Sir Richard Francis Burton's biographer, the intrepid Norman Penzer, writes: "It has often been remarked that Burton lived out of his time, and that his queen should have been Elizabeth rather than Victoria."
1
His accomplishments are such that any epoch — be it the days of Elizabeth I or Elizabeth II — can not fully frame his genius. Richard Burton was an explorer, linguist, and cultural anthropologist of the highest caliber. He served England as an army captain and diplomat with the British Foreign Office. In his private life he was a poet and diarist, and the translator of the most sought after editions of A Thousand Nights and a Night. More than just a man of intellect, he was also an athlete who was known as one of the most expert fencers in England and on the Continent.
Is it any wonder that of him his wife famously wrote: "I wish I were a man. If I were I would be Richard Burton; but, being only a woman, I would be Richard Burton's wife." 2 ?
Born in 1821, he and his younger brother Edward were pushed by their father toward careers in the church. Richard was sent to Oxford; Edward to Cambridge. Richard managed to get "sent down" quickly enough, having served only five terms. The next natural step for young Richard was to join the British East India Company's Army as an ensign. Our beautifully bound morocco copy of the East India Register and Directory for 1843 lists him with the 18th Regiment.
At Oxford Richard had studied Latin and Greek, and had tutored himself in Arabic, since that language was not part of the curriculum. When stationed in India he found himself in a linguist's paradise — he excelled in Hindustani and Gujerati, and also studied Sindhi and Maratha, and passed exams in Sindi and Punjabi. Armed with his gift for languages, he would stain his skin with walnut juice, clothe himself in native garments, and disappear into the landscape, bringing back to his army superiors the rumors and whisperings he picked up in the bazaar.
After seven years in India, Richard was fluent in six native languages, but his body was suffering from the climate and he was constantly feverish. In Bombay he was examined by the Medical Board and given their opinion that he might not survive the long voyage home. Survive he did, however, and in England he penned the first of many books. His fourth book, Falconry in the Valley of the Indus, published in an edition of 500 copies in 1852, was noted by the publisher as having sold a mere 243 copies over a period of 25 years.
While his first literary efforts were hardly bestsellers, his greatest adventure lay ahead. In 1853, backed by funding from the Royal Geographic Society, Richard Burton boarded the S.S. Bengal, his head shaved and his persona changed to that of a born Muslim, and started on a pilgrimage to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
The resulting memoir of his experiences, A Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Meccah and Medinah, made Burton a celebrity, but he didn't return to England to rest upon his laurels. He hardly rested at all; he was soon in Aden, studying the Somali language.
An exploration into the interior of Africa to find the source of the Nile was planned. Disaster came to the party; their camp was raided by Somalis and Richard was wounded by a spear — it struck his left cheek, broke through the roof of his mouth, and cut through the right cheek. The famous portrait of him by Lord Leighton makes the most of this scar. One of the other explorers was killed, and the eventual trip up the Nile with John Hanning Speke is a story unto itself.
His health once again broken, Burton spent a bit of time recovering in England, where he became engaged to Isabel Arundell. He was Isabel's dream, but her mother would not consent. Burton abruptly left for a trip to Salt Lake City, where he observed the Mormons and gathered material for The City of the Saints. In 1861 Isabel agreed to elope, and they were married on January 22, Isabel having snuck out of her parents' house that morning.
Burton secured postings with the Foreign Office, each of which resulted in publications detailing the local language, customs, and geography. From his posting at Fernando Po he set out to inform the (reportedly) bloodthirsty ruler of Dahome that the slave trade would not be tolerated by the British government. Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome records Burton's trek.
Zanzibar; City, Island and Coast, not published until 1872, describes events surrounding the expedition to discover the source of the Nile, and gives details never before revealed by Burton about the episode. Speke had died in 1864; perhaps Burton felt enough time had passed to unveil his version of his Nile adventure.
Unexplored Syria was engendered during his time spent as Consul in Damascus. Two Trips to Gorilla Land, though not published until 1876, records explorations made while Consul at Fernando Po. While this "Gorilla Land" lay outside of his official territory, that small fact couldn't keep Burton from seeking adventure. Gorillas had been "discovered" only in the middle of the 19th century; the mountain gorilla wouldn't be sighted by white men until 1901.
The Land of Midian, Revisited describes a speculative trip made while on one of his many leaves from the Foreign Office, its purpose centered on surveying and exploring the possibilities of mining the wild lands of the Midian in Arabia. Burton's travels, while first infused with physical daring and linguistic genius, later take on a more scientific flavor. His trip to Iceland was under the auspices of a mining survey, and the resulting book Ultima Thule certainly tastes more of technical writing than a travel adventure.
Burton's interest in geology wasn't purely scientific. He and Isabel had enjoyed a life of adventure and travel, and for much of the time they had lived in style, in large rented houses or apartments, with the requisite number of servants. They entertained friends, gave to charitable organizations, and maintained a large number of animals; one of Burton's pet names for his wife was "Zoo." They needed money, and Burton was hoping to literally strike gold on his mining adventures. The fortune he sought was close by, on one of his writing tables, in the form of a manuscript he had worked on for many years.
Of the Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night Burton was later to write: "I translate a doubtful book in my old age, and I immediately make sixteen thousand guineas. Now that I know the tastes of England, we need never be without money."3
The tales told by Shahrazad had already been introduced to Western culture. Antoine Galland had published some of them in French, and Edward Lane's English edition, published in 1840, was popular with the Victorians. Burton wrote that the tales had been "mutilated in Europe to a collection of fairy tales, and miscalled the Arabian Nights."4
Richard Burton's edition of The Book of a Thousand Nights and A Night was the result of his years of collecting the tales, identifying their origins, and calling upon all of his experience in the East when writing the footnotes. His linguistic talents enabled him to study original manuscripts whenever they could be found, and he had undoubtedly spent many hours listening to the storytellers in coffee houses during his years of travel. Burton had also lived with and had had sexual relationships with women in the East; he was both a cultural anthropologist and most un-Victorian in his writings.
The publication, by subscription, of the Nights in September 1885, brought Burton both praise and damnation. The Edinburgh Review called it "...a work which no decent gentleman will long permit to stand upon his shelves."5 Such a review most likely guaranteed additional sales. In England, the Society for the Suppression of Vice had the power, through the Obscene Publication Act of 1857, to shut down production of the volumes. Because of this, Burton was made responsible, by contract with the publisher, for any legal fees resulting from a raid or lawsuit.
Our copies included editions published by the Burton Club, and the Kamashatra edition. We also have a full vellum copy of Burton and F. F. Arbuthnot's collaboration The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana, published in 1883. The Burtons had to keep ahead of the Society of the Suppression of Vice; Isabel feared that their lodgings were being watched, and she was careful to not let the manuscripts out of her sight before they were published.
Burton had written in A Personal Narrative, "Of the gladdest moments, methinks in human life, is the departing upon a distant journey into unknown lands."6 Sir Richard Francis Burton died on October 20, 1890. Death was the only journey from which he would not return, and the one exploration that would not be faithfully recorded for his publishers and the public.
