Chapter 86

[Footnote 14: Thus she calls Burton's friend Da Cunha, Da Gama, and gives Arbuthnot wrong initials.]

[Footnote 15: I mean in a particular respect, and upon this all his friends are agreed. But no man could have had a warmer heart.]

[Footnote 16: Particularly pretty is the incident of the families crossing the Alps, when the children get snow instead of sugar.]

[Footnote 17: Particularly Unexplored Syria and his books on Midian.]

[Footnote 18: It will be noticed, too, that in no case have I mentioned where these books are to be found. In fact, I have taken every conceivable precaution to make this particular information useless except to bona-fide students.]

[Footnote 19: I am not referring to "Chaucerisms," for practically they do not contain any. In some two hundred letters there are three Chaucerian expressions. In these instances I have used asterisks, but, really, the words themselves would scarcely have mattered. There are as plain in the Pilgrim's Progress.]

[Footnote 20: I have often thought that the passage "I often wonder... given to the world to-day," contains the whole duty of the conscientious biographer in a nutshell.]

[Footnote 21: Of course, after I had assured them that, in my opinion, the portions to be used were entirely free from matter to which exception could be taken.]

[Footnote 22: In the spelling of Arabic words I have, as this is a Life of Burton, followed Burton, except, of course, when quoting Payne and others. Burton always writes 'Abu Nowas,' Payne 'Abu Nuwas,' and so on.]

[Footnote 23: Conclusion of The Beharistan.]

[Footnote 24: They came from Shap.]

[Footnote 25: Thus there was a Bishop Burton of Killala and an Admira Ryder Burton. See Genealogical Tree in the Appendix.]

[Footnote 26: Mrs. Burton made a brave attempt in 1875, but could never fill the gap between 1712 and 1750.]

[Footnote 27: Now the residence of Mr. Andrew Chatto, the publisher.]

[Footnote 28: In 1818 the Inspector writes in the Visitors' Book: "The Bakers seldom there." Still, the Bakers gave occasional treats to the children, and Mrs. Baker once made a present of a new frock to each of the girls.]

[Footnote 29: Not at Elstree as Sir Richard Burton himself supposed and said, and as all his biographers have reiterated. It is plainly stated in the Elstree register that he was born at Torquay.]

[Footnote 30: The clergyman was David Felix.]

[Footnote 31: Weare's grave is unmemorialled, so the spot is known only in so far as the group in the picture indicates it.]

[Footnote 32: He died 24th October 1828, aged 41; his wife died 10th September 1848. Both are buried at Elstree church, where there is a tablet to their memory.]

[Footnote 33: For a time Antommarchi falsely bore the credit of it.]

[Footnote 34: Maria, 18th March 1823; Edward, 31st August 1824.]

[Footnote 35: Beneath is an inscription to his widow, Sarah Baker, who died 6th March, 1846, aged 74 years.]

[Footnote 36: Her last subscription to the school was in 1825. In 1840 she lived in Cumberland Place, London.]

[Footnote 37: The original is now in the possession of Mrs. Agg, of Cheltenham.]

[Footnote 38: Wanderings in West Africa, ii. P. 143.]

[Footnote 39: Life, i. 29.]

[Footnote 40: Goldsmith's Traveller, lines 73 and 74.]

[Footnote 41: Life, i. 32.]

[Footnote 42: It seems to have been first issued in 1801. There is a review of it in The Anti-Jacobin for that year.]

[Footnote 43: She was thrown from her carriage, 7th August 1877, and died in St. George's Hospital.]

[Footnote 44: Life, by Lady Burton, i. 67.]

[Footnote 45: Dr. Greenhill (1814-1894), physician and author of many books.]

[Footnote 46: Vikram and the Vampire, Seventh Story, about the pedants who resurrected the tiger.]

[Footnote 47: He edited successively The Daily Telegraph and The Morning Advertiser, wrote plays and published several volumes of poetry. He began The Career of R. F. Burton, and got as far as 1876.]

[Footnote 48: City of the Saints, P. 513.]

[Footnote 49: Short died 31st May 1879, aged 90.]

[Footnote 50: In Thomas Morton's Play Speed the Plough, first acted in 1800.]

[Footnote 51: Grocers.]

[Footnote 52: Life, i. 81.]

[Footnote 53: Or so he said. The President of Trinity writes to me: "He was repaid his caution money in April 1842. The probability is that he was rusticated for a period." If so, he could have returned to Oxford after the loss of a term or two.]

[Footnote 54: He died 17th November 1842, aged 65.]

[Footnote 55: Robert Montgomery 1807-1855.]

[Footnote 56: "My reading also ran into bad courses--Erpenius, Zadkiel, Falconry, Cornelius Agrippa"--Burton's Autobiographical Fragment.]

[Footnote 57: Sarah Baker (Mrs. Francis Burton), Georgiana Baker (Mrs. Bagshaw).]

[Footnote 58: Sind Revisited. Vol. ii. pp. 78-83.]

[Footnote 59: 5th May 1843. He was first of twelve.]

[Footnote 60: "How," asked Mr. J. F. Collingwood of him many years after, "do you manage to learn a language so rapidly and thoroughly?" To which he replied: "I stew the grammar down to a page which I carry in my pocket. Then when opportunity offers, or is made, I get hold of a native--preferably an old woman, and get her to talk to me. I follow her speech by ear and eye with the keenest attention, and repeat after her every word as nearly as possible, until I acquire the exact accent of the speaker and the true meaning of the words employed by her. I do not leave her before the lesson is learnt, and so on with others until my own speech is indistinguishable from that of the native."--Letter from Mr. Collingwood to me, 22nd June 1905.]

[Footnote 61: The Tota-kahani is an abridgment of the Tuti-namah (Parrot-book) of Nakhshabi. Portions of the latter were translated into English verse by J. Hoppner, 1805. See also Anti-Jacobin Review for 1805, p. 148.]

[Footnote 62: Unpublished letter to Mr. W. F. Kirby, 8th April 1885. See also Lib. Ed. of The Arabian Nights, viii., p. 73, and note to Night V.]

[Footnote 63: This book owes whatever charm it possesses chiefly to the apophthegms embedded in it. Thus, "Even the gods cannot resist a thoroughly obstinate man." "The fortune of a man who sits, sits also." "Reticence is but a habit. Practise if for a year, and you will find it harder to betray than to conceal your thoughts."

[Footnote 64: Now it is a town of 80,000 inhabitants.]

[Footnote 65: Sind Revisited, i. 100.]

[Footnote 66: "The first City of Hind." See Arabian Nights, where it is called Al Mansurah, "Tale of Salim." Burton's A. N., Sup. i., 341. Lib Ed. ix., 230.]

[Footnote 67: Mirza=Master. Burton met Ali Akhbar again in 1876. See chapter xviii., 84.]

[Footnote 68: Yoga. One of the six systems of Brahmanical philosophy, the essence of which is meditation. Its devotees believe that by certain ascetic practices they can acquire command over elementary matter. The Yogi go about India as fortune-tellers.]

[Footnote 69: Burton used to say that this vice is prevalent in a zone extending from the South of Spain through Persia to China and then opening out like a trumpet and embracing all aboriginal America. Within this zone he declared it to be endemic, outside it sporadic.]

[Footnote 70: Burton's Arabian Nights, Terminal Essay, vol. x. pp. 205, 206, and The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton, by W. H. Wilkins, ii., 730.]

[Footnote 71: Married in 1845.]

[Footnote 72: She died 6th March 1846, aged 74.]

[Footnote 73: He died 5th October 1858. See Sind Revisited, ii. 261.]

[Footnote 74: Camoens, born at Lisbon in 1524, reached Goa in 1553. In 1556 he was banished to Macao, where he commenced The Lusiads. He returned to Goa in 1558, was imprisoned there, and returned to Portugal in 1569. The Lusiads appeared in 1572. He died in poverty in 1580, aged 56.]

[Footnote 75: The Arabian Nights.]

[Footnote 76: Who was broken on the wheel by Lord Byron for dressing Camoens in "a suit of lace." See English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.]

[Footnote 77: Begun at Goa 1847, resumed at Fernando Po 1860-64, continued in Brazil and at Trieste. Finished at Cairo 1880.]

[Footnote 78: Napier was again in India in 1849. In 1851 he returned to England, where he died 29th August 1853, aged 71.]

[Footnote 79: Life of Sir Charles Napier, by Sir W. Napier.]

[Footnote 80: The Beharistan, 1st Garden.]

[Footnote 81: She married Col. T. Pryce Harrison. Her daughter is Mrs. Agg, of Cheltenham.]

[Footnote 82: She died 10th September 1848, and is buried at Elstree.]

[Footnote 83: Elisa married Colonel T. E. H. Pryce.]

[Footnote 84: That is from Italy, where his parents were living.]

[Footnote 85: Sir Henry Stisted, who in 1845 married Burton's sister.]

[Footnote 86: India, some 70 miles from Goa.]

[Footnote 87: His brother.]

[Footnote 88: The Ceylonese Rebellion of 1848.]

[Footnote 89: See Chapter iii., 11.]

[Footnote 90: See Arabian Nights, Terminal Essay D, and The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton, vol. ii., p. 730.]

[Footnote 91: His Grandmother Baker had died in 1846.]

[Footnote 92: The Pains of Sleep.]

[Footnote 93: Byron: Childe Harold, iv. 56.]

[Footnote 94: Ariosto's Orlando was published in 1516; The Lusiads appeared in 1572.]

[Footnote 95: Temple Bar, vol. xcii., p. 335.]

[Footnote 96: As did that of the beauty in The Baital-Pachisi--Vikram and the Vampire. Meml. Ed., p. 228.]

[Footnote 97: Tale of Abu-el-Husn and his slave girl, Tawaddud.--The Arabian Nights.]

[Footnote 98: Life, i., 167.]

[Footnote 99: She became Mrs. Segrave.]

[Footnote 100: See Burton's Stone Talk, 1865. Probably not "Louise" at all, the name being used to suit the rhyme.]

[Footnote 101: Mrs. Burton was always very severe on her own sex.]

[Footnote 102: See Stone Talk.]

[Footnote 103: See Chapter x.]

[Footnote 104: The original, which belonged to Miss Stisted, is now in the possession of Mr. Mostyn Pryce, of Gunley Hall.]

[Footnote 105: Of course, since Arbuthnot's time scores of men have taken the burden on their shoulders, and translations of the Maha-Bharata, the Ramayana, and the works of Kalidasa, Hafiz, Sadi, and Jami, are now in the hands of everybody.]

[Footnote 106: Preface to Persian Portraits.]

[Footnote 107: Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah, Memorial Ed., vol. i., p. 16.]

[Footnote 108: Burton dedicated to Mr. John Larking the 7th volume of The Arabian Nights.]

[Footnote 109: Haji Wali in 1877 accompanied Burton to Midian. He died 3rd August 1883, aged 84. See Chapter xx.]

[Footnote 110: He died at Cairo, 15th October 1817.]

[Footnote 111: That is, in the direction of Mecca.]

[Footnote 112: Pilgrimage, Memorial Ed., i., 116.]

[Footnote 113: See Preface to The Kasidah, Edition published in 1894.]

[Footnote 114: Pilgrimage, Memorial Ed., i., 165.]

[Footnote 115: A chieftain celebrated for his generosity. There are several stories about him in The Arabian Nights.]

[Footnote 116: An incrementative of Fatimah.]

[Footnote 117: Burton says of the Arabs, "Above all their qualities, personal conceit is remarkable; they show it in their strut, in their looks, and almost in every word. 'I am such a one, the son of such a one,' is a common expletive, especially in times of danger; and this spirit is not wholly to be condemned, as it certainly acts as an incentive to gallant actions."--Pilgrimage, ii, 21., Memorial Ed.]

[Footnote 118: Pilgrimage to Meccah, Memorial Ed., i., 193.]

[Footnote 119: A creation of the poet Al-Asma'i. He is mentioned in The Arabian Nights.]

[Footnote 120: How this tradition arose nobody seems to know. There are several theories.]

[Footnote 121: It is decorated to resemble a garden. There are many references to it in the Arabian Nights. Thus the tale of Otbah and Rayya (Lib. Ed., v., 289) begins "One night as I sat in the garden between the tomb and the pulpit."

[Footnote 122: Pilgrimage to Meccah (Mem. Ed., i., 418).]

[Footnote 123: Mohammed's son-in-law.]

[Footnote 124: Mohammed's wet nurse.]

[Footnote 125: Son of Mohammed and the Coptic girl Mariyah, sent to Mohammed as a present by Jarih, the Governor of Alexandria.]

[Footnote 126: Khadijah, the first wife, lies at Mecca.]

[Footnote 127: Known to us chiefly through Dr. Carlyle's poor translation. See Pilgrimage, ii., 147.]

[Footnote 128: Here am I.]

[Footnote 129: Readers of The Arabian Nights will remember the incident in the Story of the Sweep and the Noble Lady. "A man laid hold of the covering of the Kaaba, and cried out from the bottom of his heart, saying, I beseech thee, O Allah, etc."

[Footnote 130: See Genesis xxi., 15.]

[Footnote 131: The stone upon which Abraham stood when he built the Kaaba. Formerly it adjoined the Kaaba. It is often alluded to in The Arabian Nights. The young man in The Mock Caliph says, "This is the Place and thou art Ibrahim."

[Footnote 132: See also The Arabian Nights, The Loves of Al-Hayfa and Yusuf, Burton's A.N. (Supplemental), vol. v.; Lib. Ed., vol. xi., p. 289.]

[Footnote 133: Burton's A.N., v., 294; Lib. Ed., iv., 242.]

[Footnote 134: See Chapter ix.]

[Footnote 135: Sporting Truth.]

[Footnote 136: The reader may believe as much of this story as he likes.]

[Footnote 137: The man was said to have been killed in cold blood simply to silence a wagging tongue.]

[Footnote 138: See Shakespeare's King John, act i., scene i.]

[Footnote 139: Burton's translation of the Lusiads, vol. ii., p. 425.]

[Footnote 140: Although Burton began El Islam about 1853, he worked at it years after. Portions of it certainly remind one of Renan's Life of Jesus, which appeared in 1863.]

[Footnote 141: To some of the beauties of The Arabian Nights we shall draw attention in Chapter 27.]

[Footnote 142: Of course both Payne and Burton subsequently translated the whole.]

[Footnote 143: First Footsteps in East Africa. (The Harar Book.) Memorial Ed., p. 26.]

[Footnote 144: Esther, vi., 1.]

[Footnote 145: Boulac is the port of Cairo. See Chapter xi..]

[Footnote 146: Zeyn al Asnam, Codadad, Aladdin, Baba Abdalla, Sidi Nouman, Cogia Hassan Alhabbal, Ali-Baba, Ali Cogia, Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Peri-Banou, The two Sisters who were jealous of their Cadette.]

[Footnote 147: Edward William Lane (1801-1876). He is also remembered on account of his Arabic Lexicon. Five volumes appeared in 1863-74, the remainder by his grand-nephew Stanley Lane-Poole, in 1876-1890.]

[Footnote 148: Every student, however, must be grateful to Lane for his voluminous and valuable notes.]

[Footnote 149: Lady Burton states incorrectly that the compact was made in the "winter of 1852," but Burton was then in Europe.]

[Footnote 150: My authorities are Mr. John Payne, Mr. Watts-Dunton and Burton's letters. See Chapter 22, 104, and Chapter 23, 107.]

[Footnote 151: It was prophesied that at the end of time the Moslem priesthood would be terribly corrupt.]

[Footnote 152: Later he was thoroughly convinced of the soundness of this theory. See Chapters xxii. to xxx.]

[Footnote 153: In the Koran.]

[Footnote 154: Burton's A.N., ii. 323; Lib. Ed., ii., p. 215.]

[Footnote 155: When the aloe sprouts the spirits of the deceased are supposed to be admitted to the gardens of Wak (Paradise). Arabian Nights, Lib. Ed., i. 127.]

[Footnote 156: To face it out.]

[Footnote 157: First Footsteps in East Africa, i., 196.]

[Footnote 158: First Footsteps in East Africa, ii., 31.]

[Footnote 159: The legend of Moga is similar to that of Birnam Wood's March, used by Shakespeare in Macbeth.]

[Footnote 160: The story of these adventures is recorded in First Footsteps in East Africa, dedicated to Lumsden, who, in its pages, is often apostrophised as "My dear L."

[Footnote 161: Afterwards Lord Strangford. The correspondence on this subject was lent me by Mr. Mostyn Pryce, who received it from Miss Stisted.]

[Footnote 162: The Traveller.]

[Footnote 163: Burton's Camoens, ii., 445.]

[Footnote 164: The marriage did not take place till 22nd January 1861. See