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 A
Gipsy Genius
By William Marion
Reddy
en are the only things worth while, in this world, and I
purpose to write briefly of a man, who, though living in
these, our own, so-called, degenerate days, would have found
a perfect setting in "the spacious times of great
Elizabeth." He would have been a worthy companion of
Raleigh, half-pirate and half-poet. He had in his time but
one soul-kinsman, and that man was at once England's shame
and glory, embalmed forever in the ominous work,
Khartoum.
ir Richard Burton was the last of the English "gentleman
adventurers." He came late into the world, but he had in him
the large, strong qualities that have made England master of
the world. He was a Gypsy genius, though his utmost research
could never find more clew to a Romany ancestry than the
fact that there was a Gypsy family of the same name. He
looked the Gypsy in ever feature, and he had upon him such
an urging restlessness as no man ever had, save, perhaps,
the Wandering Jew. His life was an epic of thought, of
investigation and of adventure. The track of his wanderings
laced the globe. He loved "the antres vast and deserts
idle," and he had the FLAIR, the houndscent, as it were, to
find the hearts of strange peoples. His "Life," by his wife,
is the most interesting biography since that of Boswell, and
strangely enough, it is, like the famous "Johnson," as
interesting for its revelation of the biographer as for its
portrayal of the subject. Burton's wife was the loving-est
slave that ever wedded with an idol. The story of the
courtship is ridiculous almost to the verge of tragic. As a
girl, a gypsy woman named Burton, told Isabel Arundell that
she would marry one of the palmist's name, would travel
much, and receive much honor.
ne day, at Boulogne, she was on the ramparts, with
companions, when she saw Burton. She describes him
raptuously; tall, thin, muscular, very dark hair, black,
clearly-defined, sagacious eye-brows, a brown weather-beaten
complexion, straight Arab features, a determined looking
mouth and chin. And then she quotes a clever friend's
description, "That he had the brow of a God, the jaw of a
Devil."
is eyes "pierced you through and through." When he smiled,
he did so "as though it hurt him." He had a "fierce proud
melancholy expression," and he "looked with contempt at
things generally." He stared at her, and his eyes looked her
through and through. She turned to a friend and said in a
whisper, "That man will marry ME." The next day they walked
again. This time this man wrote on the wall, "May I speak to
you?" She picked up the chalk and scrawled, "No, mother will
be angry." A few days later they met in formal manner, and
were introduced. She started at the name, Burton. Her naif
rhapsodies on the meeting are refreshing. One night he
danced with her. She kept the sash and the gloves she wore
that night as sacred mementoes. Six years passed before she
saw her Fate again. He had been in the world though, and she
had kept track of his actions. In 1856 she met him in the
Botanical Gardens "walking with the gorgeous creature of
Boulogne--then married." They talked of things, particularly
of Disraeli's "Tancred." He asked her if she came to the
Gardens often. She said that she and her cousin came there
every morning. He was there next morning, composing poetry
to send to Monkton-Milnes. They walked and talked and did it
again and again. "I trod on air," wrote the lady in her old,
old age. Why not? She was one woman who had found a real
hero. He asked her if she could dream of giving up
civilization, and of going to live there if he could obtain
the Consulate of Damascus. He told her to think it over. She
said, "I don't WANT to think it over--I've been thinking it
over for six years, ever since I first saw you, at Boulogne,
on the ramparts. I have prayed for you every day, morning
and night. I have followed all your career minutely. I have
read every word you ever wrote, and I would rather have a
crust and a tent with YOU than to be Queen of all the world.
And so I say now, yes, yes, yes." She lived up to this to
the day of his death, and long after it.
n 1859 she was thinking of becoming a Sister of Charity.
She had not heard from Burton in a long time. He had left
her without much ceremony to search for the sources of the
Nile with Speke. Speke had returned alone, Burton remained
at Zenzibar, and she says, "I was very sore "because Burton,
according to report, was not thinking of coming home, to his
love, but of going for the source of the Nile once more. She
called on a friend. The friend was out. She waited, and
while waiting Burton popped in upon her. He had come to see
the friend to get her address. Her description of the
meeting is a pitifully exact reproduction of her emotions
over the reunion. He was weakened by African fevers. Her
family, ardent Catholics, opposed the idea of marriage. The
lovers used to meet in the Botanical Gardens, whence she
often had to escort him fainting, to the house of
sympathetic friends, in a cab. He was poor. He was out of
favor with the government. Speke had pre-empted the honors
of the expedition. But she was happy.
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She
annihilated herself as an individual, and she has
left in her own papers a set of "Rules For a Wife,"
that will make many wives, who are regarded as
models of devotion, smile contemptuously at
her.
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hen one day, in April, 1860, she was walking with some
friends when "a tightning of the heart" came over her, that
"she had not known before." She went home, and said to his
sister, "I am not going to see Richard for some time." Her
sister re-assured her. "No, I shall not," she said, "I don't
know what is the matter." A tap came at the door, and a note
was put in her hand. Burton was off on a journey to Salt
Lake City, to investigate Mormonism. He would be gone nine
months and then he was to come back, to see if she would
marry him. He returned about Christmas, 1860. In the later
part of January they were married, the details of the affair
being appropriately unconventional, not to say exciting. The
marriage was, practically, an elopement. Lady Burton's
description of the event, and of every event in their lives,
ever after, discloses an idolatry of the man that was almost
an insanity. She reveals herself as a help-mate, with no
will but her husband's, no thought that was not for, and of,
him. She annihilated herself as an individual, and she has
left in her own papers a set of "Rules For a Wife," that
will make many wives, who are regarded as models of
devotion, smile contemptuously at her. She was utterly happy
in complete submission to his will. She described how she
served him almost like an Indian squaw. She packed his
trunks, was his amanuensis, attended to the details of
publishing his books, came, or went, as he bade, suffered
long absence in silence, or accompanied him on long journeys
of exploration, uncomplainingly, was proud when he
hypnotized her for the amusement of his friends. One can but
feel deeply sorry for her, for with all her servility, she
was a woman of the finer order of mind. The pity of her
worship grows, as the reader of his life, and hers, realizes
how little return in demonstrative affection she received as
the reward for her vast, and continuous lavishment of love.
She strikes me, in this, as a strange blend of the comic and
the tragic. The world neglected Burton. He almost deserved
it; so great a sacrifice as his wife consecrated of her life
to him would compensate for the loss of anything. You admire
it; but you catch yourself suspecting that this consecration
must have been, at times, an awful bore to him. He was
unfaithful to her, it is said, with ethnological intent, in
all the tribes of the earth. He had no morals to speak of.
He had no religion, having studied all. He was a pagan
beyond redemption, though his wife maintained that he was a
Catholic. Unfortunately, for her, his masterpiece refutes
her overwhelmingly. He wrote the most remarkable poem of the
last forty years, one that is to be classed only with
Tennyson's "In Memoriam" and the "Rubaiyat" of Omar Khayyam.
By this poem, and, probably, by the revelation of the love
he excited in one woman, he will live. This poem expresses
himself, and his conclusion, after years spent in wandering,
fighting, studying languages, customs and religions. To
understand the man and his poem, we must understand what he
did, and since the time of the Old Romance, no man surpassed
him in "deeds of derring-do." He was a modern, a very
modern, Knight of the Round Table. He was the possessor of
innumerable abstruse, and outlandish accomplishments. He was
a scientist, a linguist, a poet, a geographer, a roughly
clever diplomat, a fighter, a man with a polyhedric
personality, that caught and gave, something from and to
every one. And he died dissatisfied, at Trieste, in 1890, at
the age of sixty-nine, and Swinburne sang a dirge for him
that was almost worth dying for.
hat he did is hard to condense into an article. I can do no
more than skim over his career, and make out a feature here
and there. He was an unstudious youth. He was not
disciplined. He grew as he might, and he absorbed
information at haphazard from any book he found to his
liking, but he was a sort of intellectual Ishmael. He
studied things not in the curriculum. He plunged into Arabic
and Hindustani, and was "rusticated." He cared nothing for
the classics, yet he left a redaction of Catullus that is a
splendid exposition of that singer's fearful corruption, and
with all of his art. He entered the Indian Army, and he
became so powerful, though a subordinate, that he was
repressed. His superiors feared, that in him, they would
find another Clive or Hastings. Then he joined the Catholic
church, but he joined many a church thereafter to find its
hidden meaning. He was trusted to a limited extent by Sir
Charles Napier, and he so insinuated himself with the
natives, that he was one of them, and sharer of their
mysterious powers. Kipling has pictured him under the name
of "Strickland" as an occultly powerful personage in several
of his stories. He was close to the Sikh war, and he mingled
with the hostile natives in disguise, until he knew their
very hearts. His pilgrimage to Mecca was a feat that
startled the world. He was the first "infidel" to kiss the
Kaabba. To do this he had to become a Mohammedan, and to
perform almost hourly minute ceremonials, in which, had he
failed of perfection, he would have been torn to pieces. His
book on this journey is a narration that displays the deadly
cold quality of his courage, and indeed a stupendous
consciencelessness in the interest of science. Next we find
him in the Crimea in the thick of things, and always in
trouble. He said that all his friends got into trouble, and
Burton was, usually, "agin the government." It was after the
Crimea that he met the lady who became his remarkable wife,
in the remarkable manner I have sketched. Then he went off
to discover the sources of the Nile, and with Speke
navigated Lake Tanganyika. He knew that he had not
discovered the source, and he wanted to try again, but he
and Speke quarreled, and pamphleteered against each other in
the press. Burton, deficient in money, and in sycophancy,
was discredited for a time, although now his name is
immortal in geography as a pioneer of African travel. We
have seen how he left his betrothed to study the Mormons,
and he studied them more closely than his wife's book
intimates, for she everything extenuated and ignored for her
God-like Richard.
fter his experiences of marriage in Mormondom, undertaken
it now seems, in a desire to ascertain if polygamy were not
better for him than monogamy, he returned to London, and was
married despite the objections of Isabel Arundell's Catholic
family. The lot of the couple was poverty, although now and
then, thoughtful friends invited them to visit, and they
accepted to save money. After a long wait he was appointed
Consul at Fernando Po, on the West African coast. This was a
miserable place, but Burton made it lively; he disciplined
the negroes, and he made the sea captains fulfill their
contracts under threat of guns. He went home, and then went
back to Fernando Po, and undertook delicate dealings with
the king of Dahomey, and explored the west coast. He went to
Ireland, but Ireland was too quiet for him, but he found
there were Burtons there, which accounted to himself for
much of himself. After that he went to Brazil as Consul at
Santos, Sao Pablo, another "Jumping off place." He explored.
He found rubies, and he obtained a concession for a lead
mine for others. He met there the Tichborne Claimant, and
invented a Carbine pistol. He visited Argentina. All this
time he was writing upon many things, or having his wife
take his dictation. She went into the wilds, down into the
mines, everywhere with him. Next he was transferred to
Damascus, where his honesty got him into trouble, and his
wife's Catholicity aroused great sentiment against him. He
went into Syria, and he created consternation among the
corrupt office holders in Asia Minor. One can scarcely
follow his career without dizziness. By way of obliging a
friend, who wanted a report on a mine, he went to Iceland,
and came back to take the Consulship at Trieste. He went
back to India and into Egypt, and then returned to Trieste
to die. He wrote pamphlets, monographs, letters and books
about everything he saw, and every place he visited. He had
information exact, and from the fountain head about
innumerable things; religions, races, ruins, customs,
languages, tribal genealogies, plants, geology, archaeology
paleontology, botany, politics, morals, almost everything
that was of human interest and value, and besides all this,
he was familiar with Chaucer's vocabulary, with recondite
learning about Latin colloquialisms, and read with avidity
everything from the Confessions of Saint Augustine to the
newspapers. He wrote a "Book of the Sword," that is the
standard book on that implement for the carving of the
world. His translations of the "Arabian Nights" is a Titanic
work, invaluable for its light upon Oriental folk lore, and
literal to a degree that will keep it forever a sealed book
to the Young Person. His translations of Camoens is said to
be a wonderful rendition of the spirit of the Portuguese
Homer. His Catullus is familiar to students, but not
edifying. He wrote a curious volume on Falconry in India,
and a manual of bayonet exercise. He collated a strange
volume of African folk-lore. He translated several Brazilian
tales. He translated Apulius' "Golden Ass." And he had notes
for a book on the Gypsies, on the Greek Anthology, and
Ausonius. The Burton bibliography looks like the catalogue
of a small library. All the world knows about his book, "The
Scented Garden," which he translated from the Persian, and
which, after his death, his wife burned rather than permit
the publication of its naked naturalism. It was in the same
vein as his "Arabian Nights," and contained much curious
comment upon many things that we Anglo Saxons do not talk
about, save in medical society meetings, and dog Latin.
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[The
Kasidah] is difficult to interpret, because it
so clearly interprets itself. It must be read. It
cannot be explained.
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hen such a man sat down to write a poem, embodying his view
of "the Higher Law," what could have been expected but a
notable manuscript. With his poem, "the Kasidah," we shall
now concern ourselves. It purports to be a translation from
the Arabic of Haji Abdu El Yezdi. Its style is like that of
the Rubaiyat. It is erude, but subtile. It is brutal in its
anti-theism, and yet it has a certain tender grace of
melancholy, deeper than Omar's own. It is devoid of Omar's
mysticism and epicureanism, and appallingly synthetic. It
will not capture the sentimentalists, like the Rubaiyat,
but, when it shall be known, it will divide honors with the
now universally popular Persian poem. Burton's "Kasidah" is
miserably printed in his "Life," but Mr. Thomas Mosher, of
Portland, Maine, has issued it in beautiful and chaste form,
for the edification of his clientele of searchers for the
literature that is always almost, but never quite completely
forgotten. The "Kasidah" was written in 1853, and it is, in
its opening, much like Fitz Gerald's Rubaiyat, though Burton
never saw that gem of philosophy and song, until eight years
after. "The Kasidah" was not printed until 1880. It is
difficult to interpret, because it so clearly interprets
itself. It must be read. It cannot be "explained."
he Kasidah consists of about 300 couplets of remarkable
vigor in condensation. It reviews all the explanations of
"the sorry scheme of things" that man has contrived, and it
holds forth the writer's own view. He maintains that
happiness and misery are equally divided, and distributed in
this world. Self cultivation is, in his view, the sole
sufficient object of human life, with due regard for others.
The affections, the sympathies, and "the divine gift of
Pity" are man's highest enjoyments. He advocates suspension
of judgment, with a proper suspicion of "Facts, the idlest
of superstitions." This is pure agnosticism. There runs all
through the poem a sad note that heightens the courage with
which the writer faces his own bleak conclusion, and, "the
tinkling of the camel bell" is heard faint and far in the
surge of his investive, or below the deepest deep of his
despair. In Arabia, Death rides a camel, instead of a white
horse, as our occidental myth has it, and the camel's bell
is the music to which all life is attuned. Burton reverts
from time to time to this terrifying tintinnabulation, but
he blends it with the suggested glamour of evening, until
the terror merges into tenderness. The recurrence of this
minor chord, in the savage sweep of Burton's protest against
the irony of existence, is a fascination that the "Kasidah"
has in common with every great poem of the world. The
materialism of the book is peculiar in that it is Oriental,
and Orientalism is peculiarly mystical. The verse is blunt,
and almost coarse in places, but here and there are gentler
touches, softer tones, that search out the sorrow at the
heart of things. It is worthy, in its power, of the praise
of Browning, Swinburne, Theodore Watts, Gerald Massey. It is
Edward Fitz Gerald minus the vine and the rose, and ali
Persian silkiness. The problem he sets out to solve, and he
solves it by a petitio principii, is
Why must we meet, why must we part, why must we
bear this yoke of Must,
Without our leave or ask or given, by tyrant Fate on
victim thrust?
The impermanence of things oppresses him, for he says in
an adieu,
. . . Haply some day we meet again; Yet ne'er the
self-same man shall meet; the years shall make us other
men.
e crams into one couplet after another, philosophy after
philosophy, creed after creed, Stoic, Epicurean, Hebraic,
Persian, Christian, and puts his finger on the flaw in them
all. Man comes to life as to "the Feast unbid," and finds
"the gorgeous table spread with fair-seeming Sodom-fruit,
with stones that bear the shape of bread." There is an echo
of Koleleth in his contempt for the divinity of the body. It
is unclean without, impure within. The vanity of vanity is
proclaimed with piteous indignation.
"And still the weaver plies his loom, whose warp
and woof is wretched Man,
Weaving the unpattern'd, dark design, so dark we doubt
it owns a plan.
Dost not, O Maker, blush to hear, amid the storm of
tears and blood,
Man say thy mercy made what is, and saw the made and
said 'twas good?"
And then he sings:
Cease Man to mourn, to weep, to wail; enjoy the
shining hour of sun;
We dance along Death's icy brink, but is the dance
less full of fun?
In sweeping away the old philosophies and religions, he
is at his best as a scorner, but he has "the scorn of scorn"
and some of "the love of love" which, Tennyson declares, is
the poet's dower. His lament for the Greek paganism
runs:
And when at length, "Great Pan is dead" uprose
the loud and dolorous cry,
A glamour wither'd on the ground, a splendor faded in
the sky.
Yes, Pan is dead, the Nazarene came and seized his
seat beneath the sun,
The votary of the Riddle-god, whose one is three,
whose three is one. . . .
Then the lank Arab, foul with sweat, the drainer
of the camel's dug,
Gorged with his leek-green, lizard's meat, clad in his
filmy rag and rug,
Bore his fierce Allah o'er his sands
Where, he asks, are all the creeds and crowns and
scepters, "the holy grail of high Jamshid?"
Gone, gone where I and thou must go, borne by the
winnowing wings of Death,
The Horror brooding over life, and nearer brought with
every breath.
Their fame hath filled the Seven Climes, they rose and
reigned, they fought and fell,
As swells and swoons across the wold the tinkling of
the camel's bell.
or him "there is no good, there is no bad; these be the
whims of mortal will." They change with place, they shift
with race. "Each Vice has borne a Virtue's crown, all Good
was banned as Sin or Crime." He takes up the history of the
world, as we reconstruct it for the period before history,
from geology, astronomy and other sciences. He accepts the
murderousness of all processes of life and change. All the
cruelty of things
"Builds up a world for better use; to general
Good bends special Ill."
And thus the race of Being runs, till haply in the
time to be
Earth shifts her pole and Mushtari-men another falling
star shall see:
Shall see it fall and fade from sight, whence come,
where gone, no Thought can tell,--
Drink of yon mirage-stream and chase the tinkling of
the camel-bell.
Yet follow not the unwisdom path, cleave not to this
and that disclaim;
Believe in all that man believes; here all and naught
are both the same.
Enough to think that Truth can be; come sit me where
the roses glow,
Indeed he knows not how to know who knows not also how
to unknow.
He denies the Soul and wants to know where it was when
Man was a savage beast in Primeval forests, what shape it
had, what dwelling place, what part in nature's plan it
played. "What men are pleased to call the Soul was in the
hog and dog begun."
Life is a ladder infinite-stepped that hides its
rungs from human eyes:
Planted its foot in chaos-gloom, its head soars high
above the skies.
he evolution theory he applies to the development of reason
from instinct. He protests against the revulsion from
materialism by saying that "the sordider the stuff, the
cunninger the workman's hand," and therefore the Maker may
have made the world from matter. He maintains that "the
hands of Destiny ever deal, in fixed and equal parts their
shares of joy and sorrow, woe and weal" to all that breathe
our upper air. The problem of predestination he holds in
scorn. The unequality of life exists and "that settles it"
for him. He accepts one bowl with scant delight but he says
"who drains the score must ne'er expect to rue the headache
in the morn." Disputing about creeds is "mumbling rotten
bones." His creed is this:
Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but
self expect applause:
He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps
his self-made laws.
All other Life is living Death, a world where none but
Phanton's dwell,
A breath, a wind, a soul, a voice, a tinkling of the
Camel's bell.
e appreciates to the full the hedonism of Omar but he casts
it aside as emptiness. He tried the religion of pleasure and
beauty. His rules of life are many and first is "eternal war
with Ignorance." He says: "Thine ignorance of thine
ignorance is thy fiercest foe, thy deadliest bane. The Atom
must fight the unequal fray against a myriad giants. The end
is to "learn the noblest lore, to know that all we know is
naught." Self-approval is enough reward. The whole duty of
man is to himself, but he must "hold Humanity one man" and,
looking back at what he was, determine not to be again that
thing. "Abjure the Why and seek the How." The gods are
silent. The indivisible puny Now in the length of infinite
time is Man's all to make the best of. The Law may have a
Giver but let be, let be!
Thus I may find a future life, a nobler copy of
our own,
Where every riddle shall be ree'd, where every
knowledge shall be known;
Where 'twill be man's to see the whole of what on
earth he sees a part;
Where change shall ne'er surcharge the thought; nor
hope deferred shall hurt the heart.
But--faded flower and fallen leaf no more shall deck
the parent tree;
A man once dropt by Tree of Life, what hope of other
life has he?
The shattered bowl shall know repair; the riven lute
shall sound once more;
But who shall mend the clay of man, the stolen breath
to man restore?
The shivered clock again shall strike, the broken reed
shall pipe again;
But we, we die and Death is one, the doom of brutes,
the doom of men.
Then, if Nirvana round our life with nothingness, 'tis
haply blest;
Thy toils and troubles, want and woe at length have
won their guerdon--Rest.
Cease, Abou, cease! My song is sung, nor think the
gain the singer's prize
Till men hold Ignorance deadly sin till Man deserves
his title, "Wise."
In days to come, Days slow to dawn, when Wisdom deigns
to dwell with men,
These echoes of a voice long stilled haply shall wake
responsive strain:
Wend now thy way with brow serene, fear not thy humble
tale to tell--
The whispers of the Desert wind: the tinkling of the
Camel's bell.
o ends the song. The notes appended thereto by Burton are a
demonstration of his learning and his polemic power. The
poem is his life of quest, of struggle, of disappointment
coined into song more or less savage. It seems to me that he
overlooked one thing near to him that would have lighted the
darkness of his view, while looking To Reason for balm for
the wounds of existence. He ignored his wife's love which,
silly and absurd as it seems at times, in the records she
has left us, is a sweeter poem than this potent plaint and
protest he has left us. He explored all lands but the one in
which he lived unconsciously--the Land of Tenderness. This
is the pity of his life and it is also its indignity. He was
crueler than "the Cruelty of Things." He "threw away a pearl
richer than all his tribe"--a woman's heart. But--how we
argue in a circle!--that he, with his fine vision could not
see this, is perhaps, a justification of his poem's
bitterness. Even her service went for naught, seeing it
brought no return of love from its object. Burton was a
great man, though a failure. His wife's life was one
continuous act of love for him that he ignores and her life
was a failure, too, since she never succeeded in making the
world worship him as she did. Still "the failures of some
the infinities beyond the successes of others" and all
success is failure in the end. Still again, it is better to
have loved in vain than never to have loved at all, and fine
and bold and brave as was Richard Francis Burton, his wife,
with her "strong power called weakness," was the greater of
the two. She wrote no "Kasidah" of complaint, but suffered
and was strong.
St. Louis, August 16th, 1897.
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