A LIFE OF SIR RICHARD BURTON.*
KNOWN daring nearly forty years as Captain Burton, Haji Barton, Consul Burton, and now, finally, as Sir Richard, an original and picturesque man, although still, happily, sur- viving, has had his life written and set before the public by an ingenuous and devoted admirer. Richard Burton has filled • Richard F. Burton, K.C.M.G. : his Early Private and Public Life, with an Account of his Travels cud Exp7oratione. By Francis Hitohman. 2 vols. London: Sampson Low.
so considerable a place in the history of modern literature, adventure, geography, and hard work, that he well deserved to have his extraordinary life properly recorded at some time. Whether Mr. Rachman, ably supported as he is by Lady Burton, who has contributed the most readable chapters, has furnished precisely the kind of biography required, in quality as well as quantity, is very doubtful. He had a subject almost unique,—a man of strong character and original bent, who cat his own way through the world, and had the daring to be sincere, who physically may be regarded as the type of endurance in an age famous for hard-workers, and whose "two-o'clock-la- the-morning courage," which may be an affair of temperament and stout nerves, yet none the less admirable, enabled him to plunge into deadly hazards and pass through them unscathed, if not unmoved. We doubt strongly whether, in order to present a living picture of such a man, it was necessary to compile summaries of his travels, which he has done so much better himself. Yet two-thirds of these pages are filled with abstracts of books ; and we cannot help feeling that a better, more instructive, and more impressive biography might have been put into one volume. Mr. Hitchman also has some strong, shall we say, prejudices. He hates "permanent officials" not wisely, but too well ; he dislikes, perhaps the word is too mild, "reviewers ;" and he seems to have an inborn horror of some people whom he calls the" middle classes," or the bourgeois. All this would not be of any importance whatever in itself; but it is displayed in a shape which injures his hero, with whom in several conjunctures we desire to sympathise, and find our sym- pathies repelled by Mr. Hitchman's petty and one-sided way of putting things. But we must do him the justice to say that he is in earnest, that he must have taken immense pains, and that no one could have exceeded him in anxiety to make his readers admire and love Sir Richard and Lady Burton, who is always a bright star in this little firmament. If he has not succeeded in producing a fine, we might even say an adequate, piece of biography, it is not for want of labour and will, qualities which go a long way, but are not always sustained by taste, judgment, and a sense of proportion.
We learn from the preface that the two opening chapters, +dealing "with Sir Richard Burton's life to the time of his leaving India," are the work of Lady Burton. They are by far the most novel and readable chapters in the book ; but we cannot say as much of her other contribution, which relates her husband's experiences with Beatson's Horse during the Crimean War, and appears to have been partly written by Burton himself. Yet even the lively and dashing early chapters are not seldom deficient in good taste, and not wholly devoid of a slight flavour of slang, which adds neither vivacity nor accuracy to the style. It is from these, however, that we learn something of the early private life of the Burtons. They come of a Westmoreland family, a branch of which emigrated to Ireland in the last century. Colonel Burton, the father of Richard, entered the Army at seventeen, and later in life, after he had married, found it expedient to live abroad. His children, Richard, Edward, and a sister, brought up on the Continent, learned several languages almost as a matter of course ; and the boys acquired a cosmopolitan tone which never left them. They seem to have been hardy and high-spirited children who, despite a liberal use of the paternal cane, did pretty much as they pleased. "They beat all their bonnes, generally by running at their petticoats and upsetting them." One servant, a big Norman girl, insisting on stricter discipline, was soon conquered,—" A jerk of the arm on her part brought on a general attack from the brood ; the poor bonne measured her length upon the ground and they jumped upon her." One day their mother took them to the window of a pastry-cook's, and, by way of lesson, pointing to some apple. puffs, said :—" Now, let us go ; it is good for little children to restrain themselves.' 'Upon this the three devilets turned flashing eyes and burning cheeks upon their moralising mother, broke the windows with their fists, clawed out the tray of apple-puffs, and bolted, leaving poor Mrs. Burton, a sadder and a wiser woman, to pay the damage of her lawless brood's proceedings." None will be surprised to read, further on, that Edward, who went to Cambridge, was sent away because he flatly refused to rise in time to attend morning chapel; and that Richard was rusticated from Oxford, because he would drive tandem to a forbidden steeple-chase. At the same time, it should be said that both the boys wilfully dis- obeyed in order that they might enter on active life as soldiers. Richard, indeed, studied hard, in his own way, turning early to Arabic, but was unable to get help from the Regius Professor. He also spoilt the master's garden, drilled a hole in his favourite watering-pot with a bullet from an air-gun, and shot rooks with the same instrument. Lady Burton gives a bright, if somewhat flippant sketch of Oxford in 1841-42, just as she does afterwards of Bombay, Gujerat, and Scinde, all derived from her husband's notes and letters. Dismissed from Oxford, as he wished to be, Richard Burton became a cadet in the East India Company's Army. Here his passion for languages had full scope, and he soon passed first in Hindustani and Gujerati, and studied both Arabic and Persian. In fact, despite his abounding animal spirits and exuberant physical vigour, he spent many hours at his books, always in a fine practical fashion, and with an eye to practical ends. His method of acquiring a language, described "as his own invention, and thoroughly suited to himself," is worth quoting, although it would not snit everybody :—
" He bought a simple grammar and vocabulary, marked out the forma and words which he knew to be absolutely necessary, and learnt them by heart by carrying them in his pocket and looking over them at spare moments during the day. He never worked more than a quarter of an hour at a time, for after that the brain lost its fresh- ness. After learning some three hundred words, easily done in a week, he stumbled through some easy book (one of the Gospels is the most come-at-able), and underlined every word that he wished to recollect, in order to read over his pencillings at least once a day. Having finished his volume, he completely worked up the grammar, minutias and all, and then chose some other book whose subject most interested him. The neck of the language was now broken, and progress was rapid."
It should be added that he read aloud, so that the ear might assist the memory ; and "when he conversed with anybody in a language he was learning, he took the trouble to repeat the words inaudibly after him, and so learn the trick of pro- nunciation and emphasis." No wonder that he swiftly acquired languages, and become such an accomplished linguist. Yet what more hopeless task was ever undertaken than that of turning into the Fellow of a College a man so very much out of the common, and who was a law to himself He was bound to be erratic, unconventional—some would say immoral—adventurous, independent, and take the con- sequences. After reading this account of his youthful years, one is not surprised that the boy who tried to climb down the crater of Vesuvius, should have penetrated into the mysteries of Medina and Mecca, and been the first European to enter the city of Harar, and one of the first, at least, to push deep into the interior from Zanzibar, towards the head-waters of the Nile. Mr. Hitchman, as we have said, gives a fair summary of the travels of Burton ; but the real interest of the book lies mainly in the early chapters, which show in the boy the real character of the man. With his energy, perseverance, capacity, and thirst for knowledge of all kinds, it seems quite natural that he should be invested with the Brahminical thread, initiated in the Sikh religion, should have obtained a certificate
of Suffeism, and become a proficient in the tenets and cere- monial of Islam. It is equally natural, although Mr. Hitch- man seems to think it something bordering on sin, that a man whose ways were so abnormal should be distrusted by permanent as well as other responsible officials. His motto,
we are told, was, "Honour, not honours ;" and honour of a kind he has won in many and varied fields. A mean pension and a knighthood do not seem a great reward ; but Richard Burton has shaped his life for himself, and has not done the things which win larger pay and higher rank. Despite many defects, a good crop of inaccuracies, which inferentially throw doubt upon some amusing anecdotes and historical state- ments, and a want of depth as well as breadth in the treatment of his great theme—the character and life-work of a very original man—Mr. Hitchman's volume will nevertheless be found entertaining, perhaps edifying, by the general reader.
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