36. Zanzibar: City, Island and Coast. 2 vols., 1872. 37. Unexplored Syria. 2 vols., 1872. 38. On Human Remains, etc., from Iceland, 1872.
In May, Burton was back again in Edinburgh, preparing for the Iceland journey. He took many walks down Princes Street and up Arthur's Seat with Lady Stisted and his nieces, and "he was flattered," says Miss Stisted, "by the kindness and hospitality with which he was received. The 93rd Highlanders, stationed at the Castle, entertained in genuine Highland fashion; and at our house he met most of the leading Scotch families who happened to be lingering in the northern capital." Lord Airlie, the High Commissioner, held brilliant receptions at Holyrood. There were gay scenes—women in their smartest gowns, men wearing their medals and ribands. General Sir H. Stisted was there in his red collar and cross and star of the Bath. Burton "looked almost conspicuous in unadorned simplicity." On 4th June 260 Burton left for Iceland. The parting from his friends was, as usual, very hard. Says Miss Stisted, "His hands turned cold, his eyes filled with tears." Sir W. H. Stisted accompanied him to Granton, whence, with new hopes and aspirations, he set sail. Spectacularly, Iceland—Ultima Thule—as he calls it—was a disappointment to him. "The giddy, rapid rivers," were narrow brooks, Hecla seemed but "half the height of Hermon," the Great Geyser was invisible until you were almost on the top of it. Its voice of thunder was a mere hiccough. Burton, the precise antithesis of old Sir John de Mandeville, was perhaps the only traveller who never told "travellers' tales." Indeed, he looked upon Sir John as a disgrace to the cloth; though he sometimes comforted himself with the reflection that most likely that very imaginative knight never existed. But he thoroughly enjoyed these Icelandic experiences, for, to use one of his own phrases, the power of the hills was upon him. With Mr. Lock he visited the concession, and on his way passed through a village where there was a fair, and where he had a very narrow escape. A little more, we are told, and a hideous, snuffy, old Icelandic woman would have kissed him. In respect to the survey, the mass of workable material was enormous. There was no lack of sulphur, and the speculation promised to be a remunerative one. Eventually, however, it was found that the obstacles were insuperable, and the scheme had to be abandoned. However, the trip had completed the cure commenced by Camoens, and at the end of it everybody said "he looked at least fifteen years younger."
Burton had scarcely left Granton for Iceland before Mrs. Arundell died, and the letters which Mrs. Burton wrote at this time throw an interesting light on the relations between her and Burton's family. To Miss Stisted she says (June 14th), "My darling child. My dear mother died in my arms at midnight on Wednesday 5th. It was like a child going to sleep, most happy, but quite unexpected by us, who thought, though sinking, she would last till August or October. I need not tell you, who know the love that existed between her and me, that my loss is bitter and irreparable, and will last for life. May you never know it! I have written pages full of family detail to darling Nana, and I intended to enclose it to you to read en route, but I thought perhaps our religious views and observances might seem absurd to the others, and I felt ashamed to do so. You know when so holy a woman as dear mother dies, we do not admit of any melancholy or sorrow except for ourselves Your dear little letter was truly welcome with its kind and comforting messages. I am glad that our darling [Burton] was spared all the sorrow we have gone through, and yet sorry he did not see the beauty and happiness of her holy death... She called for Richard twice before her death. Do write again and often, dear child. Tell me something about the Iceland visits.... Your loving Zooey."
What with the unsatisfactory condition of their affairs, and the death of her mother, Mrs. Burton was sadly troubled; but the long lane was now to have a turning. One day, while she was kneeling with wet cheeks before her mother's coffin, and praying that the sombrous overhanging cloud might pass away, a letter arrived from Lord Granville offering her husband the Consulate of Trieste 261 with a salary of £700 a year. This was a great fall after Damascus, but in her own words, "better than nothing," and she at once communicated with her husband, who was still in Iceland.
She then made a round of country house visits, including one to Wardour Castle. 262 In an unpublished letter to Miss Stisted, she says: "My pet, I came here on Tuesday... I have never cried nor slept since mother died (a month to-morrow) I go up again on Monday for final pack-up—to my convent ten days—....then back to town in hopes of Nana in August, about the 7th. Then we shall go to Spain, and to Trieste, our new appointment, if he [Burton] will take it, as all our friends and relations wish, if only as a stop-gap for the present. Arundell has done an awfully kind thing. There is a large Austrian honour in the family with some privileges, and he has desired me to assume all the family honours on arriving, and given me copies of the Patent, with all the old signatures and attested by himself. This is to present to the Herald's College at Vienna. He had desired my cards to be printed Mrs. Richard Burton, nee Countess Isabel Arundell of Wardour of the most sacred Roman Empire. This would give us an almost royal position at Vienna or any part of Austria, and with Nana's own importance and fame we shall (barring salary) cut out the Ambassador. She wants a quiet year to learn German and finish old writings.... I should like the tour round the world enormously, but I don't see where the money is to come from... This is such a glorious old place... The woods and parks are splendid, and the old ruin of the castle defended by Lady Blanche is the most interesting thing possible. Half the other great places I go to are mushroom greatness, but this is the real old thing of Druid remains and the old baronial castle of knights in armour and fair Saxon-looking women, and with heavy portcullises to enter by, and dungeons and subterranean passages, etc. There is a statue of our Saviour over the door, and in Cromwell's siege a cannon ball made a hole in the wall just behind it and never took off its head. ...Your loving Zoo."
A few days later Mrs. Burton received a letter from her husband, who expressed his willingness to accept Trieste. He arrived at Edinburgh again on September 5th, and his presence was the signal for a grand dinner, at which all the notables of the neighbourhood, including many people of title, were present. But, unfortunately, Burton was in one of his disagreeable moods, and by the time dinner was half over, he found that he had contradicted with acerbity every person within earshot. While, however, he was thus playing the motiveless ogre, his brother-in-law, Sir Henry Stisted, at the other end of the table, was doing his utmost to render himself agreeable, and by the extraordinary means of rolling out anecdote after anecdote that told against the Scotch character. The Mackenzies, the Murrays, the MacDonalds, the McQueens, looked black as thunder, and Stisted's amiability gave even more offence than Burton's ill-temper. Noticing that something was amiss opposite him, Burton stopped his own talk to listen. Then Stisted's innocence and the ludicrousness of the whole scene dawned upon him, and leaning back in his chair he roared with uncontrollable laughter. When he met his wife again one of her first questions was about this dinner, at which she had hoped her husband would dazzle and delight the whole company, and which she supposed might lead to his promotion. He then told her the whole story, not omitting his ill-humour. She listened with dismay, and then burst into tears. "Come," he commented, "I wasn't so bad as Stisted, anyhow."
Upon his return to London, Burton renewed his acquaintance with his cousins Dr. and Mrs. Edward John Burton. He and Dr. Burton, whom he thought fit to call after a character in The Arabian Nights, "Abu Mohammed Lazybones," 263 had long known each other, but Dr. Burton had also for some time resided in distant lands. The notes that brought about the meeting—and they could not be briefer—now lie before me. They run:
"My dear Richard,
A few days later, Burton dined with Edward John, and made the acquaintance of his young cousins, St. George and Frederick. Of St. George, a dark-haired lad, who was particularly clever and had a humorous vein, Burton from the first thought highly. One day, happening to turn over some of the leaves of the boy's exercise book, he stumbled upon the following lines:
He laughed heartily and thanked his little cousin for the compliment, while the couplet became a stock quotation in the family. Later, when St. George went to a French school, he was very proud to find that the boys were conversant not only with the exploits of his famous uncle, but also with the history of the Dr. Francis Burton who had made Napoleon's death mask. Frederick Burton was a plump, shy, fair-haired little fellow, and Burton, who loved to tease, did not spare his rotundity. In one of Frederick's copy-books could be read, in large hand,
"I," commented Burton, "find life very long."
Subsequently he advised his cousin to go to the River Plate. "Well," he would ask, when he entered the house, "has Frederick started for the River Plate yet? I see a good opening there."
As Dr. Burton was born in the house of his father's brother, the Bishop of Killala, Burton used to affect jealousy. "Hang it all, Edward," he would say, "You were born in a bishop's palace."
Apparently it was about this time that the terrible silence of Burton's brother was for a moment broken. Every human device had been tried to lead him to conversation, and hitherto in vain. It seems that some years previous, and before Edward's illness, Dr. E. J. Burton had lent his cousin a small sum of money, which was duly repaid. One day Dr. Burton chose to assume the contrary, and coming upon Edward suddenly he cried:
"Edward, you might just as well have paid me that money I lent you at Margate. I call it shabby, now."
Edward raised his head and fixing his eyes on Dr. Burton said, with great effort, and solemnly, "Cousin, I did pay you, you must remember that I gave you a cheque."
Thrilled with joy, Dr. Burton attempted to extend the conversation, but all in vain, and to his dying day Edward Burton never uttered another word.
Of all the spots in London, none was so dear to Burton as his club, The Athenaeum. When in England, he practically lived there, and its massive portico, its classic frieze, and the helmeted statue of Minerva were always imaged on his heart. He wrote a number of his books there, and he loved to write his letters on its notepaper stamped with the little oval enclosing Minerva's head. He used to make his way to the Athenaeum early in the day 264 and go straight to the library. Having seated himself at the round table he would work with coralline industry, and without a single break until six or seven in the evening. It was a standing joke against him in Dr. Burton's family that when at the club he was never at home to anybody except a certain Mrs. Giacometti Prodgers. This lady was of Austrian birth, and, according to rumour, there was a flavour of romance about her marriage. It was said that while the laws of certain countries regarded her as married, those of other countries insisted that she was still single. However, married or not, she concentrated all her spleen on cab-drivers, and was continually hauling some luckless driver or other before the London magistrates. Having a profound respect for Burton's judgment, she often went to him about these cab disputes, and, oddly enough, though nobody else could get at him, he was always at the service of Mrs. Prodgers, and good-naturedly gave her the benefit of his wisdom. 265 To the London magistrates the good lady was a perpetual terror, and Frederick Burton, a diligent newspaper reader, took a pleasure in following her experiences. "St. George," he would call across the breakfast table, "Mrs. Giacometti Prodgers again: She's had another cab-man up."
One evening, says a London contributor to the New York Tribune 266 referring to this period, "there was a smoking party given by a well-known Londoner. I went in late, and on my way upstairs, stumbled against a man sitting on the stairs, with a book and pencil in his hands, absorbed in his reading, and the notes he was making. It was Burton. When I spoke to him he woke up as if from a dream with the dazed air of one not quite sure where he is. I asked him what he was reading. It proved to be Camoens, and he told me he was translating the Portuguese poet. It seemed an odd place for such work, and I said as much." "Oh," answered Burton, "I can read anywhere or write anywhere. And I always carry Camoens about with me. You see, he is a little book, and I have done most of my translating in these odd moments, or, as you say, in this odd fashion." And he added, with a kind of cynical grin on his face, 'You will find plenty of dull people in the rooms above.' He had been bored and this was his refuge."
Report now arrived that Jane Digby was dead; and paragraphs derogatory to her character appeared in the press. Mrs. Burton not only answered them, but endeavoured to throw a halo over her friend's memory. She said also that as she, Mrs. Burton, had Jane Digby's biography, nobody else had any right to make remarks. Comically enough, news then came that Jane was still alive. She had been detained in the desert by the fighting of the tribes. Says Mrs. Burton, "her relatives attacked her for having given me the biography, and she, under pressure, denied it in print, and then wrote and asked me to give it back to her; but I replied that she should have had it with the greatest pleasure, only she having 'given me the lie' in print, I was obliged for my own sake to keep it, and she eventually died." This very considerate act of Jane's saved all further trouble.
On his expedition with Speke to Tanganyika, Burton had already written four volumes, 267 and it was now to be the subject of another work, Zanzibar, which is chiefly a description of the town and island from which the expedition started. The origin of the book was as follows. With him on his way home from Africa he had brought among other MSS. a bundle of notes relating both to his "preliminary canter" and to Zanzibar, and the adventures of these notes were almost as remarkable as those of the Little Hunchback. On the West Coast of Africa the bundle was "annexed" by a skipper. The skipper having died, the manuscripts fell into the hands of his widow, who sold them to a bookseller, who exposed them for sale. An English artillery officer bought them, and, in his turn, lost them. Finally they were picked up in the hall of a Cabinet Minister, who forwarded them to Burton. The work contains an enormous mass of geographical, anthropological and other information, and describes the town so truthfully that nobody, except under compulsion, would ever dream of going there. The climate, it seems, is bad for men, worse for women. "Why," he asks, "should Englishmen poison or stab their wives when a few months at Zanzibar would do the business more quietly and effectually?" The expense of getting them over there may be one objection. But whoever goes to Zanzibar, teetotallers, we are told, should keep away. There it is drink or die. Burton introduces many obsolete words, makes attacks on various persons, and says fearlessly just what he thinks; but the work has both the Burtonian faults. It is far too long, and it teems with uninteresting statistics.
There also left the press this year (1871) a work in two volumes entitled Unexplored Syria, by Burton and Tyrwhitt Drake. 268 It describes the archaeological discoveries made by the authors during their sojourn in Syria, and includes an article on Syrian Proverbs (Proverba Communia Syriaca) which had appeared the year before in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. Some of the sayings have English analogues, thus:
"nah" being wealth or honour; "ah," the expression of fear or doubt. 269
At one of the meetings of the Royal Geographical Society, at which Burton had been billed to speak, there were present among the audience his wife, Mr. Arundell, and several other members of the family. Considerable hostility was shown towards Burton; and Colonel Rigby 270 and others flatly contradicted some of his statements respecting Zanzibar. Then Burton flew into a temper such as only he could fly into. His eyes flashed, his lips protruded with rage, and he brandished the long map pointer so wildly that the front bench became alarmed for their safety. Old Mr. Arundell, indignant at hearing his son-in-law abused, then tried to struggle on to the platform, while his sons and daughters, horrified at the prospect, hung like bull-dogs to his coat tails. Says Burton, "the old man, who had never been used to public speaking, was going to address a long oration to the public about his son-in-law, Richard Burton. As he was slow and very prolix, he would never have sat down again, and God only knows what he would have said." The combined efforts of the Arundell family however, prevented so terrible a denouement, Burton easily proved his enemies' statements to be erroneous, and the order was eventually restored.
39. Medinah and Meccah. 3 vols. in one, 1873. 40. Minas Geraes. 7th January 1873. J. A. I. 41. The Lands of the Cazembe. 1873. 42. The Captivity of Hans Stadt, 1874. 43. Articles on Rome. Macmillan's Mag. 1874-5. 44. The Castellieri of Istria. 45. Gerber's Province of Minas Geraes. 46. New System of Sword Exercise. 47. Ultima Thule, or a Summer in Iceland. 2 vols. 1875. 48. Two Trips to Gorilla Land. 2 vols. 1875. 49. The Inner Life of Syria. 2 vols., 1875, by Mrs. Burton. 50. The Long Wall of Salona.
Burton left England for Trieste 24th October 1872, 271 but the popular belief that he entered the town with a fighting cock under his arm and a bull-terrier at his heels lacks foundation. He was fifty-one, the age of the banished Ovid, to whom he often compared himself, and though the independent and haughty Burton bears no resemblance to the sycophantic and lachrymose yet seductive Sulmoan, nevertheless his letters from Trieste are a sort of Tristia—or as the flippant would put it—Triestia. Indeed, he read and re-read with an almost morbid interest both the Tristia and the Ex Ponto. 272 Ovid's images seemed applicable to himself. "I, too," he said, "am a neglected book gnawed by the moth," "a stream dammed up with mud," "a Phalaris, clapped, for nothing in particular, into the belly of a brazen bull." Like Ovid, too, he could and did pronounce his invective against the Ibis, the cause of all his troubles, that is to say, Rashid Pasha, whose very name was as gall and wormwood. His fate, indeed, was a hard one. The first linguist of his day, for he spoke twenty-eight languages and dialects, he found himself relegated to a third-rate port, where his attainments were absolutely valueless to anybody. The greatest of travellers, the most indefatigable of anthropologists, the man who understood the East as no other Englishman had understood it—was set to do work that could in those days have been accomplished with ease by any raw and untravelled government official possessed of a smattering of German and Italian. But the truth is, Burton's brilliant requirements were really a hindrance to him. The morbid distrust of genius which has ever been incidental to ordinary Government officialism, was at that time particularly prevalent. The only fault to be found with Burton's conduct at Damascus, was that, instead of serving his own interest, he had attempted to serve the interests of his country and humanity. By trimming, temporizing, shutting his eyes to enormities, and touching bribes, he might have retained his post, or have been passed on to Constantinople.
When time after time he saw incompetent men advanced to positions of importance, his anger was unrestrainable, "Why," he asked bitterly, "are the Egyptian donkey-boys so favourable to the English?" Answer, "Because we hire more asses than any other nation."
Trieste is a white splash between high wooded mountains and a dark precipice rising from a sea intense as the blue of the gentian. The population was about 140,000, mostly Italian speaking. Nominally they were Catholics, and of genuine Catholics there might have been 20,000, chiefly women. "Trieste," said Burton, "is a town of threes—three quarters, three races (Italian, Slav and Austrian), and three winds (Sirocco, Bora, and Contraste)." One brilliant man of letters had been connected with the town, namely Marie-Henry Beyle, better known by his pen name, Stendhal, 273 who, while he was French Counul here, pumice polished and prepared for the press his masterpiece, La Chartreuse de Parme, which he had written at Padua in 1830. To the minor luminary, Charles Lever, we have already alluded. Such was the town in which the British Hercules was set to card wool. The Burtons occupied ten rooms at the top of a block of buildings situated near the railway station. The corridor was adorned with a picture of our Saviour, and statuettes of St. Joseph and the Madonna with votive lights burning before them. This, in Burton's facetious phrase, was "Mrs. Burton's joss house;" and occasionally, when they had differences, he threatened "to throw her joss house out of the window." Burton in a rage, indeed, was the signal for the dispersal of everybody. Furniture fell, knick-knacks flew from the table, and like Jupiter he tumbled gods on gods. If, however, he and his wife did not always symphonize, still, on the whole, they continued to work together amicably, for Mrs. Burton took considerable pains to accommodate herself to the peculiarities of her husband's temperament, and both were blessed with that invaluable oil for troubled waters—the gift of humour. "Laughter," Burton used to say, and he had "a curious feline laugh," "animates the brain and stimulates the lungs." To his wife's assumption of the possession of knowledge, of being a linguist, of being the intellectual equal of every living person, saving himself, he had no objection; and the pertinacity with which she sustained this role imposed sometimes even on him. He got to think that she was really a genius in a way, and saw merit even in the verbiage and rhodomontade of her books. But whatever Isabel Burton's faults, they are all drowned and forgotten in her devotion to her husband. It was more than love—it was unreasoning worship. "You and Mrs. Burton seem to jog along pretty well together," said a friend. "Yes," followed Burton, "I am a spoilt twin, and she is the missing fragment."
Burton, of course, never really took to Trieste, his Tomi, as he called it. He was too apt to contrast it with Damascus: the wind-swept Istrian hills with the zephyr-ruffled Lebanon, the dull red plains of the Austrian sea-board with the saffron of the desert, the pre-historic castellieri or hill-forts, in which, nevertheless, he took some pleasure, with the columned glories of Baalbak and Palmyra. "Did you like Damascus?" somebody once carelessly asked Mrs. Burton.
"Like it!" she exclaimed, quivering with emotion, "My eyes fill, and my heart throbs even at the thought of it."
Indeed, they always looked back with wistful, melancholy regret upon the two intercalary years of happiness by the crystalline Chrysorrhoa, and Mrs. Burton could never forget that last sad ride through the beloved Plain of Zebedani. Among those who visited the Burtons at Trieste, was Alfred Bates Richards. After describing Mrs. Burton's sanctuary, he says: "Thus far, the belongings are all of the cross, but no sooner are we landed in the little drawing-rooms than signs of the crescent appear. These rooms, opening one into another, are bright with Oriental hangings, with trays and dishes of gold and burnished silver, fantastic goblets, chibouques with great amber mouth-pieces, and Eastern treasure made of odorous woods." Burton liked to know that everything about him was hand-made. "It is so much better," he used to say, than the "poor, dull work of machinery." In one of the book-cases was Mrs. Burton's set of her husband's works, some fifty volumes. 274
Mr. Richards thus describes Burton himself, "Standing about five feet eleven, his broad, deep chest and square shoulders reduce his apparent height very considerably, and the illusion is intensified by hands and feet of Oriental smallness. The Eastern and distinctly Arab look of the man is made more pronounced by prominent cheek-bones (across one of which is the scar of a javelin cut), by closely-cropped black hair, just tinged with grey, and a pair of piercing, black, gipsy-looking eyes." Out of doors, in summer, Burton wore a spotlessly white suit, a tie-pin shaped like a sword, a pair of fashionable, sharply-pointed shoes, and the shabbiest old white beaver hat that he could lay his hands upon. On his finger glittered a gold ring, engraved with the word "Tanganyika." 275 In appearance, indeed, he was a compound of the dandy, the swash-buckler and the literary man. He led Mr. Richards through the house. Every odd corner displayed weapons—guns, pistols, boar-spears, swords of every shape and make. On one cupboard was written "The Pharmacy." It contained the innocuous medicines for Mrs. Burton's poor—for she still continued to manufacture those pills and drenches that had given her a reputation in the Holy Land. "Why," asked Richards, "do you live in a flat and so high up?" "To begin with," was the reply, "we are in good condition, and run up and down the stairs like squirrels. If I had a great establishment, I should feel tied and weighed down. With a flat and two or three servants one has only to lock the door and go out." The most noticeable objects in the rooms were eleven rough deal tables, each covered with writing materials. 276 At one sat Mrs. Burton in morning neglige, a grey choga—the long, loose Indian dressing-gown of soft camel's hair—topped by a smoking cap of the same material. She observed, "I see you are looking at our tables. Dick likes a separate table for each book, and when he is tired of one he goes to another." He never, it seems, wrote more than eleven books at a time, unless stout pamphlets come under that category. Their life was a peaceful one, except on Fridays, when Mrs. Burton received seventy bosom and particular friends, and talked to them at the top of her voice in faulty German, Italian, which she spoke fluently, or slangy English. 277 In the insipid conversation of this "magpie sanhedrin," "these hen parties," as he called them, Burton did not join, but went on with his work as if no one was present. Indeed, far from complaining, he remarked philosophically that if the rooms had been lower down probably 140 visitors instead of 70 would have looked in. The Burtons usually rose at 4 or 5, and after tea, bread and fruit, gave their morning to study. At noon they drank a cup of soup, fenced, and went for a swim in the sea. Burton then took up a heavy iron stick with a silver knob 278 and walked to the Consulate, which was situated in the heart of the town, while Mrs. Burton, with her pockets bulging with medicines, and a flask of water ready for baptism emergencies hanging to her girdle, busied herself with charitable work, including the promotion of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. They generally dined at the table d'hote of the Hotel de la Ville, and dined well, for, as Burton says used to "Only fools and young ladies care nothing for the carte." 279 Having finished their coffee, cigarettes, and kirsch, outside the hotel, they went home to bed, where, conscious of a good day's work done, they took their rest merrily. Sometimes they interrupted the routine with excursions into the surrounding country, of which they both knew every stock and stone, pre-historic or modern. Of business ability, Burton had never possessed one iota, and his private affairs were constantly mis-managed. As at Fernando Po, Santos and Damascus, he promptly looked out for a sanitarium, his choice finally resting upon a loftily-situated village called Opcina.
Reviewing Burton's career, Mr. Alfred Bates Richards says: "He has done more than any other six men, and is one of the best, noblest and truest that breathes. While not on active service or on sick leave he has been serving his country, humanity, science, and civilisation in other ways, by opening up lands hitherto unknown, and trying to do good wherever he went. He was the pioneer for all other living African travellers."
If Trieste was not an ideal post for him, still it had the patent advantage of being practically a sinecure. He and his wife seem to have been able to get away almost at any time. They sometimes travelled together, but often went in different directions, and as Burton was as restless as a hyena, he never stayed in any one place many hours. Occasionally they met unexpectedly. Upon one of these meetings in a Swiss hotel, Burton burst out affectionately with, "And what the devil brought you here?" To which she replied, promptly but sweetly, "Ditto, brother." For study, Burton had almost unlimited time, and nothing came amiss to him. He lost himself in old sacramentaries, Oriental manuscripts, works on the prehistoric remains of Istria, Camoens, Catullus, The Arabian Nights, Boccaccio. His knowledge was encyclopaedic.
Early in 1873 the Burtons visited Vienna chiefly in order to see the great Exhibition. The beauty of the buildings excited their constant admiration, but the dearness of everything at the hotels made Burton use forcible language. On one occasion he demanded—he never asked for anything—a beefsteak, and a waiter hurried up with an absurdly small piece of meat on a plate. Picking it up with the fork he examined it critically, and then said, quite amiably for him, "Yaas, yaas, 280 that's it, bring me some." Next he required coffee. The coffee arrived in what might have been either a cup or a thimble. "What's this?" demanded Burton. The waiter said it was coffee for one. "Then," roared Burton, with several expletives, "bring me coffee for twenty." Their bill at this hotel came to £163 for the three weeks.
On their return from Vienna, they had the pleasure of meeting again Lady Marion Alford, Aubertin, and that "true-hearted Englishman, staunch to the backbone," Charles Tyrwhitt Drake, who "brought with him a breath from the desert and stayed several weeks." The three friends went to a fete held in the stalactite caverns of Adelsberg, from which Burton, who called them the eighth wonder of the world, always assumed that Dante got his ideas of the Inferno. Lighted by a million candles, and crowded with peasants in their picturesque costumes, which made wondrous arabesques of moving shadows, the caves presented a weird and unearthly appearance, which the music and dancing subsequently intensified. Shortly afterwards Drake left for Palestine. In May (1874), Burton was struck down by a sudden pain, which proved to arise from a tumour. An operation was necessary, and all was going on well when a letter brought the sad news of Drake's death. He had succumbed, at Jerusalem, to typhoid fever, at the early age of twenty-eight. 281 Burton took the news so heavily, that, at Mrs. Burton says, 282 it "caused the wound to open afresh; he loved Drake like a brother, and few know what a tender heart Richard has." To use Dr. Baker's 283 phrase, he had "the heart of a beautiful woman."
In the meantime Mrs. Burton was reaping the fruits of her injudicious treatment of Khamoor. Thoroughly spoilt, the girl now gave herself ridiculous airs, put herself on a level with her mistress, and would do nothing she was told. As there was no other remedy, Mrs. Burton resolved philanthropically to send her back to Syria, "in order that she might get married and settled in life." So Khamoor was put on board a ship going to Beyrout, with nine boxes of clothes and a purse of gold. "It was to me," says Mrs. Burton, "a great wrench." Khamoor's father met her, the nine boxes, and the purse of gold at Beyrout, and by and by came to the news that she was married and settled down in the Buka'a. Such was the end of Chico the Second.
51. The Port of Trieste. 52. The Gypsy. Written in 1875. 53. Etruscan Bologna. 1876. 54. New System of Sword Exercise for Infantry. 1876.
On 8th December 1874, Burton sent his wife to England to arrange for the publication of various of his works, and in May 1875, having obtained leave, he followed her, arriving in London on the 12th. He took with him "a ton or so of books" in an enormous trunk painted one half black the other white—"the magpie chest" which henceforth always accompanied him on his travels. At the various stations in England there were lively scenes, the company demanding for luggage excess, and Burton vigorously protesting but finally paying. He then took the value out by reeling off a spirited address to the railway clerk, punctuated with expletives in twenty odd African or Asiatic languages, on the meanness of the clerk's employers.
Always suffering from impecuniosity, the Burtons were perpetually revolving schemes for increasing their income. One was to put on the market a patent pick-me-up, good also for the liver, to be called, "Captain Burton's Tonic Bitters," the recipe of which had been "acquired from a Franciscan monk." "Its object," observed Burton facetiously, to a friend, "is to make John Bull eat more beef and drink more beer." Mrs. Burton imagined naively that if it were put into a pretty bottle the demand would exceed the supply. They had hopes, too, for the Camoens, which had taken many years of close application and was now approaching completion. Still, it was argued that a Translation of Camoens, however well done, could not hope for the success of a well-advertised liver tonic, seeing that while most people have a liver, it is only here and there one who has a taste for Camoens. The tonic was placed on the market, but the scheme, like so many others, proved a fiasco. Nobody seemed to want to be picked up, and the indifference of a Christian nation to the state of its liver, was to Burton extremely painful. So he abandoned philanthropy, and took to lecturing before the Anthropological and other societies, dining out, and calling on old friends. One Sunday he visited the Zoo; but when he asked for a glass of beer at the refreshment bar, the girl declined to serve him because he was "not a bona-fide traveller!"
In 1875, Burton's portrait, painted by the late Lord Leighton, was exhibited in the Academy; and on July 6th of the same year, Burton started off on a second trip to Iceland, which occupied him six weeks, but he and his wife did not meet again till October 6th. On December 4th (1875) they left London for the Continent. The morning was black as midnight. Over the thick snow hung a dense, murky fog, while "a dull red gleam just rendered the darkness visible."
"It looks," said Burton, "as if London were in mourning for some great national crime."
To which Mrs. Burton replied, "Let us try to think, darling, that our country wears mourning for our departure into exile."
On reaching Boulogne they sought out some of their old acquaintances, including M. Constantin, Burton's fencing master. After a brief stay in Paris, they proceeded to Trieste, ate their Christmas dinner, and then set out for India, partly for pleasure and partly for the purpose of collecting information about the abandoned diamond mines of Golconda.
The Suez Canal, which had been finished some five years previous, gave them much pleasure, and it was like living life over again to see the camels, the Bedawin in cloak and kuffiyyah, the women in blue garments, and to smell the pure air of the desert. On reaching Yambu, Burton enquired whether Sa'ad the robber chief, who had attacked the caravan in the journey to Mecca days, still lived; and was told that the dog long since made his last foray, and was now safe in Jehannum. 284 They landed at Jiddah, where Burton was well received, although everyone knew the story of his journey to Mecca, and on rejoining their ship they found on board eight hundred pilgrims of a score of nationalities. Then a storm came on. The pilgrims howled with fright, and during the voyage twenty-three died of privation, vermin, hunger and thirst. Says Mrs. Burton: 285 "They won't ask, but if they see a kind face they speak with their eyes as an animal does." At Aden Burton enquired after his old Harar companions. Shahrazad was still in Aden, the coquettish Dunyazad in Somaliland, the Kalandar had been murdered by the Isa tribe, and The End of Time had "died a natural death"—that is to say, somebody had struck a spear into him. 286 Bombay was reached on February 2nd.