CHAPTER X.

MISCELLANEOUS TRAITS OF CHARACTER AND OPINIONS.

I am afraid all this "gup," as Richard would call it, will be considered rather light and frivolous about places so well known, but I want to give every word my husband has said about his life, and where I think he has forgotten anything, I like to put it in afterwards. I am afraid of its reading in a jerky style, for a friend, who one day sat in a corner when we were collaborating on one of his big tables, wrote the following specimen of us as we were beginning our work:--

"BURTONS--HUSBAND AND WIFE.

"_He._ Bless (_sic_) you, I say hold your tongue! Who wants _your_ opinion?

"_She_ (in a smaller voice). Oh, it is all very well, but you know you are like an iron machine, and I do all the wit and sparkle.[1]

"_He._ Oh, I dare say--the sparkle of a superannuated glow-worm. (Then both roared with laughter, and writing is suspended for several minutes.)

"_She._ Now then, go on, old iron-works, and have the first say."

(This is really the way most of our works, when collaborating, have been written.)

But I have a greater object than this. I want to prove to the world, that, though he was far from the sphere suited to his immense talent and services, which he had richly earned from the Governments that threw him away, his life was as happy as it could be made _under the circumstances_. It was not the being chained to a hard barren rock, as is generally represented. If the Governments had shown their appreciation of his services, had placed him where he ought to have been placed, I believe I may say he would not have had a sorrow in the world. It is true that the climate was bad--all our climates were--but once gout had laid hold of him, it pursued him in _every_ climate, good and bad, and he suffered much. Indeed, it was one of our pet jokes that we were so inured to bad climates that we were generally ill in good ones.

I do not forgive the Governments for this, and less the Conservative, for which he worked so hard; but they were merciful about "leave." He did not owe to them a penny of the money that enabled him to do what he liked, go where he would, have what he liked, and have the best of loving care, both wifely and medical, all his last years. He had to give half his pay to his Vice-Consul when absent, and so it suited all round, but it galled him to have to ask for leave, and if they could make no better use of him, they should at least have let him go on full pay in 1886, when he had served them forty-four years, and felt his breaking-up coming on. The only comfort I find in the blow dealt him, about not getting Marocco, is, that I fear shortly after he would have become unequal for the post, and I know that quite latterly he was not able for more than he did.

He only made four attempts to better his official life after his career was broken by recall from Damascus, and they were at the latter end of his life. One was to be made a K.C.B., in 1878; the second in 1880, to be appointed Commissioner for the Slave-trade in the Red Sea--that was ten years before his death; one to succeed Sir John Drummond-Hay in Marocco, 1885--when that was refused him, in his heart he threw up the Service, though necessity kept him on; and in 1886 his last appeal was to be allowed to retire on his full pension.

There seems to have been all along, during my husband's life, an impression that he was always craving for Government honours, and complaining of neglect. This is absolutely untrue. He was too proud, too manly, too philosophic. He was profoundly silent on the subject. It was I who did it, I who asked, I who made interest, and left no stone unturned to get him advanced to his proper deserts, not from a mean vanity, nor selfish ambition, but because I saw all these long years, with deep pain, what all the world knows and acknowledges _now_, his true merits and great work; the true hero, abandoned and forgotten, so surely as Gordon was, silently eating his heart out by a foreign fireside, with a craving for England and his fellow-men as strong as Byron's. I alone am to blame, if blame there is; and in those days the Press backed me. What harm would it have done the Service, or the Foreign Office, to have given him his last four crippled years, with his pension? This reproach has been thrown in our teeth by successful people who ought to have had better taste.

[Sidenote: _Miscellaneous Traits of Character and Opinions_.]

As I said before, a man presents different characters to his wife, to _his_ family, to _her_ family, to his lover, to his men-friends, to his boon-companions, to the public. Now I have often, in the early days of my married life, watched with great interest and astonishment things that in after life I became quite used to. My husband, whose character naturally quite expanded with me in the privacy of our domestic life, became quite another man the moment anybody else entered the room. He was very natural with my immediate family, my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and one or two of my uncles, so that they would describe him very much in the same terms that I do. With his own family he was, again, quite a different man, so that they saw him in another light. With the few friends--and you could count them on the fingers of one hand--with whom he chose to be _really_ intimate, he expanded to a certain amount; to all those he really liked he was a first-rate and staunch friend. With his boon-companions he was the centre of attraction. He would sit in the middle of them, and by his gaiety, brilliant conversation, and sound knowledge, fascinate the whole room, but to the world in general he seemed to wear a mask. He would throw out his quills like a porcupine, and somebody remarked they seemed to become harder every year.

When we were staying with my father, of whom he was particularly fond, he would always sit by him at meals. My father kept very open house, and intimates used to flock in at meal-times. Sometimes, when he would be in a full flow of spirits and gaiety, some outsider would walk in. He would stop suddenly, and his face become like a mask, and my father at first used to ask me, "What is the matter? Is Dick offended? Doesn't he like So-and-so?" and I said, "Oh no; that is his usual habit when a stranger comes in, and he will be like that until he knows him; and if he does not like him he will be always like that to him, and if he is nice he will thaw." He seemed to have a horror of any one seeing the inside of him, and if he was caught saying or doing anything good, he would actually blush, and hide it as if he had been caught committing a crime.

In married life we quite agreed about most things, and one was that complete liberty took off all the galling chain, popularly attributed by men to the monotony, dreary respectability, and conventionality of the usual British home circle, which frightens so many men from entering into matrimony, and which forms the antidote to the cosiness, companionship, and security of home, to two people who understand each other; consequently, whenever he showed a tendency to wander, and to go without me, though I was overjoyed when I was told I might go, I never restricted him. I provided every imaginable comfort for him; I transacted all his business at home, so that he might feel that he had left his second self, that nothing would go amiss when he was away. When he returned, he got a warm and joyous welcome, and was asked no questions. He told me what he liked, at his own sweet will, and I knew that he always returned to me with pleasure. He smoked where he liked, he brought whoever he liked into the house, his friends were always welcome, and he knew he need never be ashamed or afraid to ask anybody in to lunch or dinner; in short, his home was his own, and it was comfortable. On my part, I never wanted to go away from him for an hour; but when he sent me, as he often did, on various business for him, I went. But I am glad to think, now that he has gone, that after my business was terminated, no amount of pleasure or engagements, or a need to rest, ever held me back one hour when I might have been with him. I was always on board, or in the train, two hours after the work, whatever it was, was done, but I am equally sure that if I had said to him, "Jemmy, I am hipped, or I am bored, or I want a change," he would have told me to pack up my things and to go off for a week or a fortnight to Paris or London, or anywhere else I liked.

Richard was a most moral and refined man at home in his domestic life. He was not only the best husband that ever lived, but the pleasantest man to live with, and the easiest. He was too large-minded for all the usual small worries and Grundified conventions that form the cab-shafts of domestic life in civilization. He was a man with whom it was possible to combine, to keep up all the little refinements of the honeymoon, which tends to preserve affection and respect, and a halo of romance, which we kept up for thirty years, which is to civilized European life, just what putting one's self on a lower rank than one's husband in Moslem life is in the East--it preserves respect to both man and woman; whilst anything immoral, or cruel, or dishonest called forth his anger and severity.

He was a man who, if he had not practised great self-control, _could_ have had a very violent temper; but he had it so completely under him, that I have very seldom seen him in a rage, except, as I say, at anything cruel or unjust, ungentlemanly or immoral. With regard to domestic temper, it is a consolation to me to say that we never had a quarrel in our lives, nor even cross words, although occasionally women-friends worked hard to that effect. I always hold it as a rule that it is the most ungenerous thing a woman can be guilty of to "nag" a man, because, if he is a gentleman, he is at an utter disadvantage--he can't strike her. I have often seen women nagging at their husbands till I have wondered why they did not knock them down and jump upon them. When we married, I made a promise to myself that I would never do this, and if I ever saw him a little put out about anything, and felt myself getting irritable, I used to go out of the room on some excuse till it had passed, and then come back, and by that time we would begin to chaff about it, and it was all gone. I remember once slamming the door when I went out, and I heard him roaring with laughter.

He never had any mean jealousy, as a little man would have had. If I got any praise he was glad, and when he knew that I had striven my heart out in somebody's service, or for some good, and that I got slighted, as I often did, or a still worse return, he used to be furious, and I always used to have to pretend that I liked it to keep him quiet. In some few cases, let us say in the service of the poor, or in the protection of animals, I was more frequently seen than he was, and some ignorant person would say, "Look, my dear, that is the kind lady's husband;" and he used to roar with laughing, and say, "What a capital joke for me to be known only as 'Lady B.'s husband'!" Then we used to laugh, and I used to pretend to be delighted with my importance.

I am glad to say there was only _one_ will in the house, and that was _his_. He was master and mistress both, but, like all great men, he gave _carte blanche_ for all little things; but if he once put his foot down, and had he chosen to say black was white, white I knew it had to be. I like that. I was only too lucky to have met my master; I hate a house where the woman is at the helm. Then, like all great men, he was open to reason, and if, after having agreed to his views, I said later on, "I am going to do what you wish, but, before it is too late, what would you think of such a plan?" he would reflect a moment, and if my idea was really good, he would at once say: "Why, of course, I never thought of it; do what you say." But if his way was best, he would say, "No, I have decided."

His kindness of heart, and consideration for other people's feelings, nobody will ever know. In public life, and with his dependents, he was severe, but very just. He was always touched by any show of confidence and trust, and I must say he met it everywhere. He was adored by servants, by children, by animals, and by all people under him--soldiers, sailors, and tribes. When any British subjects were put into prison, and he ascertained that it was unjust or harsh (for instance, as the old man of ninety imprisoned a whole winter at Damascus, deep snow on the ground, in a narrow cell with scarce bread and water enough to keep him alive, for owing a Jew sixteen shillings which he could not pay, and these things are numerous), he used to go down once a week to the prisons, and let them out on his own responsibility, and let their accusers fight him instead of them. Hence, often complaints to the Home Government against him from the rich and powerful. Once a British sailor in Trieste was put in prison for some drunken lark; he had good-naturedly treated a native soldier to a drink, and when Jack had had enough, the native stole his watch. Jack, naturally, immediately knocked him down and took it from him, so he was locked up. The next day Richard got a very dirty-looking note, on which was written outside, "The Council." The seal was Jack's dirty thumb. Inside was--

"BURTIN,

"i ham him trobel, kum and let me haout.

"TIM TROUNCER."

Richard was delighted, and immediately went off and got the sailor out, and got the authorities to put the native soldier in his place. I simply give this as an illustration of the manner in which he was trusted and loved.

His mode of study was as follows:--

In _early_ life he studied everything till he had passed in it, whether it was medicine, law, theology, or any other branch. In after life he kept his knowledge on a steady platform, studying up all things together to a certain point at so much a day, "raising the platform" (as he called it) equally. He never passed a day without reading up something in one of his twenty-nine languages; hence he spoke them all without difficulty, never mixing them. He then read a good deal, and took notes, and cut any useful and interesting paragraphs from about ten English and four local papers. He used to examine into the meaning and the etymology of words as he went on, with all their bearings and different spellings; he never read hurriedly, passing anything over. He wrote for a certain time in the day at several different tables--a table to each work. He kept himself up in all the passing events of the day, wrote his journal, copied anything that struck him, and at night he always "cooled his head" with a novel. If he were sick he would go to bed for several days--went on the starvation system, banished all business from his mind, and had piles of novels on chairs by his bed. One day he would get up quite well and go to work again. The most remarkable thing about him was, that every man who spoke to him found, that his one specialty was Richard's specialty. It seemed as if there was nothing that he did not know; and as for hidden things, he seemed to guess them by intuition as if he were a magician.

People will wonder if I tell them of a quality quite unsuspected on the exterior. The older he grew, the greater dislike he had for women who went wrong. He was always civil to them, especially in his own house, but there was a coldness in his manner to them, in contrast to people who were innocent, and he seemed to detect them by instinct. He used to tell me that he inherited this from his father, who in his old age was exactly the same, and if any lady known to have _affaires gallantes_ was coming, that he used to turn round to his mother and say, "Mind, Martha! I won't have that adulteress put by me." He was also very indignant if any lady was insulted. He especially disliked a man who boasted of favours received, or let one know in any way about it--he always said such a one was no Englishman; and when he heard that any woman had lost her reputation through being simply kind to anybody, he took her part. He said, "Those are not even the men who 'kiss and tell,' but the men who 'tell and have not kissed.' A man when he really has any affair with a woman, if he is a man, is deadly silent about it." In his journals he has mapped and classified his men into three sorts as regarding their conduct with women:--

"1. The English gentleman who kisses and does not tell.

"2. The snob who kisses and tells, or if he does not actually tell, he insinuates with a smile and a gesture.

"3. Is the lying coward who tells and does not kiss, has never been allowed the chance of kissing, who has a snub to avenge, or who blackmails for money; who forge their own love-letters, and read them not only to their friends, but at cafés and clubs.

"The two last classes were more or less unknown in England till the introduction of so much foreign blood and foreign contact. It never would have occurred to the pure-blooded Englishman. Unfortunately, when men debase themselves by asking ladies for money (there is always something generous in a woman to a man--not to her own sex), they pity them, and are kind to them, and give it to them, instead of doing what they ought to do--ringing the bell and having the man turned out of the house. I have seen more innocent women lose a spotless reputation by those acts of kindness, than others by an illicit love with an English gentleman. When I see a man trying to prove that a woman drinks, or that she is out of her mind, or hysterical, or a liar, if he tells it to me once I may forget it, but if he tells it to me twice I know that that man has got something serious to hide, and that that woman knows his secret. If the man is effeminate, or deformed, or vain, morbid, or craving for notice and sympathy, be sure it is his own state he describes, and not the woman he runs down, who has snubbed him and knows what he wants to hide."

Of critics and reviewers he wrote as follows:--

"They no longer review books; when they are incompetent they review the author, and if the author's politics and religion do not happen to agree with the office of that paper, it admits scurrilous and personal paragraphs on the authors themselves, bringing up a sort of _dossier_ of the author, which would be considered even disgraceful in a trial in a criminal court. Thirty years ago this would never have been allowed. This may amuse the writer, it may excite the reader, but I protest against it. Nothing can be less profitable to an author or a reader than a long tirade of peevish, petulant, personal comment, and unanswerable sneer. This is only used by people who can shelter themselves under an anonymous signature, or a _Critique manqué_, and is quite the mark of a pretender in literature and critical art, and which seldom disfigures the style of a true or able critic."

Much as he disliked unjust or coarse criticism, he delighted in playful bits of chaff like the following from the writer of the _feuilleton_ in the _Queen_, the lady's newspaper and Court chronicle. He had simply written to the _Morning Post_ a little chaff, telling truly what he had seen at a private Davenport _séance_.

"Oh, R. F. B.! Oh, R. F. B.! How can you such a ninny be? Why peril a good name and fame By playing into tricksters' game? Why, when all other dodges fail, Apply your aid to prop a tale Not half so true as 'Gammer Gurton,' With such a name as R. F. Burton?"

"Gaiety," in speaking of _Echo_, said--

"The _Echo_ is just a bit wild, Its par is indeed a hard hitter; In fact, it is not drawn mild, It is a matter of Burton and bitter."

Anent the "Arabian Nights," a young girl says--

"What did he say to you, dear aunt? That's what I want to know. What did he say to you, dear aunt? That man at Waterloo!

"An Arabian old man, a Nights old man, As Burton, as Burton can be; Will you ask my papa to tell my mamma The exact words and tell them to me?"

There was another capital chaff on his "Lusiads," but I cannot find it.

With regard to flowers, he would go out and bring one little wild flower and put it in a glass of water on his table--sometimes a single leaf. If anybody gave him a bouquet, or brought hothouse or garden flowers and put them under his nose, he would turn away with disgust; and people will no doubt laugh when I tell them that it was a peculiar form of asceticism which ran like a thread (one amongst many) through his life. He learnt singing, but he found his own voice so disagreeable in song he would not go on with it, whilst his speaking voice never had its equal--so soft and deep and attractive, that every one would stop to listen as if it were a sweet-toned bell.

In music he had the finest ear, so that a false note was an agony to him; and he could fully appreciate all Eastern music and gypsy music that would sound tuneless to an English ear, and only loved the minor key. He would go to an opera to hear a new _prima donna_, but he could not abide amateur music, and at evenings at home, if anybody proposed a little music, and a girl got up and nervously warbled a ballad about banks and butterflies, he used to put his hand to his stomach and walk out of the room. He did not allow me to cultivate much music, but if I sang melancholy music in a minor key, in a soft low voice, he would throw open the door even while he was at work.

He was intensely simple in his tastes. I used to busy myself greatly, Martha-like, about making his room extremely comfortable; but the moment I put anything pretty in it, it used to be put in the passage. He liked large plain deal tables, about six feet long and three or four feet broad, with no table-cloth. He would tie a red bandanna on the leg for a penwiper. He liked hard wooden writing-chairs, and to have a great many of these tables--one for each separate work; a small iron bedstead, with iron wove mattress, no sheets, but plenty of English white soft warm blankets. He would have no night-light; but would never have blinds nor shutters drawn, that he might see daylight as soon as possible, and the last of the twilight. His bookshelves were all of plain deal, and each category upon which he was working, was kept separate. He would not have his books and papers touched, and preferred dust and cobwebs to their being moved. His three private rooms contained only books, swords, pistols, and guns, scientific instruments, a few medicines, and plenty of clothes. He loved his old clothes. He would order rows of greatcoats and ulsters, and then go out in a little thin coat to keep himself hardy.

He had a great love for boots, and sometimes had as many as a hundred pairs in the house. I used to implore to be allowed to give his old hats away to the cabmen, and he only laughed immensely at my getting so ashamed of them; but he always had loads of new clothes, and wore the old ones for preference. There was one rather amusing story about a fencing-shoe. He lost one, and he went and asked his bootmaker if he would make him another. He said, "No; he would make him a pair." He took this shoe all over the world, and every bootmaker he saw he asked him to make the odd shoe; but nobody ever would. At last we found out that there is a superstition amongst bootmakers that if they make one boot they die. He tried it for eighteen years and never succeeded, and I have the odd shoe now in remembrance.

He never would keep two of anything. If he had two things of a sort he gave one away, and if he became attached to any particular thing he would give it away--another asceticism--nor would he indulge in any perfume except good eau de Cologne.

With regard to food, he was very fond of what some people would call common things; but no man understood better how to order a dinner, or what to order, and how to enjoy it, especially in Paris. He used to say that French cooking and English materials and a good cellar ought to keep any man alive for a hundred years; but when he could not get these luxuries he preferred, not the demi-semi sort of table with sham _entrées_, but whatever food of the country the natives ate. For instance, in West Africa on the coast, everything was turtle, which abounds. In Brazil it was _fejão_ and _farinha_, which _fejoada_ was brown beans, covered with a very savoury sauce, and coarse flour (the two mixed up together are delicious); and also a kind of hot-pot, which was kept continually going. In Damascus and all Eastern places it would be _kous-kous_, of which he never tired, and _kabábs_; and in Trieste, _risotto_ (a savoury rice dish with lumps of meat thrown about in it), _polenta_ (yellow meal made something like a pudding with little birds in it), _ravioli_ (Genoese paste), and so on.

But, in fact, in each place that we went to, he used native dishes, native wine, and native smoke, cigars or otherwise, because, as he argued, they were adapted to the climate. So when we came to a pretentious hotel, and he asked for common things--let us say the little black olives--the proprietor would say, "Oh dear, no, Sir; we don't keep such common things as that;" and he used to say, "Then send out sharp and get them." He loved _bácalá_ (dried codfish) and _sauerkraut_, but they have both such a horrid smell that I bargained to have them on Saturday, the day _after_ my reception day (Friday). One thing he could not bear, and that was honey. As some people know that there is a cat in a room, he also could not sit in the room with honey, and knew even if it was kept in the most secret drawer or cupboard. Sometimes after a dinner or lunch I have said to him, "What made you look so uncomfortable?" And he would say, "There was honey in the room, and I thought they would think I was mad if I asked to have it removed; but I felt quite faint."

His great treat of all was a sucking-pig, three weeks old, roasted well with the crackle, stuffing, and apple-sauce; and this was always ordered on our wedding-day and on his birthday.

With regard to what he drank, from the time of Richard's attacks of gout, he stuck steadily to three ounces a day of whisky-and-water during the twenty-four hours. His favourite wine was port--he used to call it the "prince of wines;" but he was not allowed it during the last three years and a half. Champagne he cared but little for. I was so sorry that he could not add, being no longer living, his testimony to Dr. Broadbent, when the discussion was on in the papers about drink in 1891; but I can do it for him now, and confirm it too. In all bad climates--West Africa, India, and elsewhere--when an epidemic such as cholera or yellow fever comes on, the first men to die are the water-drinkers, and when the first virulence has polished them off, it clears off the drunkards, and the only persons left living are the moderate drinkers. This is a positive fact, and anybody who gainsays it, has had no practical experience in very bad climates.

Our days used to be passed as follows:--

Of course, I am not speaking now of the last three and a half years that he was sick and I broken down. In his days of health and strength he suffered from insomnia, and he could not get more than two or three hours' sleep. For the first twenty-two years of my married life, I made our early tea at any time from three to half-past five, according to the seasons (and if I happened to go to a ball I did not find it worth while to go to bed); we had tea, bread and butter, and fruit. Now, if it was a home day, we would set to work first on our journals, then on the correspondence, and then to our literature. I did the greater part of his correspondence by dictation or directions, and then copied for him or wrote _with_ him and _for_ him. At eleven or twelve, according to the seasons, we had a regular _déjeuner_ (lunch), answering to the continental fashion. He would then go to the Consulate or we went for a long walk, or I would do visits or shopping, or look after the Societies of which I was President--it might be for the poor or the animals. If it were summer, we would take an hour's swim; if it were winter, an hour at the fencing school. In our declining days, in the summer time, we had an hour's _siesta_ before beginning new work. At four o'clock a sit-down tea of bread and butter and fruit and jam, at which most of our intimates and our Staff would flock in; and then we would return to our literature till evening dinner, either in garden or house. After dinner we smoked and read, went to bed about ten, and read ourselves to sleep.

Sometimes we were invited out, or invited friends, and this was varied by long excursions, riding, driving, walking, or boating. We generally knew every stick and stone for fifty miles round the place we lived in, and, of course, larger travels or camp life varied again from this. Camp life for me would begin two hours before dawn, when I would see the horses watered, fed, groomed, and saddled, and somebody else the striking of the tents, the packing and loading of the baggage animals. At dawn we started, and we rode until the sun was impossibly hot. We then called a halt, got shade if we could, loosened the girths, watered our beasts and ourselves if possible, fed them and ourselves if we could, and in all cases rested. After about a couple of hours we went on again till sunset. We then bivouacked for the night. If we were amongst any tribes, his diwan was spread, _chibouks_ and lemonade were prepared, and he sat in state and received chiefs or notables. I used to walk off with the horses, and went through the whole detail again of changing saddle and bridle for clothing and halter, cooling, watering, feeding, clothing, picketing, and then back to the tent to join the party in a humble and unostentatious manner as would become a young man, _if I were posing as such_--say a son or a dependant.

Once the visits were over we had supper, and to bed, and to-morrow _da capo_.

During our last three and a half years we were both broken down, though I am still alive to tell the tale, and we had to forget what we _used_ to do, and train down to what we _could_ do; but I look back with comfort and pride on the reflection that during our thirty years of married life we never lost a minute, and that it was all occupied in trying to "soar," and not to "drop." The word always in his mouth was "work, work, work," and his motto always, "Excelsior!"

He had another peculiarity on which he rather prided himself. In his latter years about most things he was excessively open--in fact, I used to be rather surprised and sometimes worried at the way in which he talked quite openly of his plans before utter strangers, and corresponded freely about literature with people he had never seen, and I often think that he came to a great deal of harm that way, that untrue people were apt to trade upon it; and, on the other hand, on the things he really felt most, he prided himself on his secrecy, and was very fond of _hiding things_. I used to tell him he was a regular magpie, because in the end he hid them so well that he used to have to come and call me to try and find them.

He used to trust me with the whole of the money, and I rendered him a monthly account, and it amused him immensely to pretend to people that I never allowed him any money, but sent him out with half a crown. Sometimes, when he made a small literary profit, he would hide it away, and it used invariably to get stolen. Once he put away £18 after this fashion, and our cook in our absence let some boy-friend of hers come in to play with the weapons; the boy poked his nose into all the drawers and found it, and stole it, and after that he did not hide any more.

He never knew how much he had, if he had debts or anything. I managed all that, and used to show him once a month a total of what was spent and what there was to go on with. He liked money for what it would bring, but he was very generous; he never gave it a thought, and he spent it as fast as he got it. He gave freely. He was born to be rich, and he liked to be thought rich. His own motto which he composed for himself was, "HONOUR, NOT HONOURS;" and his chaff motto for young ladies' albums, and which he would never explain to them, was as follows:--

"Sháwir hunna wa Khálif hunna." "Consult them (_fem._) and (do contrary) to them."

It is very curious the ignorance with which he was occasionally met. An educated man from Vienna asked him one day if he had ever been to Africa, and an educated Englishwoman, after living nearly eighteen years with him in Trieste, asked him the same question, and was not aware that he had ever written a book. I think that gives people some idea of his modesty.

He had a great objection _personally_ to cremation, although he thought it a clean and healthy thing; but he said with his usual joke at a serious thing, "I do not want to burn before I have got to;" and secondly, "When a fellow has been quartered for seven years or more close to a Hindú _smáshán_, or burning-ground, it reminds him so painfully of the unpleasant smell of roast Hindú" (which pervaded his quarters when he was a struggling ensign or lieutenant). He used to carry a stick, which it was a pain to lift, to exercise the muscles of his arms; his Damascus pipe held a quarter of a pound of tobacco; his elephant-guns, with which he used to trot about Africa, of twenty-four pounds, which carried a four-ounce ball, I can only just lift; and, on the other hand, and later on in life, he would buy such diminutive things that they were almost more fit for a doll's house than for a man.

His handwriting, as everybody knows, was so small as to be almost invisible, and he used jokingly to say that the printers struck work when one of his manuscripts went in. _They_ used to make hideous mistakes, and _he_ used to abuse them in what he jokingly called "langwidge" all down the margins, and one day a firm sent up a foreman to say that the men declined to go on if they were abused in that manner. I was sent to interview the man, and we both laughed so much we could hardly speak, but he said he would go back and try to pacify them. Richard used always to say that a wee writing, as if done with a pin, betokened a big, strong man; a bold, dashing hand, as if written with the poker, was always a tiny, golden-haired, baby-faced woman.

Sometimes, when people annoyed Richard in little ways, I would say, "Never mind; why do you take notice of such little things?" and he invariably answered, "I am like an elephant's trunk; I can pick up a needle and root up a tree."

In his latter days, though his eyes were as soft and as brilliant and youthful as they could be, he only required spectacles just at the very end to read his own writing or small print, and the oculist found that he had two quite different eyes, which had been complained of in Madame Gutmansthal's picture, showing what a true artist she was. The right required No. 50 convex, and the left eye 14 convex. He turned to me and said, "I always told you that I was a dual man, and I believe that that particular mania when I am delirious is perfectly correct."

DESCRIPTION OF RICHARD IN EGYPT.

Cutting from the _Argonaut_.

[Sidenote: _Descriptions from Other Sources_.]

Edwin de Leon, for many years Consul-General of the United States in Egypt, thus writes of the late Sir Richard Burton:--

"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. Audacious in speech and act, and fond of shocking the prejudices of those with whom he talked, he was the expounder of the most outrageous paradoxes possible to conceive. He was eminently a social animal; loved the pleasures of the table, and would talk with a friend all night in preference to going to bed, and in the Chaucerian style. Yet, with women, I never knew him even hint an indelicacy; for the charm of his conversation was to them very great, he had so much to tell. In his earlier days he was a strikingly handsome man, and even since his face had been scarred and furrowed by wounds and trials, there yet lingered on that expressive countenance the 'faded splendour wan' which had survived his youth. Among his personal habits was that of carrying in his hand an iron walking-stick, as heavy as a gun, to keep his muscles properly exercised, and a blow from his fist was like a kick from a horse. Mind and muscle with him were equally strong propellers, and the animal nature as vigorous as the intellectual. He had the faculty of making staunch friends and bitter enemies, and many of each. Burton had a curious characteristic which he shared with Lord Byron--that of loving to paint himself much blacker than he really was, and to affect vices, much as most men affect virtues, and with the same insincerity. In one of his shipwreck stories, after describing how they all suffered from the pangs of hunger, and the wolfish glances they began to cast on each other from time to time as the days wore on and no relief came, dropping his voice to a mysterious whisper, almost under his breath he added, 'The cabin-boy was young and fat, and looked very tender, and on him, more than on any other, such looks were cast, until----' Here he paused, looked around at the strained and startled faces of his auditors, in which horror was depicted, and then abruptly concluded, as though dismissing a disagreeable memory, 'But these are not stories to be told at a cheerful dinner-party, in a Christian country, and I had best say no more. Let us turn to some more cheerful subject.' Of course he was pressed to continue and complete his story, but stubbornly refused; leaving his hearers in a most unsatisfactory state of mind as to the _dénouement_ of the unfinished narrative."

DESCRIPTION OF RICHARD IN HIS STUDY AT TRIESTE.

Cutting from _Life_.

"Though standing nearly six feet high, he did not look a tall man, his broad shoulders, deep chest, and splendidly developed limbs deceiving the eye as to his real height. His hands and feet were small. His hair was of the deepest black, and was always worn close-cropped. In the East he went with his head clean shaven, covered with a fez and a white cap underneath it. As a talker he was unrivalled. His voice was soft and musical, contrasting strangely with the commanding tones which one would fancy necessary for him whose life so often depended on the power of his tongue over uncivilized men. His laugh was like the rattle of a pebble thrown across a frozen pond. While the best of ordinary men never aspire to know more than something of everything, and everything of something, he might almost without exaggeration be said to know everything of everything. He was an especial favourite of young men, who would literally sit at his feet as he talked. To all he was the kindest and truest of friends, and the brightest and most uncomplaining of companions in spite of his many disappointments.

"His literary work was always a labour of love with him, and those in the next room would often hear a hearty laugh burst from him as he lighted on the quaint conceit of some Oriental chronicler."

He was a man dearly loved by all Eastern races, by children and servants, and animals; he never made a mistake about character, and often when I have been quite delighted with people he has warned me against them, and forbidden me to have anything to do with them. I have never known him wrong in his estimate.

He had a wonderful prescience of things and events, even of those things of which he knew the least. I might quote a little common instance of so trite a thing as the "Argentines." I had some money in Argentines--not much, only a few hundreds--and one day without any rhyme or reason he ordered me to take them out. I thought to myself that if a first-rate lawyer and a first-rate broker put them in, that it must be right, and that Richard, being anything but a business man, could not possibly know anything about it, so I did not write the letter. Six months later he gave me a call; I went into his room. "Did you ever write that letter that I desired you to write, taking your money out of the Argentines?" "No, Jemmy," I said; "you know you know nothing about business, and it is a good percentage." He said very sternly, "Go and bring your pen and paper directly, and sit down here, and write it before me, and I will post it myself." He dictated to me a most imperative letter to my lawyer, desiring him to withdraw the money the moment he received the letter, without stopping to write back any questions. It was done, and my lawyer wrote me back a very aggrieved letter at my want of confidence in the judgment of his broker, and bitterly complained that I had lost £14. I gave it to Richard, who was delighted. A fortnight later the smash came. To show how kind-hearted he is, he called me and said laughingly, "I forbid you to write and taunt your lawyer; I know it is an awful temptation." He was so extremely punctiliously conscientious in his conduct to other people, so full of kindnesses and consideration for the feelings and peculiarities of other people.

I know that he is appreciated already, but not yet understood. His nobility of nature and chivalry belonged to the Knights of the Middle Ages. His science, erudition, and broad views belong to sixty years hence; his misfortune was not belonging to his Time, and hence the many failures during his life.

[1] This was a little bit of "chaff," because he was so afraid of saying too much about himself, that he often made it heavy with knowledge and science, and suppressed what was interesting as to his own share in the matter quoted.--I. B.