, August 1904.

[FN#518] Chambers’s Journal.

[FN#519] Ex Ponto, iv., 9.

[FN#520] Or words to that effect.

[FN#521] This was no solitary occasion.  Burton was constantly chaffing her about her slip-shod English, and she always had some piquant reply to give him.

[FN#522] See Chapter xxxv., 166.

[FN#523] Now Queen Alexandra.

[FN#524] Life, ii., 342.

[FN#525] This remark occurs in three of his books, including The Arabian Nights.

[FN#526] Stories of Janshah and Hasan of Bassorah.

[FN#527] One arch now remains.  There is in the British Museum a quarto volume of about 200 pages (Cott.  MSS., Vesp., E 26) containing fragments of a 13th Century Chronicle of Dale.  On Whit Monday 1901, Mass was celebrated within the ruins of Dale Abbey for the first time since the Reformation.

[FN#528] The Church, however, was at that time, and is now, always spoken of as the “Shrine of Our Lady of Dale, Virgin Mother of Pity.”  The Very Rev. P. J. Canon McCarthy, of Ilkeston, writes to me, “The shrine was an altar to our Lady of Sorrows or Pieta, which was temporarily erected in the Church by the permission of the Bishop of Nottingham (The Right Rev. E. S. Bagshawe), till such time as its own chapel or church could be properly provided.  The shrine was afterwards honoured and recognised by the Holy See.”  See Chapter xxxix.

[FN#529] Letter to me, 18th June 1905.  But see Chapter xxxv.

[FN#530] Murphy’s Edition of Johnson’s Works, vol, xii., p. 412.

[FN#531] Preface to The City of the Saints.  See also Wanderings in West Africa, i., p. 21, where he adds, “Thus were written such books as Eothen and Rambles beyond Railways; thus were not written Lane’s Egyptians or Davis’s Chinese.”

[FN#532] The general reader will prefer Mrs. Hamilton Gray’s Tour to the Sepulchres of Etruria, 1839; and may like to refer to the review of it in The Gentleman’s Magazine for April, 1841.

[FN#533] Phrynichus.

[FN#534] Supplemental Nights, Lib.  Ed., x., 302, Note.

[FN#535] The recent speeches (July 1905) of the Bishop of Ripon and the letters of the Rev. Dr. Barry on this danger to the State will be in the minds of many.

[FN#536] Burton means what is now called the Neo-Malthusian system, which at the time was undergoing much discussion, owing to the appearance, at the price of sixpence, of Dr. H. Allbutt’s well-known work The Wife’s Handbook.  Malthus’s idea was to limit families by late marriages; the Neo-Malthusians, who take into consideration the physiological evils arising from celibacy, hold that it is better for people to marry young, and limit their family by lawful means.

[FN#537] This is Lady Burton’s version.  According to another version it was not this change in government that stood in Sir Richard’s way.

Page 153

[FN#538] Vide the Preface to Burton’s Catullus.

[FN#539] We are not so prudish as to wish to see any classical work, intended for the bona fide student, expurgated.  We welcome knowledge, too, of every kind; but we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that in much of Sir Richard’s later work we are not presented with new information.  The truth is, after the essays and notes in The Arabian Nights, there was nothing more to say.  Almost all the notes in the Priapeia, for example, can be found in some form or other in Sir Richard’s previous works.

[FN#540] Decimus Magnus Ausonius (A.D. 309 to A.D. 372) born at Burdegala (Bordeaux).  Wrote epigrams, Ordo Nobilium Urbium, short poems on famous cities, Idyllia, Epistolae and the autobiographical Gratiarum Actio.

[FN#541] Among the English translations of Catullus may be mentioned those by the Hon. George Lamb, 1821, and Walter K. Kelly, 1854 (these are given in Bohn’s edition), Sir Theodore Martin, 1861, James Cranstoun, 1867, Robinson Ellis, 1867 and 1871, Sir Richard Burton, 1894, Francis Warre Cornish, 1904.  All are in verse except Kelly’s and Cornish’s.  See also Chapter xxxv. of this work.

[FN#542] Mr. Kirby was on the Continent.

[FN#543] Presentation copy of the Nights.

[FN#544] See Mr. Kirby’s Notes in Burton’s Arabian Nights.

[FN#545] See Chapter xxix.

[FN#546] Now Professor of Sanskrit at Cambridge.

[FN#547] Chapter xxxi.

[FN#548] Burton’s book, Etruscan Bologna, has a chapter on the contadinesca favella Bolognese, pp. 242-262.

[FN#549] 20th September 1887, from Adeslberg, Styria.

[FN#550] Writer’s cramp of the right hand, brought on by hard work.

[FN#551] Of the Translation of The Novels of Matteo Bandello, 6 vols.  Published in 1890.

[FN#552] Mr. Payne had not told Burton the name of the work, as he did not wish the news to get abroad prematurely.

[FN#553] She very frequently committed indiscretions of this kind, all of them very creditable to her heart, but not to her head.

[FN#554] Folkestone, where Lady Stisted was staying.

[FN#555] Lady Stisted and her daughter Georgiana.

[FN#556] Verses on the Death of Richard Burton.—­New Review.  Feb. 1891.

[FN#557] With The Jew and El Islam.

[FN#558] Mr. Watts-Dunton, need we say? is a great authority on the Gypsies.  His novel Aylwin and his articles on Borrow will be called to mind.

[FN#559] My hair is straight as the falling rain
              And fine as the morning mist. 
                      —­Indian Love, Lawrence Hope.

[FN#560] The Jew, The Gypsy, and El Islam, p. 275.

[FN#561] It is dedicated to Burton.

[FN#562] Burton’s A. N., Suppl. i., 312; Lib.  Ed., ix., 209.  See also many other of Burton’s Notes.

[FN#563] Lib.  Ed., vol. x.

Page 154

[FN#564] Lib.  Ed., x., p. 342. xi., p. 1.

[FN#565] Lib.  Ed., xii.

[FN#566] Burton differed from Mr. Payne on this point.  He thought highly of these tales.  See Chapter xxxv, 167.

[FN#567] This paragraph does not appear in the original.  It was made up by Burton.

[FN#568] One friend of Burton’s to whom I mentioned this matter said to me, “I was always under the impression that Burton had studied literary Arabic, but that he had forgotten it.”

[FN#569] Life, ii., 410.  See also Romance, ii., 723.

[FN#570] As most of its towns are white, Tunis is called The Burnous of the Prophet, in allusion to the fact that Mohammed always wore a spotlessly white burnous.

[FN#571] As suggested by M. Hartwig Derenbourg, Membre de l’Institut.

[FN#572] The nominal author of the collection of Old English Tales of the same name.

[FN#573] Ridiculous as this medical learning reads to-day, it is not more ridiculous than that of the English physicians two centuries later.

[FN#574] Juvenal, Satire xi.

[FN#575] Religio Medici, part ii., section 9.

[FN#576] We should word it “Pauline Christianity.”

[FN#577] Arabian Nights, Lib.  Ed., vii., 161.

[FN#578] See the example we give in 160 about Moseilema and the bald head.

[FN#579] Also called The Torch of Pebble Strown River Beds, a title explained by the fact that in order to traverse with safety the dried Tunisian river beds, which abound in sharp stones, it is advisable, in the evening time, to carry a torch.

[FN#580] Mohammed, of course.

[FN#581] It contained 283 pages of text, 15 pages d’avis au lecteur, 2 portraits, 13 hors testes on blue paper, 43 erotic illustrations in the text, and at the end of the book about ten pages of errata with an index and a few blank leaves.

[FN#582] He also refers to it in his Arabian Nights, Lib.  Ed., vol. viii., p. 121, footnote.

[FN#583] See Chapter xxvi.

[FN#584] But, of course, the book was not intended for the average Englishman, and every precaution was taken, and is still taken, to prevent him from getting it.

[FN#585] Court fool of Haroun al Rashid.  Several anecdotes of Bahloul are to be found in Jami’s Beharistan.

[FN#586] A tale that has points in common with the lynching stories from the United States.  In the Kama Shastra edition the negro is called “Dorerame.”

[FN#587] Chapter ii.  Irving spells the name Moseilma.

[FN#588] Chapter ii.  Sleath’s Edition, vol. vi., 348.

[FN#589] It must be remembered that the story of Moseilema and Sedjah has been handed down to us by Moseilema’s enemies.

[FN#590] The struggle between his followers and those of Mohammed was a fight to the death.  Mecca and Yamama were the Rome and Carthage of the day—­the mastery of the religious as well as of the political world being the prize.

Page 155

[FN#591] As spelt in the Kama Shastra version.

[FN#592] Burton’s spelling.  We have kept to it throughout this book.  The word is generally spelt Nuwas.

[FN#593] The 1886 edition, p. 2.

[FN#594] Vol. i., p. 117.

[FN#595] Cf.  Song of Solomon, iv., 4.  “Thy neck is like the Tower of David.”

[FN#596] See Burton’s remarks on the negro women as quoted in Chapter ix., 38.

[FN#597] Women blacken the inside of the eyelids with it to make the eyes look larger and more brilliant.

[FN#598] So we are told in the Introduction to the Kama Shastra edition of Chapters i. to xx.  Chapter xxi. has not yet been translated into any European language.  Probably Burton never saw it.  Certainly he did not translate it.

[FN#599] From the Paris version of 1904.  See Chapter xxxviii. of this book, where the Kama Shastra version is given.

[FN#600] Life, by Lady Burton, ii., 441.

[FN#601] The pen name of Carl Ulrichs.

[FN#602] Life, by Lady Burton, ii., 444.

[FN#603] There is an article on Clerical Humorists in The Gentleman’s Magazine for Feb. 1845.

[FN#604] Mr. Bendall.

[FN#605] On the Continent it was called “The Prince of Wales shake.”

[FN#606] It is now in the Public Library, Camberwell.

[FN#607] John Elliotson (1791-1868).  Physician and mesmerist.  One always connects his name with Thackeray’s Pendennis.

[FN#608] A reference to a passage in Dr. Tuckey’s book.

[FN#609] James Braid (1795-1850) noted for his researches in Animal Magnetism.

[FN#610] See Chapter xxiv, 112.

[FN#611] The famous Finnish epic given to the world in 1835 by Dr. Lonnrot.

[FN#612] Letter to Mr. Payne, 28th January 1890.

[FN#613] As ingrained clingers to red tape and immobility.

[FN#614] I give the anecdote as told to me by Dr. Baker.

[FN#615] Letter of Mr. T. D. Murray to me 24th September 1904.  But see Chapter xxxi.  This paper must have been signed within three months of Sir Richard’s death.

[FN#616] On 28th June 1905, I saw it in the priest’s house at Mortlake.  There is an inscription at the back.

[FN#617] Alaeddin was prefaced by a poetical dedication to Payne’s Alaeddin, “Twelve years this day,—­a day of winter dreary,” etc.

[FN#618] See Chapter xxxiii., 156.  Payne had declared that Cazotte’s tales “are for the most part rubbish.”

[FN#619] Mr. Payne’s translation of The Novels of Matteo Bandello, six vols.  Published in 1890.

[FN#620] Now Professor of Sanskrit at Cambridge.

[FN#621] 6th November 1889.

[FN#622] Lib.  Ed., vol. xii., p. 226.

[FN#623] See Introduction by Mr. Smithers.

[FN#624] 11th July 1905.

[FN#625] We quote Lady Burton.  Mr. Smithers, however, seems to have doubted whether Burton really did write this sentence.  See his Preface to the Catullus.

Page 156

[FN#626] A Translation by Francis D. Bryne appeared in 1905.

[FN#627] I am indebted to M. Carrington for these notes.

[FN#628] Unpublished.

[FN#629] Dr. Schliemann died 27th December, 1890.

[FN#630] Not the last page of the Scented Garden, as she supposed (see Life, vol. ii., p. 410), for she tells us in the Life (vol. ii., p. 444) that the Ms. consisted of only 20 chapters.

[FN#631] Told me by Dr. Baker.

[FN#632] Life, ii., 409.

[FN#633] Communicated by Mr. P. P. Cautley, the Vice-Consul of Trieste.

[FN#634] Asher’s Collection of English Authors.  It is now in the Public Library at Camberwell.

[FN#635] She herself says almost as much in the letters written during this period.  See Chapter xxxix., 177.  Letters to Mrs. E. J. Burton.

[FN#636] See Chapter xxxi.

[FN#637] Letters of Major St. George Burton to me, March 1905.

[FN#638] Unpublished letter to Miss Stisted.

[FN#639] Unpublished letter.

[FN#640] Verses on the Death of Richard Burton.  The New Review, Feb. 1891.

[FN#641] Unpublished.  Lent me by Mr. Mostyn Pryce.

[FN#642] Unpublished.

[FN#643] See Chapter xiv, 63.

[FN#644] See The Land of Midian Revisited, ii., 223, footnote.

[FN#645] The Lusiads, Canto ii., Stanza 113.

[FN#646] She impressed them on several of her friends.  In each case she said, “I particularly wish you to make these facts as public as possible when I am gone.”

[FN#647] We mean illiterate for a person who takes upon herself to write, of this even a cursory glance through her books will convince anybody.

[FN#648] For example, she destroyed Sir Richard’s Diaries.  Portions of these should certainly have been published.

[FN#649] Some of them she incorporated in her “Life” of her husband, which contains at least 60 pages of quotations from utterly worthless documents.

[FN#650] I am told that it is very doubtful whether this was a bona fide offer; but Lady Burton believed it to be so.

[FN#651] Romance of Isabel Lady Burton, vol. ii., p. 725.

[FN#652] The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton.

[FN#653] Lady Burton, owing to a faulty translation, quite mistook Nafzawi’s meaning.  She was thinking of the concluding verse as rendered in the 1886 edition, which runs as follows:—­

   “I certainly did wrong to put this book together,
    But you will pardon me, nor let me pray in vain;
    O God! award no punishment for this on judgment day! 
    And thou, O reader, hear me conjure thee to say, So be it!”

But the 1904 and, more faithful edition puts it very differently.  See Chapter xxxiv.

[FN#654] An error, as we have shown.

[FN#655] Mr. T. Douglas Murray, the biographer of Jeanne d’Arc and Sir Samuel Baker, spent many years in Egypt, where he met Burton.  He was on intimate terms of friendship with Gordon, Grant, Baker and De Lesseps.

Page 157

[FN#656] Written in June 1891.

[FN#657] Life, ii., p. 450.

[FN#658] It would have been impossible to turn over half-a-dozen without noticing some verses.

[FN#659] We have seen only the first volume.  The second at the time we went to press had not been issued.

[FN#660] See Chapter xxxiv.

[FN#661] The Kama Shastra edition.

[FN#662] See Chapter xxvi.

[FN#663] She often used a typewriter.

[FN#664] The same may be said of Lady Burton’s Life of her husband.  I made long lists of corrections, but I became tired; there were too many.  I sometimes wonder whether she troubled to read the proofs at all.

[FN#665] His edition of Catullus appeared in 1821 in 2 vols. 12 mos.

[FN#666] Poem 67.  On a Wanton’s Door.

[FN#667] Poem 35.  Invitation to Caecilius.

[FN#668] Poem 4.  The Praise of his Pinnance.

[FN#669] Preface to the 1898 Edition of Lady Burton’s Life of Sir Richard Burton.

[FN#670] In her Life of Sir Richard, Lady Burton quotes only a few sentences from these Diaries.  Practically she made no use of them whatever.  For nearly all she tells us could have been gleaned from his books.

[FN#671] In the church may still be seen a photograph of Sir Richard Burton taken after death, and the words quoted, in Lady Burton’s handwriting, below.  She hoped one day to build a church at Ilkeston to be dedicated to our Lady of Dale.  But the intention was never carried out.  See Chapter xxxi.

[FN#672] See Chapter xxxvii, 172.

[FN#673] It must be remembered that Canon Wenham had been a personal friend of both Sir Richard and Lady Burton.  See Chapter xxxvi., 169.

[FN#674] This letter will also be found in The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton, ii., 722.

[FN#675] All my researches corroborate this statement of Lady Burton’s.  Be the subject what it might, he was always the genuine student.

[FN#676] “It is a dangerous thing, Lady Burton,” said Mr. Watts-Dunton to her, “to destroy a distinguished man’s manuscripts, but in this case I think you did quite rightly.”

[FN#677] Miss Stisted, Newgarden Lodge, 22, Manor Road, Folkestone.

[FN#678] 67, Baker Street, Portman Square.

[FN#679] True Life, p. 415.

[FN#680] Frontispiece to this volume.

[FN#681] The picture now at Camberwell.

[FN#682] Now at Camberwell.

[FN#683] To Dr. E. J. Burton, 23rd March 1897.

[FN#684] I think this expression is too strong.  Though he did not approve of the Catholic religion as a whole, there were features in it that appealed to him.

[FN#685] 14th January 1896, to Mrs. E. J. Burton.

[FN#686] Sir Richard often used to chaff her about her faulty English and spelling.  Several correspondents have mentioned this.  She used to retort good-humouredly by flinging in his face some of his own shortcomings.

Page 158

[FN#687] Unpublished letter.

[FN#688] Payne, i., 63.  Burton Lib.  Ed., i., 70.

[FN#689] Unpublished letter.

[FN#690] Lady Burton included only the Nights Proper, not the Supplementary Tales.

[FN#691] The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton, ii., 763.

[FN#692] Holywell Lodge, Meads, Eastbourne.

[FN#693] Left unfinished.  Mr. Wilkins incorporated the fragment in The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton.

[FN#694] Huxley died 29th June 1895.

[FN#695] Mrs. FitzGerald died 18th January 1902, and is buried under the Tent at Mortlake.  Mrs. Van Zeller is still living.  I had the pleasure of hearing from her in 1905.

[FN#696] She died in 1904.

[FN#697] Or Garden of Purity, by Mirkhond.  It is a history of Mohammed and his immediate successors.

[FN#698] Part 3 contains the lives of the four immediate successors of Mohammed.

[FN#699] Now Madame Nicastro.

[FN#700] Letter of Miss Daisy Letchford to me. 9th August, 1905.

[FN#701] See Midsummer Night’s Dream, iii., 2.

[FN#702] Close of the tale of “Una El Wujoud and Rose in Bud.”

[FN#703] These lines first appeared in The New Review, February 1891.  We have to thank Mr. Swinburne for kindly permitting us to use them.

[FN#704] Two islands in the middle of the Adriatic.

[FN#705] J.A.I.  Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.

[FN#706] T.E.S.—­Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London.  New Series.

[FN#707] A.R.—­Anthropological Review.

[FN#708] A.R. iv.  J.A.S.—­Fourth vol. of the Anthropological Review contained in the Journal of the Anthropological Society.

[FN#709] Anthrop.  Anthropologia—­the Organ of the London Anthropological Society.

[FN#710] M.A.S.  Memoirs read before the Anthropological Society of London.

[FN#711] The titles of the volumes of original poetry are in italics.  The others are those of translations.

[FN#712] Zohra—­the name of the planet Venus.  It is sometimes given to girls.