Richard Burton

“ I do most sincerely trust that Sir Richard Burton's friends will be successful in obtaining for him an adequate retiring allowance from his post at Trieste. Wherever modern deeds of daring are known, there is the name of Burton held in honour; and even in these days of exploration and travel, I stand amazed opposite a shelf containing the record of Burton's travels. In literature and scholarship he is not less distinguished than in geography ”

“ I know I am right in saying that, whatever the Royal Geographical Society may have thought then, they have since learned the truth, and know what a true and valuable member they possessed in Richard Burton, of which they have now given me most gratifying proofs. No one can speak so truly as I can, because I possess all Richard Burton's private journals; I know all the secrets of his life for the past thirty-five years. I have all Speke's letters, and the copies of my husband's to him. Men do not tell everything to their men-friends. ”

“ In point of fact, the "Richard Burton" described by part of the press, notably by the Saturday Review—the Richard Burton quoted by a great portion of the people who professed to know him so well, and really hardly knew him at all, never existed—was a man I never knew and never saw.
To the last breath, there was never a saner, or a sounder, or a truer judgment in any man who walked this earth. He saw and knew all the recesses of men's minds and actions. ”

“ Since Richard's last visit, great changes had taken place in Egypt, for Ismail Pasha had abdicated, who believed in and needed these mines; and Tewfik Pasha had succeeded, and Tewfik did not consider himself bound by anything his father had done; and if the English Government gave a man a chance, it certainly would not have been given to Richard Burton. Hence he got no further than Egypt, and ate his heart out in impotent rage and disgust at his bad luck. ”

“ Writing to Payne, 15th January, 1883, Burton says, "Has Arbuthnot sent you his Vatsyayana? 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. ”

“ Sir Richard Burton died at the age of 70, on the 20th October, 1890. During the last 48 years of his life, he lived only for the benefit and for the welfare of England and of his countrymen, and of the Human Race at large. ”

“ If Richard and I never marry, God will cause us to meet in the next world; we cannot be parted; we belong to one another. Despite all I have seen of false, foolish, weak attachments, unholy marriages, the after-life of which is rendered unholier still by struggling against the inevitable, still I believe in the one true love that binds a woman’s heart faithful to one man in this life, and, God grant it, in the next. All this I am and could be for one man. But how worthless should I be to any other man but Richard Burton! I should love Richard’s wild, roving, vagabond life ”

“ Sir,—My relations have startled me with a cutting from a 'London Correspondent' saying that 'Sir Richard Burton is lying very dangerously ill, neglected and alone, in a London lodging, whilst Stanley is being fêtéd.' If the love and devotion of a wife may count for anything, Sir Richard will never be neglected nor alone whilst I am alive. ”

“ Richard Burton was self-reliant, self-sustained, seeking no support from heaven or earth, substituting self-will for faith and strenuous effort for Divine assistance; endowed by nature with a frame of iron and muscles of steel, he was an athlete who might have figured in the arena in Greek or Roman times. ”

“ W. Kirby Green. 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. ”

“ Let him rest where he wanted to rest, and be silent, or do not boast of your "free country" where a man may not even be buried where he will; where he may not speak his mind, and tell the truth. Be ashamed [Pg 450] that History may have to say, that the only honour that England accorded to Richard Burton, having failed to do him justice in this life, was to bespatter his wife with mud after he was dead, and could not defend her. ”

“ Once he is married to me, he will be the favourite of our family, and you will all be proud of him, and have implicit confidence in him. And let me tell you another thing: you and my father are immensely proud of your families, and we are taught to be the same; but from the present to the future, I believe that our proudest record will be our alliance with Richard Burton. I want to 'Live.' I hate the artificial existence of London; I hate the life of a vegetable in the country; I want a wild, roving, vagabond life. I am young, strong, and hardy, with good nerves ”

“ RICHARD BURTON. (PRESENTED TO HIM, WITH HIS WIFE'S PORTRAIT, AS A WEDDING GIFT.) By Louis Desanges.
During the time we were breakfasting, Dr. Bird began to chaff him about the things that were sometimes said of him, and which were not true. "Now, Burton, tell me; how do you feel when you have killed a man?" Dr. Bird (being a physician) had given himself away without knowing it. Richard looked up quizzically, and drawled out, "Oh, quite jolly! How do you?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ In not a few respects Sir Richard Burton's character resembled Edward FitzGerald's. Burton, indeed, hailed the adapter of Omar Khayyam as a "fellow Sufi."
Lady Burton, too, comes extremely well out of the fire of criticism. The reader may object to her religious views, he may smile at her weaknesses, he may lament her indiscretions, but he will recognise that at bottom she was a God-fearing, noble-minded woman; and he will, we think, find himself really in love with her almost before knowing it. ”

“ A correspondent wrote: "A friend called in the other day to see Sir Richard Burton, and remarked, 'Why, Burton, if Gordon turns up, the Government will begin to believe in your knowledge. You [Pg 281] will be a made man.' Burton replied with his usual quiet 'Ye—es,' stroking his chin thoughtfully; 'for God's sake, my dear fellow, don't say anything about it. The Foreign Office will only say what a damned beast I was to know it when they never even suspected it!'"
Spring comes very soon in Trieste, and we were able to sit and walk out a great deal in the garden. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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; 660 secondly, because Sir Richard Burton's "old version" 661 of The Scented Garden is public property, and has been reprinted at least three times ”

“ As it is well known, he left his writings, published and unpublished, to his widow, Lady Burton, absolutely, to do with as she thought best. Lady Burton suppressed what she deemed advisable; the rest she brought with her to England. She published her Life of Sir Richard Burton, a new edition of his Arabian Nights, also Catullus and Il Pentamerone; and was arranging for the publication of others when she died (March, 1896) . ”

“ He goes to seek his brothers. It would be easy to point out the intellectual Fatherland of our greatest minds. Lamartine, De Musset, and De Vigny are English; Delacroix is an Anglo-Indian; Victor Hugo a Spaniard; Ingres belongs to the Italy of Florence and Rome.'
"Richard Burton has also some peculiarities which oblige one to suspect a drop of Oriental, perhaps gipsy, blood. By gipsy we must understand the pure Eastern."
My mother had a wild half-brother—Richard Baker, junior, a barrister-at-law, who refused a judgeship in Australia, and died a soap-boiler. ”

“ 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." ”

“ At the end of April Lady Burton recovered sufficiently to leave the hotel, and joined her sister, Mrs. Fitzgerald. She was chiefly occupied during the next few months in looking out for a house, and in completing the arrangements for her husband's final resting-place. About the middle of June the tent was finished. Sir Richard Burton's remains were transferred from the crypt under the church to the mausoleum where they now rest. At the funeral service Lady Burton occupied a prie-dieu by the side, and to the right was Captain St. George Burton, of the Black Watch, a cousin of Sir Richard. ”

“ The Glasgow Times says, "But the chapter is something more than that. It is a remarkable addition to the history of the 'Quarrels of Authors.' Sir Richard Burton, as we have before indicated, is a good hater, and he smites his enemies hip and thigh. The enemies are rather numerous, and some of them, it must be admitted, were scarcely worth powder and shot, but the way in which the old fighting man and traveller (he still seems to retain all the energy characteristic of both) 'goes for' them is refreshing in the extreme. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We sincerely trust that the present Government will not fail, amidst other acts of justice and good works, to bestow some signal mark of her Majesty's favour upon Captain Richard Burton, one of the most remarkable men of the age, who has displayed an intellectual power and a bodily endurance through a series of adventures, explorations, and daring feats of travel, which have never been surpassed in variety and interest by any one man, and whose further [Pg 13] neglectful treatment, should it take place, will be a future source of indignant regret to the people of England.' ”

“ 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!" ”

“ Burton was merely an interesting genius whom everybody liked, but whom nobody understood. He had neither means nor position ; his sole asset was a tremendous and fascinating personality. Would any mother dare to entrust her daughter to the care of such a man?
Nothing, therefore, was to be gained by announcing the engagement until Burton should return from his expedition to Central Africa, three, possibly four, years hence. Indeed, by doing so, they would only mar the few weeks of happiness still before them, and would make life still more difficult for Isabel during her lover's absence. ”