SIR RICHARD BURTON.

Star (Christchurch), 30 September 1893, Page 1

SIR RICHARD BURTON.

GREAT } BUT MISUNDERSTOOD. (St James' Budget.) How remarkable and how original a man the late Sir Bichard Burton was, nobody who has any knowledge of his career needs I to be told ; but these two large volumes, prepared by the pious care of his widow, | Bet his daring origina.ity and his undeniable geniu9 in a very strong light. Tosay that the book is fascinating were but small praise ; to say that it iB intensely attractive, even in despite of tbe msßsee of more or less extraneous and undigested matter whioh Lady Burton haß introduced, is very real praise. She brings out with great clearness the reasons why her husband failed to attain to the considerable heights which at one time seemed to be within his reach. Our admiration for Burton was unstinted; but; it is abundantly clear that he had a knack of treading upon people's corns. He v aa constantly doing the right thing in the wrong way — a very perilous habit in a man who seeks to follow that odd trade of diplomacy. Indeed, he was too strong and too original a man for official trammels. His many-sidedness was a standing wonder. Soldier, explorer, linguist, diplomatist, Orientalist, writer, a combatant to the backbone, a finished mystic steeped in the obscure lore of the Eaet; here waß an amazing congregation of attributes. It is a good deal of a scandal and a disgrace that he was not better understood; but we are a literal [ and unimaginative raoe, while Burton was on fire with imagination. Partly Irish, partly Scotch, with a dash of Bourbon and a suspicion of gypsy blood, he differed enormously from the ordinary Englishman. A MISTAKEN BDI.CATION. Burfcon had, too, a foreign education— the very worst kind of education, a3 he | himself points out in the fragment of autobiography prefixed to his "Life," for a young Englishman who is to succeed in other than commercial English life. Brought up in France and Italy, ha failed to acquire thoae conventions the bbserv.ince of which, reasonably or unreasonably, is in England more useful' than anywhere else. Upon his own confession he waa a remarkably turbulent youog gentleman, and he was perhaps not altogether fortunate in his parents. He tells us :— " Our father and our mother had not much idea of managing their children; it was like the old tale of the hen who hatched ducklings. By way of a wholesome and moral lesßon of self-command and self-denial, our mother took us past Madame Pisterre's windows, and bade us look at all the good things in the window, during which we fixed our ardent affections upon a tray of apple-pnffs ; then she Baid, ' Now, my dears, let us go away ; it is so good for little children to restrain themselves/ Upon this we three tleyilets turned flashing eyes and burning cheeks upon our moralising mother, broke the windows with our fists, clawed out the tray of apple-puffs, and bolted, leaving poor mother a sadder and a wiser woman, to pay the damages of her lawless brood's proceeding.." When ha got to Oxford he found that this foreign training was a serious disadvantage, although the end of his undergraduate career might have been the same had he gone there straight from Eton. He and a number of others got into trouble about going to the races. • The next stage of his career was hia entrance into the army of John Company. MONKEY LANGUAGE. Ever restless, Burton had not been many years in India before he had passed examinations in all manner of Oriental

languages and had become an official interpreter. But this and hia other work was not enough for him. His widow tells vs :— " When Bichard was in India he at one time got rather tired of the daily mess, and living with men, and he thought he should like to learn the manners, customs, and habits of monkeys, so he collected forty monkeys of all kinds of age;, races, species, and he lived with them and he used to call them by different ofliees. lie had his doctor, his chaplain, his secretary, his aide-de-camp, his agent, and one t>uy one, a very pretty small silky-loojciiig monkey, he used to call his wife, arid pnt pearls in her ea.B. Hiß great amusement was to keep a kind 0? refectory for them, where they all sat down on chairs at meal?, and the servants waited on them, arid each had its bowl arid plate, with the food and drinks proper for them. Ho sat at the head of the table, and the pretty little monkey sat by him in 0, high baby's chair, with a little bar before it. He had a little whip on the table, with which he used to keep them in order when they had bad manners, which did sometimes occur, aa they frequently used to get jealous of the little monkey, arid tried to claw her. He did this for the sake of doing what Mr Garner is now doing, that of ascertaining and studying the language of monkeys, ao that he used regularly to talk to them, and pronounce their sounds afterward*, till he and the monkeys at last got quite to understand each other. He obtained as many as sixty words, I think twenty more than Mr Gamer — that is, leading words— and he wrote them down and formed a vocabulary, meaning to pursue his studies at some future time. Mr Garner has now the advantage of phonographs and all sorts of appliances. Had Bichard been alive he could have helped him greatly. Unfortunately his monkey vocabulary was burnt 'ma fire." LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT. It was after Burton's return from India that he firat met— it was at Boulogne— the lady who was to become his wife. Lady Burton gives a dramatic account of the meeting : — " He looked at me 9s though he read me through and through in a moment, and Btar ted a little. I was completely magnetised, arid when we had got a little distance away I turned to _hy sister and whispered to her, 'That man will marry me.' The next day he was there again, and he foUowed us and chalked up, 'May I speak to you?' leaving the chalk on the wall, so I took up the chalk and wrote back, •No, mother will be angry;' and mother found it— and was angry; and after that we were stricter prisoners than ever. However, ' destiny is stronger than custom.' A mother and a pretty daughter came to Boulogne, who happened to be a cousin of my father's; they joined the -majority in the society Benae, and one day we were allowed to walk on the Bamparts with them. There I met Bichard, who— agony !— was flirting with the daughter." It was long before they were married, and when they were it was only after such determined opposition on the part of the lady's mother that the ceremony had to be performed without the parental consent. THE QUARBEI, WITH SPEKE. i Burton's African explorations and the quarrel which resulted from his friend and companion Speke endeavouring to claim all the credit, are too familiar to need description. Lady Barton writes a striking account of the tragic meeting of the British Association at Bath in 1864, during which Speke was accidentally killed while out shootmg :— " Laurence Oliphant conveyed to Bichard that Speke had said that 'if Burton appeared on the platform at Bath' (which was, as it were, Speke's native town) 'he would kick him/ Iremember Bichard's answer, "'Well, that settles it ! By God, he shall kick me;' and so to Bath we went. There was to be no speaking on Africa the first day, but the next day was fixed for the ' great discussion between Burton and Speke.' The first day we went on the platform close, to Speke. He looked at Bichard, and at me, and we athim. I shall never forget his face. It was fu}l of sorrow, of yearning and perplexity. Then he seemed to turn tq stope. , After a while he began to fidget a great deal, and exclaimed half aloud, 'Oh, I cannot stand this any longer.' He got up to go out. The man nearest him said, 'Shall you want your chair again, sir? May I have it? Shall you come back ?' and he answered, ' I hope not,' and left the hall. Tho next day a large crowd was assembled for this famous discussion. All the distinguished people were with the Council ; Bichard alone was excluded, and stood on the platform, we two alone, he with his notes in his hand. There was a 'delay of about twenty-five minutes, and then the Council and speakers filed in and announced the terrible accident out shooting that had befallen poor Speke shortly after his leavin g the hall the day before. Bichard sank into a chair, and I saw by the workings of his face the terrible emotion he was controlling, and the shock he had received. When called upon to speak, in a voice that trembled, he spoke of other things, ahd as briefly as he could. When we got home he wept long and bitterly, and I was for many a day trying to comfort him." The famous pilgrimage to Mecca had taken place before this. The story of the daring and adventurous journey need not again be told. It 86t the seal on Burton's fame and raised up a good many difficulties for him in after-lire. Directly after hie marriage he was appointed Consul at Fernando Po, on the West Coast of Africa, " with a coast-line of six or seven hundred miles for his jurisdiction, a deadly climate, arid £700 a year." Presently he was promoted to Santos, in Brazil, where, on the whole, he seems to have been happy. Prom Brazil Burton went to Damascus, where he was in hia element. The work there was more diplomatic than consular, and he enjoyed ifc enormously. The cabals which were got up against him there make a long story which has been often told. Lord Granville recalled him,, to his intense mortification, aud all chitnee of a brilliant ' official career was seen to be at an end. After a brief period of neglect and even poverty, during which Burton waß reduced to his last few pounda, he was given the consulship at Trieste, which he held till his death. BURTON AND GORDON. During the whole of Burton's career at Trieste he kept up an active correspondence with many famous men. One of these correspondents waß Gordon, who found in Burton a kindred spirit. Lady Burton makes an interesting reference to this intimacy :— " The likeness between these two men, Bichard Burton and Charles Gordon, was immense. The two men stood out in this nineteenth century aB a sort of pendant, and the sad fate of both is equal, as far as government goeß. One abandoned and forgotten in the desert, the other in a small foreign seaport; both men equally honoured by their country, and Btanding on pedestals that wUI never be thrown down — uncrowned kings both. This difference there was between them— Charles Gordon spoke out all that Bichard laboured to conceal. He used to come and ait on our hearthrug beforo the fire in the long winter evenings, and it was very pleasant to hear them talk. Gordon had the habit of saying, 'There are only' two men in the world who could, do such or suoh a thing; I am one*/ and you are the other.' After he became* Governor of the Soudan, he wrote to niy husband as follows: 'You and I are t_yd only two men fit to govern the Soudan ;/ 'if one dies, the other will be left. 1 will he. ap i fche Soudan, you tako Darfarj and Ipum

give you -£5000 a year if you will throw up . Trieste.' Bichard wrote back: 'My dear Gordon,— You arid I are too mnch alike- I could not serve under yon, nor you under me. Ido not look upon the Soudan ai a lasting thing. I have nothing to depend upon but my salary, and I have a wife, i and you have not.' "