THE LIFE OF
CAPTAIN
SIR RICHARD F. BURTON,
K.C.M.G., F.R.G.S.
BY HIS WIFE,
ISABEL BURTON.
WITH NUMEROUS PORTRAITS, ILLUSTRATIONS, AND MAPS.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, LD.
1893.
RICHARD BURTON IN HIS TENT IN AFRICA.
[CONSECRATION.]
TO MY EARTHLY MASTER,
WHO IS WAITING FOR ME ON HEAVEN'S FRONTIERS.
Whilst waiting to rejoin you, I leave as a message to the World we inhabited, the record of the Life into which both our lives were fused. Would that I could write as well as I can love, and do you that justice, that honour, which you deserve! I will do my best, and then I will leave it to more brilliant pens, whose wielders will feel less—and write better.
Meet me soon—I wait the signal!
ISABEL BURTON.
[FOREWORD.]
"No man can write a man down except himself."
In speaking of my husband, I shall not call him "Sir Richard," or "Burton," as many wives would; nor yet by the pet name I used for him at home, which for some reason which I cannot explain was "Jemmy;" nor yet what he was generally called at home, and what his friends called him, "Dick;" but I will call him Richard in speaking of him, and "I" where he speaks on his own account, as he does in his private journals. I always thought and told him that he destroyed much of the interest of his works by hardly ever alluding to himself, and now that I mention it, people may remark it, that in writing he seldom uses the pronoun I. I have therefore drawn, not from his books, but from his private journals. It was one of his asceticisms, an act of humility, which the world passed by, and probably only thought one of his eccentricities. In his works he would generally speak of himself as the Ensign, the Traveller, the Explorer, the Consul, and so on, so that I often think that people who are not earnest readers never understood who it was that did this, thought that, or saw the other. If I make him speak plainly for himself, as he does in his private journals, but never to the public, it will give twenty times the interest in relating events; so I shall throughout let him speak for himself where I can.
In early January, 1876, Richard and I were on our way to India for a six months' trip to visit the old haunts. We divided our intended journey into two lots. We cut India down the middle, the long way on the map, from north to south, and took the western side, leaving the eastern side for a trip which was deferred, alas! for our old age and retirement. We utilized the voyage out (which occupied thirty-three days in an Austrian Lloyd, used as a Haj, or pilgrim-ship), and also the voyage back, in the part of the following pages which refers to his early life, he dictating and I writing.
In 1887, when my husband was beginning to be a real invalid, he lent some of these notes to Mr. Hitchman (who asked leave to write his biography), Richard promising not to tread upon his heels by his own Autobiography till he should be free from service in 1891. It will not, I think, do any harm to the reading public to reproduce it with more detail, because only seven hundred people got Mr. Hitchman's, who did not by any means use the whole of the material before he returned it, and what I give is the original just as Richard dictated it, and it is more needful, because it deals with a part of his life that was only known to himself, to me only by dictation; because everything that he wrote of himself is infinitely precious, and because to leave to the public a sketch of an early Richard Burton is desirable, otherwise readers would be obliged to purchase Mr. Hitchman's, as well as this work, in order to make a perfect whole.
I must take warning, however, that when Mr. Hitchman's book came out, part of the Press found this account of my husband's boyhood and youth charming, and another part of the Press said that I was too candid, and did nothing to gloss over the faults and foibles of the youthful Burtons; they doubted the accuracy of my information—I was informed that my style was too rough-and-ready, and of many others of my shortcomings. In short, I was considered rather as writing against my own husband, whilst both sides of the Press in their reviews assumed that I wrote it; this charmed Richard, and he would not let me refute. Not one word was mine—it was only dictation, and peremptory dictation when I objected to certain self-accusations. I beg leave to state that I did not write one single word; I could not, for I did not know it—and all that the family objected to, or considered exaggerated, will not be repeated here. Before entering on these pages, I must warn the reader not to expect the goody-goody boy nor yet the precocious vicious youth of 1893. It is the recital of a high-spirited lad of the old school, full of animal spirits and manly notions, a lively sense of fun and humour, reckless of the consequences of playing tricks, but without a vestige of vice in the meaner or lower forms—a lad, in short, who would be a gentleman and a man of the world in his teens, and who, from his foreign travel, had seen more of life than boys do brought up at home.
I do not begin this work—the last important work of my life—without fear and trembling. If I can perform this sacred duty—this labour of love—well,—I shall be glad indeed, but I begin it with unfeigned humility. I have never needed any one to point out to me that my husband was on a pedestal far above me, or anybody else in the world. I have known it from 1850 to 1893, from a young girl to an old widow, i.e. for forty-three years. I feel that I cannot do justice to his scientific life, that I may miss points in travel that would have been more brilliantly treated by a clever man. My only comfort is, that his travels and services are already more or less known to the public, and that other books will be written about them. But if I am so unfortunate as to disappoint the public in this way, there is one thing that I feel I am fit for, and that is to lift the veil as to the inner man. He was misunderstood and unappreciated by the world at large, during his life. No one ever thought of looking for the real man beneath the cultivated mask that generally hid all feelings and belief—but now the world is beginning to know what it has lost. The old, old, sad story.
He shall tell his own tale till 1861, the first forty years, annotated by me. Whilst dictating to me I sometimes remarked, "Oh, do you think it would be well to write this?" and the answer always was, "Yes! I do not see the use of writing a biography at all, unless it is the exact truth, a very photograph of the man or woman in question." On this principle he taught me to write quite openly in the unconventional and personal style—being the only way to make a biography interesting, which we now class as the Marie Bashkirtcheff style. As you will see, he always makes the worst of himself, and offers no excuse. As a lad he does not know what to do to show his manliness, and all that a boy should, ought, and does think brave and honourable, be it wild or not, all that he does.
What appals me is, that the task is one of such magnitude—the enormous quantity of his books and writings that I have to look through, and, out of eighty or more publications, to ascertain what has seen the light and what has not, because it is impossible to carry the work of forty-eight years in one's head; and, again, the immense quantity of subjects he has studied and written upon, some in only a fragmentary state, is wonderful. My wish would be to produce this life, speaking only of him—and afterwards to reproduce everything he has written that has not been published. I propose putting all the heavier matter, such as pamphlets, essays, letters, correspondence, and the résumé of his works—that is, what portion shows his labours and works for the benefit of the human race—into two after-volumes, to be called "Labours and Wisdom of Richard Burton." After his biography I shall renew his "Arabian Nights" with his Forewords, Terminal Essay, and Biography of the book in such form that it can be copyrighted—it is now protected by my copyright. His "Catullus" and "Pentamerone" are now more or less in the Press, to be followed by degrees by all his unpublished works. His hitherto published works I shall bring out as a Uniform Library, so that not a word will be lost that he ever wrote for the public. Fortunately, I have kept all his books classified as he kept them himself, with a catalogue, and have separate shelves ticketed and numbered; for example, "Sword," "Gypsy," "Pentamerone," "Camoens," and so on.
If I were sure of life, I should have wished for six months to look through and sort our papers and materials before I began this work, because I have five rooms full. Our books, about eight thousand, only got housed in March, 1892, and they are sorted—but not the papers and correspondence; but I fancy that the public would rather have a spontaneous work sooner, than wait longer. If I live I shall always go on with them. I have no leisure to think of style or of polish, or to select the best language, the best English,—no time to shine as an authoress. I must just think aloud, so as not to keep the public waiting.
From the time of my husband's becoming a real invalid—February, 1887—whilst my constant thoughts reviewed the dread To Come—the catastrophe of his death—and the subsequent suffering, I have been totally incapable, except writing his letters or attending to his business, of doing any good literary work until July, 1892, a period of five years, which was not improved by four attacks of influenza.
Richard was such a many-sided man, that he will have appeared different to every set of people who knew him. He was as a diamond with so many facets. The tender, the true, the brilliant, the scientific,—and to those who deserved it, the cynical, the hard, the severe. Loads of books will be written about him, and every one will be different; and though perhaps it is an unseemly boast, I venture to feel sure that mine will be the truest one, for I have no interest to serve, no notoriety to gain, belong to no party, have nothing to sway me, except the desire to let the world understand what it once possessed, what it has lost. With many it will mean I. With me it means HIM.
When this biography is out, the public will, theoretically, but not practically, know him as well as I can make them, and all of his friends will be able after that to put forth a work representing that particular facet of his character which he turned on to them, or which they drew from him. He was so great, so world-wide, he could turn a fresh facet and sympathy on to each world. I always think that a man is one character to his wife at his fireside corner, another man to his own family, another man to her family, a fourth to a mistress or an amourette—if he have one,—a fifth to his men friends, a sixth to his boon companions, and a seventh to his public, and so on ad infinitum; but I think the wife, if they are happy and love each other, gets the pearl out of the seven oyster-shells.
I fear that this work will be too long. I cannot help it. When I embarked on it I had no conception of the scope: it was a labour of love. I thought I could fly over it; but I have found that the more I worked, the more it grew, and that the end receded from me like the mirage in the desert. I only aim at giving a simple, true recital without comment, and at fairness on all questions of whatever sort. I am very personal, because I believe the public like it. I want to give Richard as I knew him at home. I apologize in advance to my readers if I am sometimes obliged to mention myself oftener than they and I care about; but they will understand that our lives were so interwoven, so bound together, that I should very often spoil a good story or an anecdote or a dialogue were I to leave myself out. It would be an affectation that would spoil my work.
I am rather disheartened by being told by a literary friend that the present British public likes its reading "in sips." How can I give a life of seventy years, every moment of which was employed in a remarkable way, "in sips"? It is impossible. Though I must not detail much from his books, I want to convey to the public, at least, what they were about; striking points of travel, his schemes, wise warnings, advice, and plans for the benefit of England—then what about "sips"? It must not be dry, it must not be heavy, nor tedious, nor voluminous; so it shall be personal, full of traits of character, sentiments and opinions, brightened with cheerful anecdotes, and the more serious part shall go into the before-mentioned two volumes, the "Labours and Wisdom of Richard Burton."
I am not putting in many letters, because he generally said such personal things, that few would like them to be shown. His business letters would not interest. To economize time he used to get expressly made for him the smallest possible pieces of paper, into which he used to cram the greatest amount of news—telegram form. He only wrote much in detail, if he had any literary business to transact.
One of my greatest difficulties, which I scarcely know how to express, is, that which I think the most interesting, and which most of my intimates think well worth exploring; it is that of showing the dual man with, as it were, two natures in one person, diametrically opposed to each other, of which he was himself perfectly conscious. I had a party of literary friends to dinner one night, and I put my manuscript on the table before them after dinner, and I begged them each to take a part and look over it. Feeling as I do that the general public never understood him, and that his mantle after death seemed to descend upon my shoulders, that everything I say seems to be misunderstood, and that, in some few eyes, I can do nothing right, I said at the end of the evening, "If I endeavour to explain, will it not be throwing pearls to swine?" (not that I meant, dear readers, to compare you to swine—it is but an expression of thought well understood). And the answer was, "Oh, Lady Burton, do give the world the ins and outs of this remarkable and interesting character, and let the swine take care of themselves." "If you leave out by order" (said one) "religion and politics, the two touchstones of the British public, you leave out the great part of a man." "Mind you gloss over nothing to please anybody" (said a second). I think they are right—one set of people see one side, and another see another side, and neither of the two will comprehend (like St. Thomas) anything that they have not seen and felt; or, to quote one of Richard's favourite mottoes from St. Augustine, "Let them laugh at me for speaking of things which they do not understand, and I must pity them, whilst they laugh at me." So I must remain an unfortunate buffer amidst a cyclone of opinions. I can only avoid controversies and opinions of my own, and quote his and his actions.
These words are forced from me, because I have received my orders, if not exactly from the public, from a few of the friends who profess to know him best. I am ordered to describe Richard as a sort of Didérot (a disciple of Voltaire's), who wrote "that the world would never be quiet till the last king was strangled with the bowels of the last priest,"—whereas there was no one whom Richard delighted more to honour than a worthy King, or an honest straightforward Priest.
There are people who are ready to stone me, if I will not describe Richard as being absolutely without belief in anything; yet I really cannot oblige them, without being absolutely untruthful. He was a spade-truth man, and he honestly used to say that he examined every religion, and picked out its pearl to practise it. He did not scoff at them, he was perfectly sincere and honest in what he said; nor did he change, but he grew. He always said, and innumerable people could come forward, if they had the courage—I could name some—to say that they have heard him declare, that at the end of all things there were only two points to stand upon—NOTHING and CATHOLICISM; and many could, if they would, come forward and say, that when they asked him what religion he was, he answered Catholic.
He never was, what is called here and now in England, an Agnostic; he was a Master-Sufi, he practised Tasáwwuf or Sufi-ism, which combines the poetry and prose of religion, and is mystic. The Sufi is a profound student of the different branches of language and metaphysics, is gifted with a musical ear, indulges in luxuriant imagery and description. They have a simple sense—a double entendre understood amongst themselves—God in Nature,—Nature in God—a mystical affection for a Higher Life, dead to excitement, hope, fear, etc. He was fond of quoting Sayyid Mohammad Hosayn's motto, "It is better to restore one dead heart to Eternal Life, than Life to a thousand dead bodies."
I have seen him receive gratuitous copies of an Agnostic paper in England, and I remember one in particular—I do not know who wrote it,—it was very long, and all the verses ended with "Curse God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." I can see him now reading it—and stroking his long moustache, and muttering, "Poor devil! Vulgar beast!" He was quite satisfied, as his friends say, that we are not gifted with the senses to understand the origin of the Mysteries by which we are surrounded, and in this nobody agrees more thoroughly than I do. He likewise said he believed there was a God, but that he could not define Him; neither can I, neither can you, but I do not want to. Great minds tower above and see into little ones, but the little minds never climb sufficiently high to see into the Great Minds, and never did Lord Beaconsfield say a truer thing, speaking of religion than when he said, "Sensible men never tell." As I want to make this work both valuable and interesting, I am not going into the unknown or the unknowable, only into what he knew—what I know; therefore I shall freely quote his early training, his politics, his Mohammedanism, his Sufi-ism, his Brahminical thread, his Spiritualism, and all the religions which he studied, and nobody can give me a sensible reason why I should leave out the Catholicism, except to point the Spanish proverb, "that no one pelts a tree, unless it has fruit on it," but were I to do so, the biography would be incomplete.
Let us suppose a person residing inside a house, and another person looking at the house from the opposite side of the street; you would not be unjust enough to expect the person on the outside to describe minutely its inner chambers and everything that was in it, because he would have to take it on trust from the person who resided inside, but you would take the report of the man living outside as to the exterior of the house. That is exactly the same as my writing my husband's history. Do you want an edition of the inside or an edition of the outside? If you do not want the truth, if you order me to describe a Darwin, a Spencer, a John Stuart Mill, I can do it; but it will not be the home-Richard, the fireside-Richard whom I knew, the two perfectly distinct Richards in one person; it will be the man as he was at lunch, at dinner, or when friends came in, or when he dined out, or when he paid visits; and if the world—or, let us say, a small portion of the world,—is so unjust and silly as to wish for untrue history, it must get somebody else to write it. To me there are only two courses: I must either tell the truth, and lay open the "inner life" of the man, by a faithful photograph, or I must let it alone, and leave his friends to misrepresent him, according to their lights.
It has been threatened to me that if I speak the truth I am to reap the whirlwind, because others, who claim to know my husband well, see him quite in a different light. (I know many people intimately, but I am quite incompetent to write their lives—I am only fit to do that for the man with whom I lived night and day for thirty years; there are three other people who could each write a small section of his life, and after those nobody; I do not accept the so-called general term "friend.") I shall be very happy indeed to answer anybody who attacks me, who is brave enough to put his or her name; but during the two years I have been in England I have hardly had anything but anonymous communications and paragraphs signed under the brave names of "Agnostic," or "One who knows," so I have no man or woman to deal with, but empty air, which is beneath my contempt. This is a very old game, perhaps even more ancient than "Prophesy, O Christ, who it was that struck Thee!" but it is cowardly and un-English—that is, if England "stands where she did." I would also remind you of the good old Arab proverb, that "a thousand curses never tore a shirt."
I would have you remember that I gain nothing by trying to describe my husband as belonging to any particular religion. If I would describe him as an English Agnostic—the last new popular word—the small band of people who call themselves his intimate friends, and who think to honour him by injuring me, would be perfectly satisfied. I should have all their sympathy, and my name would be at rest, both in Society and in the Press. I have no interest to serve in saying he was a Catholic more than anything else; I have no bigotry on the question at all. If he did something Catholic I shall say it, and if he did something Mohammedan or Agnostic I shall equally say it.
It is also a curious fact, that the people who are most vexed with me on this score, are men who, before their wives, mothers, sisters, are good Protestants, and who go twice to the Protestant church on Sundays, but who are quite scandalized that my husband should be allowed a religion, and are furious because I will not allow that Richard Burton was their Captain. No, thank you! it is not good enough: he was not, never was like any of you—nor can I see what it can possibly be to you what faith, or no faith, Richard Burton chose to die in, and why you threaten me if I speak the truth! We only knew two things—the beautiful mysticism of the East, which, until I lived here, I thought was Agnosticism, and I find it is not; and calm, liberal-minded Roman Catholicism. The difference between you and Richard is—you, I mean, who admired my husband—that you are not going anywhere,—according to your own Creed you have nowhere to go to,—whilst he had a God and a continuation, and said he would wait for me; he is only gone a long journey, and presently I shall join him; we shall take up where we left off, and we shall be very much happier even than we have been here.
Of the thousands that have written to me since his death, everybody writes, "What a marvellous brain your husband had! How modest about his learning and everything concerning himself! He was a man never understood by the world." It is no wonder he was not understood by the World; his friends hindered it, and when one who knew him thoroughly, offers to make him understood, it is resented.
The Press has recently circulated a paragraph saying that "I am not the fittest person to write my husband's life." After I have finished these two volumes, it will interest me very much to read those of the competent person, who will be so kind as to step to the front,—with a name, please, not anonymously,—and to learn all the things I do not know.
He, she, or it, will write what he said and wrote; I write what he thought and did.
ISABEL BURTON.
29th May, 1893.
Note.—I must beg the reader to note, that a word often has several different spellings, and my husband used to give them a turn all round. Indeed, I may say that during the latter years of his life he adopted quite a different spelling, which he judged to be correcter. In many cases it is caused by the English way of spelling a thing, and the real native way of spelling the same. For English Meeanee, native way Miani. The battle of Dabba (English) is spelt Dubba, Dubbah, by the natives. Fulailee river (English) is spelt Phuleli (native). Mecca and Medina have sometimes an h at the end of them. Karrachee is Karáchi. Sind is spelt Sind, Sindh, Scind, Scinde; and what the Anglo-Indians call Bóbagees are really Babárchis, and so on. I therefore beg that the spelling may not be criticized. In quoting letters, I write as the author does, since I must not change other people's spelling.—I. B.
[Transcriber's Note.—The page headings of the original edition have been converted into sidenotes in this digital edition. Typographical and other obvious errors have also been corrected, but the variations in the spelling of proper names, etc., mentioned above remain.]
CONTENTS.
[CONSECRATION.]
[FOREWORD.]
[CHAPTER I.]
THE EARLY DAYS OF RICHARD F. BURTON.
[Family history]—[The Napoleon Romance]—[The Louis XIVth Romance].
[CHAPTER II.]
RICHARD'S BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD.
[Richard Burton's early life]—[At Tours]—[His first school]—[Trips]—[Grandmammas Baker and Burton]—[Aunt G.]—[They leave Tours].
[CHAPTER III.]
THE CHILDREN ARE BROUGHT TO ENGLAND.
[School at Richmond]—[Measles disperse the school]—[Education at Blois]—[They leave Blois for Italy]—[Pisa]—[Siena]—[Vetturino-travelling]—[Florence]—[Shooting]—[Rome in Holy Week]—[Sorrento]—[Classical games]—[Chess]—[Naples]—[Cholera]—[Marseille]—[Pau—Bagnières de Bigorres]—[Contrabandistas]—[Pau education]—[Argélés]—[The boys fall in love]—[Drawing]—[Music]—[The baths of Lucca]—[The boys get too old for home]—[Schinznach and England]—[The family break up.]
[CHAPTER IV.]
OXFORD.
[Practical jokes]—[Friends]—[Fencing-rooms]—[Manners and customs—Food and smoking]—[Drs. Newman and Pusey]—[Began Arabic]—[Play]—[Town life—College friends]—[Coaching and languages]—[Latin—Greek]—[Holidays]—[The Rhine to Wiesbaden]—[The Nassau Brigade]—[The straws that broke the camel's back]—[Rusticated].
[CHAPTER V.]
GOING TO INDIA.
[He gets a commission and begins Hindostani]—[He goes to be sworn in at the India Office].
[CHAPTER VI.]
MY PUBLIC LIFE BEGINS.
[The voyage and arrival]—[The sanitarium]—[His moonshee]—[Indian Navy]—[English bigotry]—[Engages servants]—[Reaches Baroda—Brother officers]—[Mess]—[Drill]—[Pig-sticking]—[Sport]—[Society]—[Feeding]—[Nautch]—[Reviews]—[Races]—[Cobden and Indian history]—[Somnath gates]—[Outram and Napier]—[He learns Indian riding and training]—[Passes exams. in Hindostani]—[Receives the Brahminical thread]—[On the march]—[Embarks for Sind]—[Karáchi, Sind]—[He passes in Maharátta].
[CHAPTER VII.]
THE REMINISCENCES WRITTEN FOR MR. HITCHMAN IN 1888—INDIA.
[A later chapter on same events differently told]—[His little autobiography]—[His books on India]—[Burying a Sányasi]—[His Indian career practically ends].
[CHAPTER VIII.]
ON RETURN FROM INDIA.
[Boulogne]—[Bayonet exercise]—[Meets me at Boulogne at school]—[His famous journey to Mecca and El Medinah]—[His start from Alexandria to Cairo]—[Twelve days in an open Sambúk]—[Ten days' ride to Mecca]—[Moslem Holy Week]—[The all-important crisis]—[His safe return]—[On board an English ship]—[Interesting letters]—[The Kasîdah]—[The end of the Kasîdah—Christian Poetry].
[CHAPTER IX.]
HARAR—THE MOSLEM ABYSSINIA—THE TIMBUCTOO OF EAST AFRICA, THE EXPLORATION OF WHICH HAD BEEN ATTEMPTED IN VAIN BY SOME THIRTY TRAVELLERS.
[He starts for Harar in Somali-land]—[Preparations at Zayla]—[Desert journey]—[He enters the city in triumph]—[Interview with the Amir]—[Has great success]—[Damaging reports]—[He leaves Harar safely]—[A fearful desert journey]—[Want of water]—[They reach Berberah—Join Speke, Herne, Stroyan]—[He sails for Aden]—[Returns with forty men]—[They are attacked—A desperate fight]—[Richard and Speke desperately wounded].
[CHAPTER X.]
WITH BEATSON'S HORSE.
[The Crimea]—[End of Crimea]—[Beatson's trial].
[CHAPTER XI.]
BETWEEN THE CRIMEA AND THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA.
[We become engaged]—[The story of Hagar Burton]—[Hagar Burton, the Gipsy]—[Our strange parting].
[CHAPTER XII.]
HIS EXPLORATION OF THE LAKE REGIONS, TAKING CAPTAIN SPEKE AS SECOND IN COMMAND.
[Preliminary canter]—[Hippopotamus shooting]—[Our first fever].
[CHAPTER XIII.]
THE REAL START FOR TANGANYIKA IN THE INTERIOR.
[A long march]—[Marsh fever]—[They ascend from Zungomero to a better climate]—[From lovely scenery to fœtid marshes]—[Ants]—[The war-cry of the Wahúmba]—[Evil reports]—[Game]—[Vermin]—[A hard jungle march]—[Description of caravans and difficulties]—[Reptiles]—[Ill and attended by a witch]—[Partial paralysis—Blindness—Elephants]—[The crossing of the great river Malagarázi].
[CHAPTER XIV.]
OUR REWARD—SUCCESS.
[Scenery]—[In an Arab craft to Ujiji]—[More Scenery]—[After twenty-seven days Speke returns]—[A fight]—[Are received with honour]—[A caravan arrives]—[Geographical remarks]—[Troublesome following]—[Forest on fire]—[He sends Speke to find the Nyanza]—[The Chief Suna]—[Richard collects a vocabulary]—[Speke returns and the differences arose]—[Richard soliloquizes on Speke's change of front]—[For geographers]—[The kindness of Musa Mzuri and Snay bin Amir]—[Speke's illness]—[They cross the "Fiery Field"]—[An official wigging]—[Christmas Day, 1858]—[Speke leaves Richard ill, but apparently friendly].
[CHAPTER XV.]
RICHARD AND I MEET AGAIN.
[We try to effect a reconciliation between Speke and Richard]—[My appeal to my mother]—[My letter to my mother—Not a success]—[News of Richard and subsequent return]—[A family council decides the matter]—[Our wedding]—[We are received at home again]—[A delightful London season]—[Fire at Grindlay's]—[Delightful days at country houses]—[Richard goes to West Africa].
[CHAPTER XVI.]
WEST COAST OF AFRICA—RICHARD'S FIRST CONSULATE.
[The West African negroes]—[The black man is raised above the white man]—[Richard inaugurates a better state of things]—[Method of protecting the negro]—[Teaching fair treatment for the negro]—[West African gold].
[CHAPTER XVII.]
HIS FIRST LEAVE.
[We sail for West Africa]—[We land at Madeira]—[Yellow fever]—[The peak of Teneriffe]—[I return home]—[Richard sent as H.M.'s Commissioner to Dahomè]—[Dahomè and Richard's travels]—[His travels, business, etc., on the West Coast].
[CHAPTER XVIII.]
HOME.
[Speke's death]—[Some lines I wrote on Richard and Speke]—[Richard's "Stone Talk"]—[Gaiety]—[Winwood Reade—We go to Ireland]—[Richard and Sir Bernard Burke]—[Bianconi]—[The anthropological farewell dinner]—[Lord Derby's speech as chairman]—[Richard returns thanks]—[He speaks his mind about the Nile].
[CHAPTER XIX.]
SANTOS, SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL—RICHARD'S SECOND CONSULATE.
[We explore Portugal]—[I rejoin him at Rio de Janeiro]—[Arrival at Santos and São Paulo]—[Life in Brazil—Brazilian life]—[Life at Rio]—[The Barra for contrast]—[To the mines in Minas Gerães]—[We go down the big mine]—[Below]—[Chico and I start on a fifteen days' ride alone]—[The landlord of the hotel is mystified]—[Richard dangerously ill]—[Mesmerizing]—[Regatta]—[We leave Brazil—Richard goes south]—[Lord Derby gives Richard Damascus]—[His carbine pistol]—[Pleasant days in Vichy and Auvergne]—[The Fell Railway]—[Geographical disagreeables]—[Work]—[The Nile]—[Still the Nile]—[I sail for Damascus].
[CHAPTER XX.]
DAMASCUS—HIS THIRD CONSULATE.
[I find Richard has had a cordial reception]—[We go to Palmyra, or Tadmor in the desert]—[We go without an escort]—[Tadmor]—[Camp life—Our travelling day—Night camps]—[Return home after desert]—[Native life]—[The Arabic library at Damascus—The library]—[The environs of Damascus]—[How our days were passed]—[Our reception day]—[A most interesting and remarkable woman]—[A romantic history]—[Richard's love for children]—[Richard's notes on our wilder travels]—[The Tulúl el Safá]—[Our home in the Anti-Lebanon]—[Our day]—[With Drake and Palmer in the Lebanon]—[Religious disturbances]—[Holo Pasha gives us a panther]—[The Druzes—Their stronghold]—[We camp at the Waters of Merom]—[Richard is stung by a scorpion]—[Explorations of unknown tracts]—[I prevent Rashíd Pasha's intentions taking effect]—[Rashíd's intrigue about the Druzes]—[The manner in which we are received in villages]—[Remarks on the journey]—[Kurdish dogs]—[Excursions to unknown tracts]—[Troubles from a self-appointed zealot]—[Usurers very troublesome]—[A Jehád threatened]—[Jews]—[Usurers try to remove Richard]—[Letters of indignation and sympathy]—[Jews]—[Omar Bey's fine mare—Horse-breeding]—[The Holy Land].
[CHAPTER XXI.]
RELIGION.
[Shádilis—Sufis becoming Catholics]—[They are tried and condemned]—[And persecuted]—[The Protestant converts]—[The Shádilis]—[Richard quotes Mr. Gladstone]—[Letters approving his conduct]—[Richard's answer and remarks]—[He leaves]—[I take a night ride across country]—[We were stoned at Nazareth]—[General information]—[Salih's description of Richard]—[Letters showing the state of Syria after his recall]—[The interval I remained as a hostage]—[I leave the Anti-Lebanon—Wind up at Damascus]—[I get fever]—[Eventually reach home]—[He gets an amende]—[We become penniless]—[Small jottings]—[Death of my mother]—[Richard accepts Trieste]—[The old story of shooting people, and a newer one]—[The truth]—[Difficulty of English officials doing their duty]—[Conclusion of his Damascus career].
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
[Lunge and Cut in Carte (inside).]
[Richard Burton, as Haji Abdullah, en route to Mecca.]
[Mecca and the Ka'abah, or the Holy Grail of the Moslems.]
[Burton's Sketch Map of Africa.]
[Miniature of Richard Burton.]
[Richard Burton.]
By Louis Desanges.
[Isabel Burton.]
By Louis Desanges.
[The Chief Officer of Richard's Brigade of Amazons.]
[The Burtons' House in Salahíyyah, Damascus.]
By Sir Frederick Leighton.
[Salahíyyah, Damascus in the Oasis.]
[The Burtons' House-roof at Damascus and the Adjoining Mosque-Minaret.]
[The Burtons' House at Bludán, in Anti-Lebanon.]
[THE LIFE OF SIR RICHARD BURTON.]
CHAPTER I.
THE EARLY DAYS OF RICHARD F. BURTON.
By himself. Copied from his private Journals.
"He travels and expatriates; as the bee
From flower to flower, so he from land to land,
The manners, customs, policy of all
Pay contributions to the store he gleans;
He seeks intelligence from every clime,
And spreads the honey of his deep research
At his return—a rich repast for me!"
Genealogy and Family.
Autobiographers generally begin too late.
Elderly gentlemen of eminence sit down to compose memories, describe with fond minuteness babyhood, childhood, and boyhood, and drop the pen before reaching adolescence.
Physiologists say that a man's body changes totally every seven years. However that may be, I am certain that the moral man does, and I cannot imagine anything more trying than for a man to meet himself as he was. Conceive his entering a room, and finding a collection of himself at the several decades. First the puking squalling baby one year old, then the pert unpleasant schoolboy of ten, the collegian of twenty who, like Lothair, "knows everything and has nothing to learn." The homme fait of thirty in the full warmth and heyday of life, the reasonable man of forty, who first recognizes his ignorance and knows his own mind, of fifty with white teeth turned dark, and dark hair turned white, whose experience is mostly disappointment with regrets for lost time and vanished opportunities. Sixty when the man begins to die and mourns for his past youth, at seventy when he ought to prepare for his long journey and never does. And at all these ages he is seven different beings not one of which he would wish to be again.
First I would make one or two notes on family history.
My grandfather was the Rev. Edward Burton, Rector of Tuam, in Galway (who with his brother, eventually Bishop Burton, of Killala, were the first of our branch to settle in Ireland). They were two of the Burtons of Barker Hill, near Shap, Westmoreland, who own a common ancestor with the Burtons of Yorkshire, of Carlow, and Northamptonshire. My grandfather married Maria Margaretta Campbell, daughter, by a Lejeune, of Dr. John Campbell, LL.D., Vicar-General of Tuam. Their son was my father, Lieut.-Colonel Joseph Netterville Burton, of the 36th Regiment, who married a Miss (Beckwith) Baker, of Nottinghamshire, a descendant, on her mother's side, of the Scotch Macgregors. The Lejeune above mentioned was related to the Montmorencys and Drelincourts, French Huguenots of the time of Louis XIV. To this hangs a story which will be told by-and-by. This Lejeune, whose real name was Louis Lejeune, is supposed to have been a son of Louis XIV. by the Huguenot Countess of Montmorency. He was secretly carried off to Ireland. His name was translated to Louis Young, and he eventually became a Doctor of Divinity. The royal, or rather morganatic, marriage contract was asserted to have existed, but has disappeared. The Lady Primrose of that date, who was a very remarkable personage, and a strong ally of the Jacobites, protected him and conveyed him to Ireland.
The Burtons of Shap derive themselves from the Burtons of Longnor, like Lord Conyngham and Sir Charles Burton of Pollacton, and the two above named were the collateral descendants of Francis Pierpoint Burton, first Marquis of Conyngham, who gave up the name of Burton. The notable man of the family was Sir Edward Burton, a desperate Yorkist who was made a Knight Banneret by Edward IV. after the second battle of St. Albans, and who added to his arms the Cross and four roses.
The Bishop of Killala's son was Admiral J. Ryder Burton, who entered the Navy in 1806. He served in the West Indies, and off the North Coast of Spain, when in an attack on the town of Castro, July, 1812, he received a gunshot wound in the left side, from which the ball was never extracted. From 1813 to 1816 he served in the Mediterranean and Adriatic, and was present at the bombardment of Algiers, when he volunteered to command one of the gunboats for destroying the shipping inside the Mole. His last appointment was in May, 1820, to the command of the Cornelian brig, in which he proceeded in early 1824 to Algiers, where, in company with the Naiad frigate, he fell in with an Algerine corvette, the Tripoli, of eighteen guns and one hundred men, which, after a close and gallant action under the batteries of the place, he boarded and carried. This irascible veteran at his death was in receipt of a pension for wounds. He was Rear Admiral in 1853, Vice Admiral in 1858, and Admiral in 1863. He married, in 1822, Anna Maria, daughter of the thirteenth Lord Dunsany; she died in 1850, leaving one son, Francis Augustus Plunkett Burton, Colonel of the Coldstream Guards. He married the great heiress Sarah Drax, and died in 1865, leaving one daughter, Erulí, who married her cousin, John Plunkett, the future Lord Dunsany.
My father, Joseph Netterville Burton, was a lieutenant-colonel in the 36th Regiment. He must have been born in the latter quarter of the eighteenth century, but he had always a superstition about mentioning his birthday, which gave rise to a family joke that he was born in Leap Year. Although of very mixed blood, he was more of a Roman in appearance than anything else, of moderate height, dark hair, sallow skin, high nose, and piercing black eyes. He was considered a very handsome man, especially in uniform, and attracted attention even in the street. Even when past fifty he was considered the best-looking man at the Baths of Lucca. As handsome men generally do, he married a plain woman, and, "Just like Provy," the children favoured, as the saying is, the mother.[1]
In mind he was a thorough Irishman. When he received a commission in the army it was on condition of so many of his tenants accompanying him. Not a few of the younger sort volunteered to enlist, but when they joined the regiment and found that the "young master" was all right, they at once ran away.
The only service that he saw was in Sicily, under Sir John Moore, afterwards of Corunna, and there he fell in love with Italy. He was a duellist, and shot one brother officer twice, nursing him tenderly each time afterwards. When peace was concluded he came to England and visited Ireland. As that did not suit him he returned to his regiment in England. Then took place his marriage, which was favoured by his mother-in-law and opposed by his father-in-law. The latter, being a sharp old man of business, tied up every farthing of his daughter's property, £30,000, and it was well that he did so. My father, like too many of his cloth, developed a decided taste for speculation. He was a highly moral man, who would have hated the idea of rouge et noir, but he gambled on the Stock Exchange, and when railways came out he bought shares. Happily he could not touch his wife's property, or it would speedily have melted away; yet it was one of his grievances to the end of his life that he could not use his wife's money to make a gigantic fortune. He was utterly reckless where others would be more prudent. Before his wedding tour, he passed through Windermere, and would not call upon an aunt who was settled near the Lakes, for fear that she might think he expected her property. She heard of it, and left every farthing to some more dutiful nephew.
He never went to Ireland after his marriage, but received occasional visits from his numerous brothers and sisters.
The eldest of the family was the Rev. Edward Burton, who had succeeded to the living. He wasted every farthing of his property, and at last had the sense to migrate to Canada, where he built a little Burtonville. In his younger days he intended to marry a girl who preferred another man. When she was a widow with three children, and he a widower with six children, they married, and the result was eventually a total of about a score. Such families do better than is supposed. The elder children are old enough to assist the younger ones, and they seem to hang together. My father's sisters, especially Mrs. Mathews, used to visit him when in England, and as it was known that he had married an heiress, they all hung to him, apparently, for themselves and their children. They managed to get hold of all the Irish land that fell to his share, and after his death they were incessant in their claims upon his children. My mother was Martha Baker, one of three sister co-heiresses, and was the second daughter. The third daughter married Robert Bagshaw, Esq., M.P. for Harwich, and died without issue. The eldest, Sarah, married Francis Burton, the youngest brother of my father. He had an especial ambition to enter the Church, but circumstances compelled him to become military surgeon in the 66th Regiment. There was only one remarkable event in his life, which is told in a few very interesting pages by Mrs. Ward, wife of General Ward, with a short comment by Alfred Bate Richards, late editor of the Morning Advertiser, who, together with Andrew Wilson, author of the "Abode of Snow," who took it up at his death, compiled and put together a short résumé of the principal features of my life, of which some three hundred copies were printed, in pamphlet form and circulated to private friends.
"Facts connected with the Last Hours of Napoleon.
"On the night of the 5th of May, 1821, a young ensign of the 66th Regiment, quartered at St. Helena, was wending his solitary way along the path leading from the plain of Deadwood to his barracks, situated on a patch of table-land called Francis Plain. The road was dreary, for to the left yawned a vast chasm, the remains of a crater, and known to the islanders as the 'Devil's Punchbowl;' although the weather had been perfectly calm, puffs of wind occasionally issued from the neighbouring valleys; and, at last, one of these puffs having got into a gully, had so much ado to get out of it, that it shrieked, and moaned, and gibbered, till it burst its bonds with a roar like thunder—and dragging up in its wrath, on its passage to the sea, a few shrubs, and one of those fair willows beneath which Napoleon, first Emperor of France, had passed many a peaceful, if not a happy, hour of repose, surrounded by his faithful friends in exile.
"This occurrence, not uncommon at St. Helena, has given rise to an idea, adopted even by Sir Walter Scott, that the soul of Napoleon had passed to another destiny on the wings of the Storm Spirit; but, so far from there being any tumult among the elements on that eventful night, the gust of wind I have alluded to was only heard by the few whose cottages dotted the green slopes of the neighbouring mountains. But as that fair tree dropped, a whisper fell among the islanders that Napoleon was dead! No need to dwell upon what abler pens than mine have recorded; the eagle's wings were folded, the dauntless eyes were closed, the last words, 'Tête d'armée,' had passed the faded lips, the proud heart had ceased to beat...!!
"They arrayed the illustrious corpse in the attire identified with Napoleon even at the present day; and among the jewelled honours of earth, so profusely scattered upon the breast, rested the symbol of the faith he had professed. They shaded the magnificent brow with the unsightly cocked hat,[2] and stretched down the beautiful hands in ungraceful fashion; every one, in fact, is familiar with the attitude I describe, as well as with a death-like cast of the imperial head, from which a fine engraving has been taken. The cast is true enough to Nature, but the character of the engraving is spoiled by the addition of a laurel-wreath on the lofty but insensate brow.
"About this cast there is a historiette with which it is time the public should become more intimately acquainted; it was the subject of litigation, the particulars of which are detailed in the Times newspaper of the 7th September, 1821, but to which I have now no opportunity of referring. Evidence, however, was unfortunately wanting at the necessary moment, and the complainant's case fell to the ground. The facts are these:—
"The day after Napoleon's decease, the young officer I have alluded to, instigated by emotions which drew vast numbers to Longwood House, found himself within the very death-chamber of Napoleon. After the first thrill of awe had subsided, he sat down, and on the fly-leaf torn from a book, and given him by General Bertrand, he took a rapid but faithful sketch of the deceased Emperor. Earlier in the day, the officer had accompanied his friend, Mr. Burton, through certain paths in the island, in order to collect material for making a composition resembling plaster of Paris, for the purpose of taking the cast with as little delay after death as possible. Mr. Burton having prepared the composition, set to work and completed the task satisfactorily. The cast being moist, was not easy to remove; and, at Mr. Burton's request, a tray was brought from Madame Bertrand's apartments, Madame herself holding it to receive the precious deposit. Mr. Ward, the ensign alluded to, impressed with the value of such a memento, offered to take charge of it at his quarters till it was dry enough to be removed to Mr. Burton's; Madame Bertrand, however, pleaded so hard to have the care of it, that the two gentlemen, both Irishmen and soldiers, yielded to her entreaties, and she withdrew with the treasure, which she never afterwards would resign.
"There can scarcely, therefore, be a question that the casts and engravings of Napoleon, now sold as emanating from the skill and reverence of Antommarchi, are from the original taken by Mr. Burton. We can only rest on circumstantial evidence, which the reader will allow is most conclusive. It is to be regretted that Mr. Burton's cast and that supposed to have been taken by Antommarchi were not both demanded in evidence at the trial in 1821.
"The engraving I have spoken of has been Italianized by Antommarchi, the name inscribed beneath being Napoleone.
"So completely was the daily history of Napoleon's life at St. Helena a sealed record, that, on the arrival of papers from England, the first question asked by the islanders and the officers of the garrison was, 'What news of Buonaparte?' Under such circumstances it was natural that an intense curiosity should be felt concerning every movement of the mysterious and ill-starred exile. Our young soldier one night fairly risked his commission for the chance of a glimpse behind the curtain of the Longwood windows, and, after all, saw nothing but the imperial form from the knees downwards. Every night at sunset a cordon of sentries was drawn round the Longwood plantations. Passing between the sentinels, the venturesome youth crept, under cover of trees, to a lighted window of the mansion. The curtains were not drawn, but the blind was lowered. Between the latter, however, and the window-frame were two or three inches of space; so down knelt Mr. Ward! Some one was walking up and down the apartment, which was brilliantly illuminated.[3] The footsteps drew nearer, and Mr. Ward saw the diamond buckles of a pair of thin shoes, then two well-formed lower limbs, encased in silk stockings; and, lastly, the edge of a coat, lined with white silk. On a sofa at a little distance was seated Madame Bertrand, with her boy leaning on her knee; and some one was probably writing under Napoleon's dictation, for the Emperor was speaking slowly and distinctly. Mr. Ward returned to his guard-house satisfied with having heard the voice of Napoleon Buonaparte.
"Mr. Ward had an opportunity of seeing the great captive at a distance on the very last occasion that Buonaparte breathed the outer air. It was a bright morning when the serjeant of the guard at Longwood Gate informed our ensign that 'General Buonaparte' was in the garden on to which the guard-room looked. Mr. Ward seized his spy-glass, and took a breathless survey of Napoleon, who was standing in front of his house with one of his Generals. Something on the ground attracted his notice; he stooped to examine (probably a colony of ants, whose movements he watched with interest), when the music of a band at a distance stirred the air on Deadwood Plain; and he who had once led multitudes forth at his slightest word now wended his melancholy way through the grounds of Longwood, to catch a distant glimpse of a British regiment under inspection.
"We have in our possession a small signal book which was used at St. Helena during the period of Napoleon's exile. The following passages will give some idea of the system of vigilance which it was thought necessary to exercise, lest the world should again be suddenly uproused by the appearance of the French Emperor on the battle-field of Europe. It is not for me to offer any opinion on such a system, but I take leave to say that I never yet heard any British officer acknowledge that he would have accepted the authority of Governor under the burden of the duties it entailed. In a word, although every one admits the difficulties and responsibilities of Sir Hudson Lowe's position, all deprecate the system to which he considered himself obliged to bend.
"But the signal-book! Here are some of the passages which passed from hill to valley while Napoleon took his daily ride within the boundary prescribed:—
"'General Buonaparte has left Longwood.'
"'General Buonaparte has passed the guards.'
"'General Buonaparte is at Hutt's Gate.'
"'General Buonaparte is missing.'
"The latter paragraph resulted from General Buonaparte having, in the course of his ride, turned an angle of a hill, or descended some valley beyond the ken, for a few minutes, of the men working the telegraphs on the hills!
"It was not permitted that the once Emperor of France should be designated by any other title than 'General Buonaparte;' and, alas! innumerable were the squabbles that arose between the Governor and his captive, because the British Ministry had made this puerile order peremptory. I have now no hesitation in making known the great Duke's opinion on this subject, which was transmitted to me two years ago, by one who for some months every year held daily intercourse with his Grace, but who could not, while the Duke was living, permit me to publish what had been expressed in private conversation.
"'I would have taken care that he did not escape from St. Helena,' said Wellington: 'but he might have been addressed by any name he pleased.'
"I cannot close this paper without saying a word or two on the condition of the buildings once occupied by the most illustrious and most unfortunate of exiles.
"It is well known that Napoleon never would inhabit the house which was latterly erected at Longwood for his reception; that, he said, 'would serve for his tomb;' and that the slabs from the kitchen did actually form part of the vault in which he was placed in his favourite valley beneath the willows, and near the fountain whose crystal waters had so often refreshed him.
"This abode, therefore, is not invested with the same interest as his real residence, well named the 'Old House at Longwood;' for a more crazy, wretched, filthy barn, it would scarcely be possible to meet with; and many painful emotions have filled my heart during nearly a four years' sojourn on 'The Rock,' as I have seen French soldiers and sailors march gravely and decorously to the spot, hallowed in their eyes, of course, by its associations with their invisible but unforgotten idol, and degraded, it must be admitted, by the change it has undergone.
"Indeed, few French persons can be brought to believe that it ever was a decent abode; and no one can deny that it must outrage the feelings of a people like the French, so especially affected by associations, to see the bedchamber of their former Emperor a dirty stable, and the room in which he breathed his last sigh, appropriated to the purpose of winnowing and thrashing wheat! In the last-named room are two pathetic mementoes of affection. When Napoleon's remains were exhumed in 1846, Counts Bertrand and Las Casas carried off with them, the former a piece of the boarded floor on which the Emperor's bed had rested, the latter a stone from the wall pressed by the pillow of his dying Chief.
"Would that I had the influence to recommend to the British Government, that these ruined and, I must add, desecrated, buildings should be razed to the ground; and that on their site should be erected a convalescent hospital for the sick of all ranks, of both services, and of both nations. Were the British and French Governments to unite in this plan, how grand a sight would it be to behold the two nations shaking hands, so to speak, over the grave of Napoleon!
"On offering this suggestion, when in Paris lately, to one of the nephews of the first Emperor Napoleon, the Prince replied that 'the idea was nobly philanthropic, but that England would never listen to it.' I must add that his Highness said this 'rather in sorrow than in anger;' then, addressing Count L——, one of the faithful followers of Napoleon in exile, and asking him which mausoleum he preferred,—the one in which we then stood, the dome of the Invalides, or the rock of St. Helena,—he answered, to my surprise, 'St. Helena; for no grander monument than that can ever be raised to the Emperor!'
"Circumstances made one little incident connected with this, our visit to the Invalides, most deeply interesting. Comte D'Orsay was of the party; indeed it was in his elegant atélier we had all assembled, ere starting, to survey the mausoleum then being prepared for the ashes of Napoleon. Suffering and debilitated as Comte D'Orsay was, precious, as critiques on art, were the words that fell from his lips during our progress through the work-rooms, as we stopped before the sculptures intended to adorn the vault wherein the sarcophagus is to rest. Ere leaving the works, the Director, in exhibiting the solidity of the granite which was finally to encase Napoleon, struck fire with a mallet from the magnificent block. 'See,' said Comte D'Orsay, 'though the dome of the Invalides may fall, France may yet light a torch at the tomb of her Emperor.' I cannot remember the exact words, but such was their import. Comte D'Orsay died a few weeks after this.
"Since the foregoing was written, members of the Burton family have told me, that, after taking the cast, Mr. Burton went to his regimental rounds, leaving the mask on the tray to dry; the back of the head was left on to await his return, not being dry enough to take off, and was thus overlooked by Madame Bertrand. When he returned he found that the mask was packed up and sent on board ship for France in Antommarchi's name. From a feeling of deep mortification he took the back part of the cast, reverently scraped off the hair now enclosed in a ring, and, overcome by his feelings, dashed it into a thousand pieces. He was afterwards offered by Messrs. Gall and Spurzheim (phrenologists), one thousand pounds sterling for that portion of the cast which was wanting to the cast so called Antommarchi's. Amongst family private papers there was a correspondence, read by most members of it, between Antommarchi and Mr. Burton, in which Antommarchi stated that he knew Burton had made the plaster and taken the cast. Mrs. Burton, after the death of her husband and Antommarchi, thought the correspondence useless and burnt it; but the hair was preserved under a glass watch-case in the family for forty years. There was an offer made about the year 1827 or 1828 by persons high in position in France who knew the truth to have the matter cleared up, but Mr. Burton was dying at the time, and was unable to take any part in it, so the affair dropped.
"The Bust of Buonaparte.
"Extract from the 'New Times' of September 7th, 1821.
"On Wednesday a case of a very singular nature occurred at the Bow Street Office.
"Count Bertrand, the companion of Buonaparte in his exile at St. Helena (and the executor under his will), appeared before Richard Birnie, Esq., accompanied by Sir Robert Wilson, in consequence of a warrant having been issued to search the residence of the Count for a bust of his illustrious master, which, it was alleged, was the property of Mr. Burton, 66th Regiment, when at St. Helena.
"The following are the circumstances of the case:—
"Previous to the death of Buonaparte, he had given directions to his executors that his body should not be touched by any person after his death; however, Count Bertrand directed Dr. Antommarchi to take a bust of him; but not being able to find a material which he thought would answer the purpose, he mentioned the circumstances to Mr. Burton, who promised that he would procure some if possible.
"The Englishman, in pursuance of this promise, took a boat and picked up raw materials on the island, some distance from Longwood. He made a plaster, which he conceived would answer this purpose. When he showed it to Dr. Antommarchi he said it would not answer, and refused to have anything to do with it, in consequence of which Mr. Burton proceeded to take a bust himself, with the sanction of Madame Bertrand, who was in the room at the time. An agreement was entered into that copies should be made of the bust, and that Messieurs Burton and Antommarchi were to have each a copy.
"It was found, however, that the plaster was not sufficiently durable for the purpose, and it was proposed to send the original to England to have copies taken.
"When Mr. Burton, however, afterwards inquired for the bust, he was informed that it was packed and nailed up; but a promise was made, that upon its arrival in Europe, an application should be made to the family of Buonaparte for the copy required by Mr. Burton.
"On its arrival, Mr. Burton wrote to the Count to have his promised copy, but he was told, as before, that application would be made to the family of Buonaparte for it.
"Mr. Burton upon this applied to Bow Street for a search warrant in order to obtain the bust, as he conceived he had a right to it, he having furnished the materials and executed it.
"A warrant was issued, and Taunton and Salmon, two officers, went to the Count's residence in Leicester Square. When they arrived, and made known their errand, they were remonstrated with by Sir Robert Wilson and the Count, who begged they would not act till they had an interview with Mr. Birnie, as there must be some mistake. The officers politely acceded to the request, and waived their right of search.
"Count Bertrand had, it seems, offered a pecuniary compensation to Mr. Burton for his trouble, but it was indignantly refused by that officer, who persisted in the assertion of his right to the bust as his own property, and made application for the search warrant.
"Count Bertrand, in answer to the case stated by Mr. Burton, said that the bust was the property of the family of the deceased, to whom he was executor, and he thought he should not be authorized in giving it up. If, however, the law of this country ordained it otherwise, he must submit; but he should protest earnestly against it.
"The worthy magistrate, having sworn the Count to the fact that he was executor under the will of Buonaparte, observed that it was a case out of his jurisdiction altogether, and if Mr. Burton chose to persist in his claim, he must seek a remedy before another tribunal.
"The case was dismissed, and the warrant was cancelled.
"The sequel to the Buonaparte story is short; Captain Burton (in 1861) thinking that the sketch, which was perfect, and the lock of hair which had been preserved in a family watch-case for forty years, would be great treasures to the Buonapartes, and should be given to them, begged the sketch of General and Mrs. Ward, and the hair from the Burtons; he had the hair set in a handsome ring, with a wreath of laurels and the Buonaparte bees. His wife had a complete set of her husband's works very handsomely bound, as a gift, and in January, 1862, Captain Burton sent his wife over to Paris, with the sketch, the ring, and the books, to request an audience with the Emperor and Empress, and offer them these things, simply as an act of civility—for Captain and Mrs. Burton in opinion and feeling were Legitimists. Captain Burton was away on a journey, and Mrs. Burton had to go alone. She was young and inexperienced, and had not a single friend in Paris to advise her. She left her letter and presents at the Tuileries. The audience was not granted. His Imperial Majesty declined the presents, and she never heard anything more of them. They were not returned. Frightened and disappointed at the failure of this, her first little mission at the outset of her married life, she returned to London directly, where she found the Burton family anything but pleased at her failure and her want of savoir faire in the matter, having unwittingly caused their treasure to be utterly unappreciated. She said to me on her return, 'I never felt so snubbed in my life, and I shall never like Paris again;' and I believe she has kept her word.
"Oxonian."
Francis Burton, alluded to in these pages, returned to England after the death of Napoleon, married one of the three co-heiress (Baker) sisters, and died early, leaving only two daughters. One died, and the other, Sarah, became Mrs. Pryce-Harrison.
Nor was this the only little romance in our Burton family, as the following story taken from family documents tends to show. Here is the Louis XIV. history—
"With regard to Louis XIV. there are one or two curious and interesting legends in the Burton family, well authenticated, which make Richard Burton great-great-great-grandson of Louis XIV. of France, by a morganatic marriage; and another which would entitle him to an English baronetcy, dating from 1622.
"One of the documents in the family is entitled, 'A Pedigree of the Young family, showing their descent from Louis XIV. of France,' and which runs as follows:—
"Louis XIV. of France took the beautiful Countess of Montmorency from her husband and shut him up in a fortress. After the death of (her husband) the Constable de Montmorency, Louis morganatically married the Countess. She had a son called Louis le Jeune, who 'was brought over to Ireland by Lady Primrose,' then a widow. This Lady Primrose's maiden name was Drelincourt, and the baby was named Drelincourt after his godfather and guardian, Dean Drelincourt (of Armagh), who was the father of Lady Primrose. He grew up, was educated at Armagh, and was known as Drelincourt Young. He married a daughter of Dean Drelincourt, and became the father of Hercules Drelincourt Young, and also of Miss (Sarah) Young, who married Dr. John Campbell, LL.D., Vicar-General of Tuam (ob. 1772). Sarah Young's brother, the above-mentioned Hercules Young, married and had a son George, a merchant in Dublin, who had some French deeds and various documents, which proved his right to property in France.
"The above-named Dr. John Campbell, by his marriage with Miss Sarah Young (rightly Lejeune, for they had changed the name from French to English), had a daughter, Maria Margaretta Campbell, who was Richard Burton's grandmother. The same Dr. John Campbell was a member of the Argyll family, and a first cousin of the 'three beautiful Gunnings,' and was Richard Burton's great-grandfather.
"These papers (for there are other documents) affect a host of families in Ireland—the Campbells, Nettervilles, Droughts, Graves, Burtons, Plunketts, Trimlestons, and many more.
"In 1875 Notes and Queries was full of this question and the various documents, but it has never been settled.
"The genealogy runs thus:—
"Louis XIV.
"Son, Louis le Jeune (known as Louis Drelincourt Young), by Countess Montmorency; adopted by Lady Primrose[4] (see Earl of Rosebery), and subsequently married to a daughter of Drelincourt, Dean of Armagh.
"Daughter, Sarah Young; married to Dr. John Campbell, LL.D., Vicar-General of Tuam, Galway.
"Daughter, Maria Margaretta Campbell; married to the Rev. Edward Burton, Rector of Tuam, Galway.
"Son, Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Netterville Burton, 36th Regiment.
"Son, Richard Burton, whose biography I am now relating.
"There was a Lady Primrose buried in the Rosebery vaults, by her express will, with a little casket in her hands, containing some secret, which was to die with her; many think that it might contain the missing link.
"The wife of Richard Burton received, in 1875, two very tantalizing anonymous letters, which she published in Notes and Queries, but which she has never been able to turn to account, through the writer declining to come forward, even secretly.
"One ran thus:—
"'Madam,—There is an old baronetcy in the Burton family to which you belong, dating from the reign of Edw. III.[5]—I rather believe now in abeyance—which it was thought Admiral Ryder Burton would have taken up, and which after his death can be taken up by your branch of the family. All particulars you will find by searching the Heralds' Office; but I am positive my information is correct.—From one who read your letter in N. and Q.
"She shortly after received and published the second anonymous letter; but, though she made several appeals to the writer in Notes and Queries, no answer was obtained, and Admiral Ryder Burton eventually died.
"'Madam,—I cannot help thinking that if you were to have the records of the Burton family searched carefully at Shap, in Westmoreland, you would be able to fill up the link wanting in your husband's descent, from 1712 to 1750, or thereabouts. As I am quite positive of a baronetcy being in abeyance in the Burton family, and that an old one, it would be worth your while getting all the information you can from Shap and Tuam—the Rev. Edward Burton, Dean of Killala and Rector of Tuam, whose niece he married was a Miss Ryder, of the Earl of Harrowby's family, by whom he had no children. His second wife, a Miss Judge, was a descendant of the Otways, of Castle Otway, and connected with many leading families in Ireland. Admiral James Ryder Burton could, if he would, supply you with information respecting the missing link in your husband's descent. I have always heard that de Burton was the proper family name, and I saw lately that a de Burton now lives in Lincolnshire.
"'Hoping, madam, that you will be able to establish your claim to the baronetcy,
"'I remain, yours truly,
"'A Reader of N. and Q.
"'P.S.—I rather think also, and advise your ascertaining the fact, that the estate of Barker Hill, Shap, Westmoreland, by the law of entail, will devolve, at the death of Admiral Ryder Burton, on your husband, Captain Richard Burton.'
"From the Royal College of Heralds, however, the following information was forwarded to Mrs. Richard Burton:—
"'There was a baronetcy in the family of Burton. The first was Sir Thomas Burton, Knight, of Stokestone, Leicestershire; created July 22nd, 1622, a baronet, by King James I. Sir Charles was the last baronet. He appears to have been in great distress—a prisoner for debt, 1712. He is supposed to have died without issue, when the title became extinct—at least nobody has claimed it since. If your husband can prove his descent from a younger son of any of the baronets, he would have a right to the title. The few years must be filled up between 1712 and the birth of your husband's grandfather, which was about 1750; and you must prove that the Rev. Edward Burton, Rector of Tuam in Galway, your husband's grandfather (who came from Shap, in Westmoreland, with his brother, Bishop Burton, of Tuam), was descended from any of the sons of any of the baronets named.'"[6]
"'Madam,—There is an old baronetcy in the Burton family to which you belong, dating from the reign of Edw. III.[5]—I rather believe now in abeyance—which it was thought Admiral Ryder Burton would have taken up, and which after his death can be taken up by your branch of the family. All particulars you will find by searching the Heralds' Office; but I am positive my information is correct.—From one who read your letter in N. and Q.
"'Madam,—I cannot help thinking that if you were to have the records of the Burton family searched carefully at Shap, in Westmoreland, you would be able to fill up the link wanting in your husband's descent, from 1712 to 1750, or thereabouts. As I am quite positive of a baronetcy being in abeyance in the Burton family, and that an old one, it would be worth your while getting all the information you can from Shap and Tuam—the Rev. Edward Burton, Dean of Killala and Rector of Tuam, whose niece he married was a Miss Ryder, of the Earl of Harrowby's family, by whom he had no children. His second wife, a Miss Judge, was a descendant of the Otways, of Castle Otway, and connected with many leading families in Ireland. Admiral James Ryder Burton could, if he would, supply you with information respecting the missing link in your husband's descent. I have always heard that de Burton was the proper family name, and I saw lately that a de Burton now lives in Lincolnshire.
"'Hoping, madam, that you will be able to establish your claim to the baronetcy,
"'I remain, yours truly,
"'A Reader of N. and Q.
"'P.S.—I rather think also, and advise your ascertaining the fact, that the estate of Barker Hill, Shap, Westmoreland, by the law of entail, will devolve, at the death of Admiral Ryder Burton, on your husband, Captain Richard Burton.'
[1] N.B.—This I deny. Richard was the handsomest and most attractive man I have ever seen, and Edward, though smaller, was very good-looking, but there is no doubt that Richard grew handsomer every year of his life, and I can remember Maria exceedingly attractive so far back as 1857.—I. B.
[2] "The coffin being too short to admit this array in the order proposed, the hat was placed at the feet before interment."
[3] "Napoleon's dining-room lamp, from Longwood, is, I believe, still in the possession of the 91st Regiment, it having been purchased by the officers at St. Helena in 1836."
[4] "This Lady Primrose was a person of no small importance, and was the centre of the Jacobite Society in London, and the friend of several distinguished people; and as she was connected on her own side and her husband's with the French Calvinists, she may very likely have protected Lejeune from France to Ireland, and he would probably have, when grown up, married some younger Drelincourt—as such were undoubtedly the names of the parents of Sarah Young, who married Dr. John Campbell. We can only give the various documents as we have seen them."
[5] "This is an error of the anonymous writer. Baronetcies were first created in 1605."—I. B.
[6] N.B.—We never had the money to pursue these enquiries. But should they ever be sifted, the proper heir, since my husband is dead, will be Captain Richard St. George Burton, of the "Black Watch." We made out all the links, except twelve years from 1712. It is said that Admiral Ryder Burton himself was the author of those two anonymous letters to me. My husband often used to say there were only two titles he would care to have. Firstly, the old family baronetcy, and the other to be created Duke of Midian.—Isabel Burton.
[CHAPTER II.]
RICHARD'S BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD.
I was born at 9.30 p.m., 19th March (Feast of St. Joseph in the calendar), 1821, at Barham House, Herts, and suppose I was baptized in due course at the parish church. My birth took place in the same year as, but the day before, the grand event of George IV. visiting the Opera for the first time after the Coronation, March 20th. I was the eldest of three children. The second was Maria Catherine Eliza, who married Henry, afterwards General Sir Henry Stisted, a very distinguished officer, who died, leaving only two daughters, one of whom, Georgina Martha, survives. Third, Edward Joseph Netterville, late Captain in the 37th Regiment, unmarried.
The first thing I remember, and it is always interesting to record a child's first memories, was being brought down after dinner at Barham House to eat white currants, seated upon the knee of a tall man with yellow hair and blue eyes; but whether the memory is composed of a miniature of my grandfather, and whether the white frock and blue sash with bows come from a miniature of myself and not from life, I can never make up my mind.
Barham House was a country place bought by my grandfather, Richard Baker, who determined to make me his heir because I had red hair, an unusual thing in the Burton family. The hair soon changed to black, which seems to justify the following remarks by Alfred Bate Richards in the pamphlet alluded to. They are as follows:—
"Richard Burton's talents for mixing with and assimilating natives of all countries, but especially Oriental characters, and of becoming as one of themselves without any one doubting or suspecting his origin; his perfect knowledge of their languages, manners, customs, habits, and religion; and last, but not least, his being gifted by nature with an Arab head and face, favoured this his first enterprise" (the pilgrimage to Mecca). "One can learn from that versatile poet-traveller, the excellent Théophile Gautier, why Richard Burton is an Arab in appearance; and account for that incurable restlessness that is unable to wrest from fortune a spot on earth wherein to repose when weary of wandering like the desert sands.
"'There is a reason,' says Gautier, who had studied the Andalusian and the Moor, 'for the fantasy of nature which causes an Arab to be born in Paris, or a Greek in Auvergne; the mysterious voice of blood which is silent for generations, or only utters a confused murmur, speaks at rare intervals a more intelligible language. In the general confusion race claims its own, and some forgotten ancestor asserts his rights. Who knows what alien drops are mingled with our blood? The great migrations from the table-lands of India, the descents of the Northern races, the Roman and Arab invasions, have all left their marks. Instincts which seem bizarre spring from these confused recollections, these hints of distant country. The vague desire of this primitive Fatherland moves such minds as retain the more vivid memories of the past. Hence the wild unrest that wakens in certain spirits the need of flight, such as the cranes and the swallows feel when kept in bondage—the impulses that make a man leave his luxurious life to bury himself in the Steppes, the Desert, the Pampas, the Sahara. He goes to seek his brothers. It would be easy to point out the intellectual Fatherland of our greatest minds. Lamartine, De Musset, and De Vigny are English; Delacroix is an Anglo-Indian; Victor Hugo a Spaniard; Ingres belongs to the Italy of Florence and Rome.'
"Richard Burton has also some peculiarities which oblige one to suspect a drop of Oriental, perhaps gipsy, blood. By gipsy we must understand the pure Eastern."
My mother had a wild half-brother—Richard Baker, junior, a barrister-at-law, who refused a judgeship in Australia, and died a soap-boiler. To him she was madly attached, and delayed the signing of my grandfather's will as much as possible to the prejudice of her own babe. My grandfather Baker drove in his carriage to see Messrs. Dendy, his lawyers, with the object of signing the will, and dropped dead, on getting out of the carriage, of ossification of the heart; and, the document being unsigned, the property was divided. It would now be worth half a million of money.
When I was sent out to India as a cadet, in 1842, I ran down to see the old house for the last time, and started off in a sailing ship round the Cape for Bombay, in a frame of mind to lead any forlorn hope wherever it might be. Warren Hastings, Governor-General of India, under similar circumstances threw himself under a tree, and formed the fine resolution to come back and buy the old place; but he belonged to the eighteenth century. The nineteenth is far more cosmopolitan. I always acted upon the saying, Omne solum forti patria, or, as I translated it, "For every region is a strong man's home."
Meantime my father had been obliged to go on half-pay by the Duke of Wellington for having refused to appear as a witness against Queen Caroline. He had been town mayor at Genoa when she lived there, and her kindness to the officers had greatly prepossessed them in her favour; so, when ordered by the War Office to turn Judas, he flatly refused. A great loss to himself, as Lord William Bentinck, Governor-General of India, was about to take him as aide-de-camp, and to his family, as he lost all connection with the army, and lived entirely abroad, and, eventually coming back, died with his wife at Bath in 1857. However, he behaved like a gentleman, and none of his family ever murmured at the step, though I began life as an East Indian cadet, and my brother in a marching regiment, whilst our cousins were in the Guards and the Rifles and other crack corps of the army.
The family went abroad when I was a few months old, and settled at Tours, the charming capital of Touraine, which then contained some two hundred English families (now reduced to a score or so), attracted by the beauty of the place, the healthy climate, the economy of living, the facilities of education, and the friendly feeling of the French inhabitants, who, despite Waterloo, associated freely with the strangers.
They had a chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Way (whose son afterwards entered the Indian army; I met him in India, and he died young); their schoolmaster was Mr. Clough, who bolted from his debts, and then Mr. Gilchrist, who, like the Rev. Edward Irving, Carlisle's friend (whom the butcher once asked if he couldn't assist him), caned his pupils to the utmost. The celebrated Dr. Brettoneau took charge of the invalids. They had their duellist, the Honourable Martin Hawke, their hounds that hunted the Forest of Amboise, and a select colony of Irishmen, Messrs. Hume and others, who added immensely to the fun and frolic of the place.
At that period a host of these little colonies were scattered over the Continent nearest England; in fact, an oasis of Anglo-Saxondom in a desert of continentalism, somewhat like the society of English country towns as it was in 1800, not as it is now, where society is confined to the parson, dentist, surgeon, general practitioners, the bankers, and the lawyers. And in those days it had this advantage, that there were no snobs, and one seldom noticed the aigre discorde, the maladie chronique des ménages bourgeoises. Knowing nothing of Mrs. Grundy, the difference of the foreign colonies was that the weight of English respectability appeared to be taken off them, though their lives were respectable and respected. The Mrs. Gamps and Mrs. Grundys were not so rampant. The English of these little colonies were intensely patriotic, and cared comparatively little for party politics. They stuck to their own Church because it was their Church, and they knew as much about the Catholics at their very door, as the average Englishman does of the Hindú. Moreover, they honestly called themselves Protestants in those days, and the French called themselves Catholics. There was no quibble about "their being Anglo-Catholics, and the others Roman-Catholics." They subscribed liberally to the Church, and did not disdain to act as churchwardens. They kept a sharp look-out upon the parson, and one of your Modern High Church Protestants or Puseyites or Ritualists would have got the sack after the first sermon. They were intensely national. Any Englishman in those days who refused to fight a duel with a Frenchman was sent to Coventry, and bullied out of the place. English girls who flirted with foreigners, were looked upon very much as white women who permit the addresses of a nigger, are looked upon by those English who have lived in black countries. White women who do these things lose caste. Beauséjour, the château taken by the family, was inhabited by the Maréchale de Menon in 1778, and eventually became the property of her homme d'affaires, Monsieur Froguet. The dear old place stands on the right bank of the Loire, halfway up the heights that bound the stream, commanding a splendid view, and fronted by a French garden and vineyards now uprooted. In 1875 I paid it a last visit, and found a friend from Brazil, a Madame Izarié, widow of my friend the French Consul of Bahía, who had come to die in the house of his sister, Madame Froguet.
Tours was in those days (1820-30) the most mediæval City in France. The western half of the city, divided from the eastern by the Rue Royale, contained a number of old turreted houses of freestone, which might have belonged to the fifteenth century. There also was the tomb of the Venerable St. Martin in a crypt, where lamps are ever burning, and where the destroyed cathedral has not yet been rebuilt. The eastern city contained the grand Cathedral of St. Garcien, with its domed towers, and the Archévêché or Archbishop's palace with beautiful gardens. Both are still kept in the best order. In forty-five years the city has grown enormously. The southern suburbs, where the Mall and Ramparts used to be, has become Boulevards Heurteloup and Béranger; and "Places," such as that of the Palais de Justice, where cabbage gardens fenced with paling and thorn hedges once showed a few pauper cottages defended by the fortifications, are now Crescents and Kiosks for loungers, houses with tall mansarde roofs, and the large railway station that connects Tours with the outer world. The river, once crossed by a single long stone bridge, has now two suspension bridges and a railway bridge, and the river-holms, formerly strips of sand, are now grown to double their size, covered with trees and defended by stone dykes.
I remember passing over the river on foot when it was frozen, but with the increased population that no longer happens. Still there are vestiges of the old establishments. The Boule d'Or with its Golden Ball, and the Pheasant Hotel, both in the Rue Royale, still remain. You still read, "Maison Piernadine recommended for is elegance, is good taste, is new fashions of the first choice." Madame Fisterre, the maker of admirable apple-puffs, has disappeared and has left no sign. This was, as may be supposed, one of my first childish visits. We young ones enjoyed ourselves very much at the Château de Beauséjour, eating grapes in the garden, putting our Noah's ark animals under the box hedges, picking snail-shells and cowslips in the lanes, playing with the dogs—three black pointers of splendid breed, much admired by the Duke of Cumberland when he afterwards saw them in Richmond Park, named Juno, Jupiter, and Ponto. Charlotte Ling, the old nurse, daughter of the lodge-keeper at Barham House, could not stand the absence of beef and beer and the presence of kickshaws and dandelion salad, and after Aunt Georgina Baker had paid us a visit, she returned with her to Old England. A favourite amusement of us children was swarming up the tails of our father's horses, three in number, and one—a horse of Mecklenburg breed—was as tame as an Arab. The first story Aunt Georgina used to tell of me was of my lying on my back in a broiling sun, and exclaiming, "How I love a bright burning sun!" (Nature speaking in early years). Occasional drawbacks were violent storms of thunder and lightning, when we children were hustled out of our little cots under the roof, and taken to the drawing-room, lest the lightning should strike us, and the daily necessity of learning the alphabet and so forth, multiplication table, and our prayers.
I was intended for that wretched being, the infant phenomenon, and so began Latin at three and Greek at four. Things are better now. Our father used to go out wild-boar hunting in the Forêt d'Amboise, where is the château in which Abd-el-Kadir was imprisoned by the French Government from 1847 to 1852, when he was set free by Napoleon III., at the entreaties of Lord Londonderry. (It is said that his Majesty entered his prison in person and set him free. Abd-el-Kadir, at Damascus, often expressed his obligations to the English, and warmly welcomed any English face. On one occasion I took a near relation of Lord Londonderry's to see him, and he was quite overcome.) My father was periodically brought home hurt by running against a tree. Sport was so much in vogue then as to come between the parson and his sermon.
This pleasant life came to a close one day. We were three: I was six, Maria four, and Edward three. One morning saw the hateful school-books fastened with a little strap, and we boys and our little bundle were conveyed in a small carriage to the town, where we were introduced into a room with a number of English and French boys, who were sitting opposite hacked and ink-spotted desks, looking as demure as they could, though every now and then they broke out into wicked grins and nudges. A lame Irish schoolmaster (Clough) smiled most graciously at us as long as our father was in the room, but was not half so pleasant when we were left alone. We wondered "what we were doing in that Galère," especially as we were sent there day after day, and presently we learnt the dread truth that we were at school at the ripe ages of six and three. Presently it was found that the house was at an inconvenient distance from school, and the family transferred itself to the Rue de l'Archévêché, a very nice house in the north-eastern corner of what is still the best street in the town (Rue Royale being mostly commercial). It is close to the Place and the Archbishop's palace, which delighted us, with small deer feeding about the dwarf lawn.
Presently Mr. Clough ran away, leaving his sister to follow as best she could, and we were transferred to the care of Mr. John Gilchrist, a Scotch pedagogue of the old brutal school, who took an especial delight in caning the boys, especially with a rattan or ferula across the palm of the hand; but we were not long in discovering a remedy, by splitting the end of the cane and inserting a bit of hair. We took lessons in drawing, dancing, French, and music, in which each child showed its individuality. Maria loved all four; Edward took to French and music and hated drawing; I took to French and drawing, and hated music and dancing. My brother and I took to the study of Arms, by nature, as soon as we could walk, at first with popguns and spring pistols and tin and wooden sabres, and I can quite well remember longing to kill the porter at five years old, because he laughed at our sabres de bois and pistolets de paille.
I was a boy of three ideas. Usually if a child is forbidden to eat the sugar or to lap up the cream he simply either obeys or does the contrary; but I used to place myself before the sugar and cream and carefully study the question, "Have I the courage not to touch them?" When I was quite sure of myself that I had the courage I instantly rewarded resolution by emptying one or both. Moreover, like most boys of strong imagination and acute feeling, I was a resolute and unblushing liar; I used to ridicule the idea of my honour being any way attached to telling the truth, I considered it an impertinence the being questioned, I never could understand what moral turpitude there could be in a lie, unless it was told for fear of the consequences of telling the truth, or one that would attach blame to another person. That feeling continued for many a year, and at last, as very often happens, as soon as I realized that a lie was contemptible, it ran into quite the other extreme, a disagreeable habit of scrupulously telling the truth whether it was timely or not.[1]
The school was mostly manned by English boys, sprinkled with French, and the mixture of the two formed an ungodly article, and the Italian proverb—
"Un Inglese Italianato
È un Diavolo incarnato"
may be applied with quite as much truth to English boys brought up in France. To succeed in English life, boys must be brought up in a particular groove. First the preparatory school, then Eton and Oxford, with an occasional excursion to France, Italy, and Germany, to learn languages, not of Stratford-atte-Bowe, and to find out that England is not the whole world. I never met any of my Tours schoolfellows save one—Blayden Edward Hawke, who became a Commander in the Navy, and died in 1877.
We boys became perfect devilets, and played every kind of trick despite the rattan. Fighting the French gutter-boys with sticks and stones, fists, and snowballs was a favourite amusement, and many a donkey-lad went home with ensanguined nose, whilst occasionally we got the worst of it from some big brother. The next favourite game was playing truant, passing the day in utter happiness, fancying ourselves Robinson Crusoes, and wandering about the strip of wood (long since doomed to fuel) at the top of the Tranchée. Our father and mother went much into the society of the place, which was gay and pleasant, and we children were left more or less to the servants. We boys beat all our bonnes, generally by running at their petticoats and upsetting them. There was one particular case when a new nurse arrived, a huge Norman girl, who at first imposed upon this turbulent nursery by her breadth of shoulder and the general rigour of her presence. One unlucky day we walked to the Faubourg at the south-east of the town, the only part of old Tours now remaining; the old women sat spinning and knitting at their cottage doors, and remarked loud enough for us boys to hear, "Ah ça! ces petits gamins! Voilà une honnête bonne qui ne leur laissera pas faire des farces!" Whereupon Euphrosyne became as proud as a peacock, and insisted upon a stricter discipline than we were used to. That forest walk ended badly. A jerk of the arm on her part brought on a general attack from the brood; the poor bonne measured her length upon the ground, and we jumped upon her. The party returned, she with red eyes, torn cap, and downcast looks, and we hooting and jeering loudly, and calling the old women "Les Mères Pomponnes," who screamed predictions that we should come to the guillotine.
Our father and mother had not much idea of managing their children; it was like the old tale of the hen who hatched ducklings. By way of a wholesome and moral lesson of self-command and self-denial, our mother took us past Madame Fisterre's windows, and bade us look at all the good things in the window, during which we fixed our ardent affections upon a tray of apple-puffs; then she said, "Now, my dears, let us go away; it is so good for little children to restrain themselves." Upon this we three devilets turned flashing eyes and burning cheeks upon our moralizing mother, broke the windows with our fists, clawed out the tray of apple-puffs, and bolted, leaving poor mother a sadder and a wiser woman, to pay the damages of her lawless brood's proceedings.
Talking of the guillotine, the schoolmaster unwisely allowed the boys, by way of a school-treat, to see the execution of a woman who killed her small family by poisoning, on condition that they would look away when the knife descended; but of course that was just the time (with such an injunction) when every small neck was craned and eyes strained to look, and the result was that the whole school played at guillotine for a week, happily without serious accidents.[2]
The residence at Tours was interrupted by occasional trips, summering in other places, especially at St. Malo. The seaport then thoroughly deserved the slighting notice, to which it was subjected by Captain Marryat, and the house in the Faubourg was long remembered from its tall avenue of old yew trees, which afforded abundant bird's-nesting. At Dieppe the gallops on the sands were very much enjoyed, for we were put on horseback as soon as we could straddle. Many a fall was of course the result, and not a few broken heads, whilst the rival French boys were painfully impressed by the dignity of spurs and horsewhips.
At times relations came over to visit us, especially Grandmamma Baker (Grandmamma Baker was a very peculiar character). Her arrival was a signal for presents and used to be greeted with tremendous shouts of delight, but the end of a week always brought on a quarrel. Our mother was rather thin and delicate, but our grandmother was a thorough old Macgregor, of the Helen or the Rob Roy type, and was as quick to resent an affront as any of her clan. Her miniature shows that she was an extremely handsome woman, who retained her good looks to the last. When her stepson, Richard Baker, jun., inherited his money, £80,000, he went to Paris and fell into the hands of the celebrated Baron de Thierry. This French friend persuaded him to embark in the pleasant little speculation of building a bazaar. By the time the walls began to grow above ground the Englishman had finished £60,000, and, seeing that a million would hardly finish the work, he sold off his four greys and fled Paris post-haste in a post-chaise. The Baron Thierry followed him to London, and, bold as brass, presented himself as an injured creditor at grandmamma's pretty little house in Park Lane. The old lady replied by summoning her servants and having him literally kicked downstairs in true Highland fashion. That Baron's end is well known in history. He made himself king of one of the Cannibal Islands in the South Sea, and ended by being eaten by his ungrateful subjects.
Grandmamma Baker was determined to learn French, and, accordingly, secured a professor. The children's great delight was to ambuscade themselves, and to listen with joy to the lessons. "What is the sun?" "Le soleil, madame!" "La solelle." "Non, madame. Le so—leil." "Oh, pooh! La solelle." After about six repetitions of the same, roars of laughter issued from the curtains—we of course speaking French like English, upon which the old lady would jump up and catch hold of the nearest delinquent and administer condign punishment. She had a peculiar knack of starting the offender, compelling him to describe a circle of which she was the centre, whilst, holding with the left hand, she administered smacks and cuffs with the right; but, as every mode of attack has its own defence, it was soon found out that the proper corrective was to throw one's self on one's back, and give vigorous kicks with both legs. It need hardly be said that Grandmamma predicted that Jack Ketch would make acquaintance with the younger scions of her race, and that she never arrived at speaking French like a Parisian.
Grandmamma Burton was also peculiar in her way. Her portrait shows the regular Bourbon traits, the pear-shaped face and head which culminates in Louis Philippe's. Although the wife of a country clergyman, she never seemed to have attained the meekness of feeling associated with that peaceful calling. The same thing is told of her as was told of the Edgeworth family. On one occasion during the absence of her husband, the house at Tuam was broken into by thieves, probably some of her petted tenantry. She lit a candle and went upstairs to fetch some gunpowder, loaded her pistols, and ran down to the hall, when the robbers decamped. She asked the raw Irish servant girl who had accompanied her what had become of the light, and the answer was that it was standing on the barrel of "black salt" upstairs; thereupon Grandmamma Burton had the pluck to walk up to the garret and expose herself to the risk of being blown to smithereens. When my father returned from service in Sicily, at the end of the year, he found the estate in a terrible condition, and obtained his mother's leave to take the matter in hand. He invited all the tenants to dinner, and when speech time came on, after being duly blarneyed by all present, he made a little address, dwelling with some vigour upon the necessity of being for the future more regular with the "rint." Faces fell, and the only result was, that when the rent came to be collected, he was fired at so frequently (showing that this state of things had been going on for some sixty or seventy years), that, not wishing to lead the life of the "Galway woodcock," he gave up the game, and allowed matters to take their own course.
Another frequent visitor was popularly known as "Aunt G."—Georgina Baker, the younger of the three sisters, who was then in the heyday of youth and high spirits. An extremely handsome girl, with blue eyes and dark hair and fine tall figure, she was the life of the house as long as her visits lasted. Her share of the property being £30,000, she had of course a number of offers from English as well as foreigners. On the latter she soon learned to look shy, having heard that one of her rejected suitors had exclaimed to his friend, "Quelle dommage, avec cette petite ferme à vendre," the wished-for farm, adjoining his property, happening then to be in the market. Heiresses are not always fortunate, and she went on refusing suitor after suitor, till ripe middle age, when she married Robert Bagshaw, Esq., M.P. for Harwich. She wanted to adopt me, intending to accompany me to Oxford and leave me her property, but this project had no stay in it. At the time she was at Tours, Aunt G. had a kind of "fad" that she would marry one of her brother-in-law Burton's brothers. Her eldest sister Sarah had married my uncle Burton, elder brother of my father, who, sorely against his wish, which pointed to the Church, had been compelled by the failure of the "rint" to become an army surgeon—the same who had the disappointment at St. Helena.
At last it became apparent that Tours was no longer a place for us who were approaching the ticklish time of teens. All Anglo-French boys generally were remarkable young ruffians, who, at ten years of age, cocked their hats and loved the ladies. Instead of fighting and fagging, they broke the fine old worked glass church windows, purloined their fathers' guns to shoot at the monuments in the churchyards, and even the shops and bazaars were not safe from their impudent raids. The ringleader of the gang was a certain Alek G——, the son of a Scotchmen of good family, who was afterwards connected with or was the leading spirit of a transaction, which gave a tablet and an inscription to Printing House Square. Alek was very handsome, and his two sisters were as good looking as himself. He died sadly enough at a hospital in Paris. Political matters, too, began to look queer. The revolution which hurled Charles X. from the throne, produced no outrages in quiet Tours, beyond large gatherings of the people with an immense amount of noise, especially of "Vive la Chatte!" (for La Charte), the good commères turning round and asking one another whom the Cat might be that the people wished it so long a life; but when Casimir Périer had passed through the town, and "the three glorious days of July" had excited the multitude, things began to look black, and cries of "À bas les Anglais!" were not uncommon. An Englishmen was threatened with prison because the horse he was driving accidentally knocked down an old woman, and a French officer of the line, who was fond of associating with English girls, was grossly insulted and killed in a dastardly duel by a pastrycook.
At last, after a long deliberation, the family resolved to leave Tours. Travelling in those days, especially for a large family, was a severe infliction. The old travelling carriages, which had grown shabby in the coach-house, had to be taken out and furbished up, and all the queer receptacles, imperial, boot, sword-case, and plate-chest, to be stuffed with miscellaneous luggage. After the usual sale by auction, my father took his departure, perhaps mostly regretted by a little knot of Italian exiles, whom he liked on account of his young years spent in Sicily, and whose society not improbably suggested his ultimate return to Italy. Then began the journey along the interminable avenues of the old French roads, lined with parallel rows of poplars, which met at a vanishing point of the far distance. I found exactly the same thing, when travelling through Lower Canada in 1860. Mighty dull work it was, whilst the French postilion in his seven-league boots jogged along with his horses at the rate of five miles an hour, never dreaming of increasing the rate, till he approached some horridly paved town, when he cracked his whip, like a succession of pistol shots, to the awe and delight of all the sabots. Very slow hours they were, especially as the night wore on, and the road, gleaming white between its two dark edges, looked of endless length. And when at last the inn was reached, it proved very unlike the inn of the present day. A hard bargain had to be driven with a rapacious landlady, who, if you objected to her charges, openly roared at you with arms akimbo, "that if you were not rich enough to travel, you ought to stay at home." Then the beds had to be inspected, the damp sheets to be aired, and the warming-pans to be ordered, and, as dinner had always to be prepared after arrival, it was not unusual to sit hungry for a couple of hours.
The fatigues of the journey seriously affected my mother's health, and she lost no time in falling very ill at Chartres. Then Grandmamma Baker was sent for to act garde-malade, and to awe the children, who were wild with delight at escaping school and masters, with the weight of her sturdy Scotch arm. The family passed through Paris, where the signs of fighting, bullets in the walls, and burnt houses, had not been wholly obliterated, and were fortunate enough to escape the cholera, which then for the first time attacked Europe in its very worst form. Grandmamma Baker was very nearly as bad, for she almost poisoned her beloved grandchildren, by stuffing our noses and mouths full of the strongest camphor whenever we happened to pass through a town. The cold plunge into English life was broken by loitering on the sands of Dieppe. A wonderful old ramshackle place it was in those days, holding a kind of intermediate place between the dulness of Calais and the liveliness of "Boolone," as the denizens called it. It wanted the fine hotels and the Établissement, which grew up under the Second Empire, but there was during the summer a pleasant, natural kind of life, living almost exclusively upon the sands and dipping in the water, galloping about on little ponies, and watching the queer costumes of the bathers, and discussing the new-comers. Though railways were not dreamt of, many Parisians used to affect the place, and part of the French nature seems to be, to rush into the sea as soon as they see it.
[1] N.B.—From that he became a man wholly truthful, wholly incorruptible, who never lost his "dignity," a man whose honour and integrity from the cradle to the grave was unimpeachable.—I. B.
[2] N.B.—This kind of indulgence should never be allowed by parents or tutors. During our eighteen years in Austria, there were some parents up the Slav district who allowed their two eldest children, boy and girl, six and seven, to see the pigs killed for a treat. They saw everything, to the hanging up of the pigs ready for buying. Next day the mother went down to the Trieste market, father to work, and the children were left in charge of the cottage. When the parents got near the cottage in late afternoon, the two children ran out and said, "We have had such fun, mamma; we have played all day at killing pigs, and we have done baby beautifully, and he squealed at first just like a real pig." The horrified parents rushed in, and found truly that baby was beautifully done, hanging up by the legs, his poor little stomach kept open by a bit of wood just like a real pig, and had been dead for hours.—I. B.
[CHAPTER III.]
THE CHILDREN ARE BROUGHT TO ENGLAND.
Landing in England was dolorous. Grandmamma Baker inflated her nostrils, and, delighted at escaping from those crapauds and their kickshaws, quoted with effusion her favourite Cowper, "England, with all thy faults, I love thee still." The children scoffed. The air of Brighton, full of smoke and blacks, appeared to them unfit for breathing. The cold grey seas made them shudder. In the town everything appeared so small, so prim, so mean, the little one-familied houses contrasting in such a melancholy way with the big buildings of Tours and Paris. We revolted against the coarse and half-cooked food, and, accustomed to the excellent Bordeaux of France, we found port, sherry, and beer like strong medicine; the bread, all crumb and no crust, appeared to be half baked, and milk meant chalk and water. The large joints of meat made us think of Robinson Crusoe, and the vegetables cuite à l'eau, especially the potatoes, which had never heard of "Maître d'hôtel" suggested the roots of primitive man. Moreover, the national temper, fierce and surly, was a curious contrast to the light-hearted French of middle France. A continental lady of those days cautioned her son, who was about to travel, against ridicule in France and the canaille in England. The little children punched one another's heads on the sands, the boys punched one another's heads in the streets, and in those days a stand-up fight between men was not uncommon. Even the women punched their children, and the whole lower-class society seemed to be governed by the fist.
My father had determined to send his boys to Eton to prepare for Oxford and Cambridge. In the mean time some blundering friend had recommended him a preparatory school. This was kept by the Rev. Charles Delafosse, who rejoiced in the title of Chaplain to the Duke of Cumberland, a scion of royalty, who had, apparently, very little to do with the Church. Accordingly, the family went to Richmond, the only excitement of the journey being the rage of the post-boys, when we boys on the box furtively poked their horses with long sticks. After sundry attempts at housing themselves in the tiny doll-rooms in the stuffy village, they at last found a house, so called by courtesy, in "Maids of Honour Row," between the river and the Green, a house with a strip of garden fronting it, which a sparrow could hop across in thirty seconds. Opening upon the same Green, stood that horror of horrors, the school, or the "Establishment," as it would now be called. It consisted of a large block of buildings (detached), lying between the Green and the Old Town, which has long been converted into dwelling-houses. In those days it had a kind of paling round a paddock, forming a long parallelogram, which enclosed some fine old elm trees. One side was occupied by the house, and the other by the school-room. In the upper stories of the former, were the dormitories with their small white beds, giving the idea of the Lilliput Hospital; a kind of outhouse attached to the dwelling was the place where the boys fed at two long tables stretching the whole length of the room. The only decoration of the palings were names cut all over their inner surfaces and rectangular nails at the top, acting as chevaux de frise. The school-room was the usual scene of hacked and well-used benches and ink-stained desks, everything looking as mean and uncomfortable as possible.
This was the kind of Dotheboys Hall, to which, in those days, gentlemen were contented to send their sons, paying a hundred a year, besides "perquisites" (plunder): on the Continent the same treatment would be had for £20.
The Rev. Charles was a bluff and portly man, with dark hair and short whiskers, whose grand aquiline nose took a prodigious deal of snuff, and was not over active with the rod; but he was no more fit to be a schoolmaster than the Grand Cham of Tartary. He was, however, rather a favourite with the boys, and it was shrewdly whispered, that at times he returned from dining abroad half-seas over. His thin-lipped wife took charge of the ménage, and looked severely after the provisions, and swayed with an iron sceptre the maid-servants, who had charge of the smaller boys. The ushers were the usual consequential lot of those days. There was the handsome and dressy usher, a general favourite with the fair; the shabby and mild usher, despised by even the smallest boy; and the unfortunate French usher, whose life was a fair foretaste of Purgatory.
Instead of learning anything at this school, my brother and I lost much of what we knew, especially in French, and the principal acquisitions were, a certain facility of using our fists, and a general development of ruffianism. I was in one perpetual scene of fights; at one time I had thirty-two affairs of honour to settle, the place of meeting being the school-room, with the elder boys sitting in judgment. On the first occasion I received a blow in the eye, which I thought most unfair, and having got my opponent down I proceeded to hammer his head against the ground, using his ears by way of handles. My indignation knew no bounds when I was pulled off by the bystanders, and told to let my enemy stand up again. "Stand up!" I cried, "after all the trouble I've had to get the fellow down." At last the fighting went on to such an extent, that I was beaten as thin as a shotten herring, and the very servant-maids, when washing me on Saturday night, used to say, "Drat the child! what has he been doing? he's all black and blue." Edward fought just as well as I did, but he was younger and more peaceable. Maria says that I was a thin, dark little boy, with small features and large black eyes, and was extremely proud, sensitive, shy, nervous, and of a melancholy, affectionate disposition. Such is the effect of a boys' school after a few months' trial, when the boys learn to despise mother and sisters, and to affect the rough as much as possible, and this is not only in England, but everywhere where the boy first escapes from petticoat government. He does not know what to do to show his manliness. There is no stronger argument in favour of mixed schools, up to a certain age, of boys and girls together.
At the little Richmond theatre we were taken to see Edmund Kean, who lived in a cottage on the Green. He had gentle blood in his veins, grandson (illegitimate) of George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, and that accounted for his Italian, or rather un-John-Bull appearance, and for his fiery power. I saw him in his famous Richard III. rôle, and remember only what old Colley Grattan described, "Looks bloated with brandy, nose red, cheeks blotched, and eyes blood-shot." He was drinking himself to death. His audience appeared not a little afraid of him; perhaps they had heard of the Guernsey scene, where he stood at the footlights and flashed out, "Unmannered dogs! stand ye where I command."
Our parents very unwisely determined to correct all personal vanity in their offspring by always dwelling upon our ugliness. My nose was called cocked; it was a Cross which I had to carry, and was a perpetual plague to me; and I was assured that the only decent feature in my face was my teeth. Maria, on account of her fresh complexion, was called Blousabella; and even Edward, whose features were perfect, and whom Frenchmen used to stop and stare at in the streets, and call him "Le petit Napoleon," was told to nauseousness that "handsome is as handsome does." In later life we were dressed in a marvellous fashion; a piece of yellow nankin would be bought to dress the whole family, like three sticks of barley sugar. Such was the discipline of the day, and nothing could be more ill-judged; it inflicted an amount of torment upon sensitive children which certainly was not intended, but which had the very worst effect.
If we children quarrelled, and turned up our noses at the food in English hotels, what must have been our surprise at the food of an English school? Breakfast at 8 a.m., consisting of very blue milk and water, in chipped and broken-handled mugs of the same colour. The boys were allowed tea from home, but it was a perpetual battle to get a single drink of it. The substantials were a wedge of bread with a glazing of butter. The epicures used to collect the glazing to the end of the slice in order to convert it into a final bonne bouche. The dinner at one o'clock began with stickjaw (pudding) and ended with meat, as at all second-rate schools. The latter was as badly cooked as possible, black out and blue inside, gristly and sinewy. The vegetables were potatoes, which could serve for grapeshot, and the hateful carrot. Supper was a repetition of breakfast, and, at an age when boys were making bone and muscle, they went hungry to bed.
Occasionally the pocket-money and tips were clubbed, and a "room" would go in for a midnight feed of a quartern loaf, ham, polony, and saveloys, with a quantity of beer and wine, which generally led to half a dozen fights. Saturday was a day to be feared on account of its peculiar pie, which contained all the waifs and strays of the week. On the Sunday there was an attempt at plum-pudding of a peculiarly pale and leaden hue, as if it had been unjustly defrauded of its due allowance of plums. And this dull routine lasted throughout the scholastic year. School hours were from seven till nine, and ten to one, and three to five, without other changes, save at the approach of the holidays, when a general burst of singing, locally called "challenging," took place. Very few were the schoolfellows we met in after life. The ragged exceptions were Guildford Onslow, the Claimant's friend. Tuckey Baines, as he was called on account of his exploits on Saturday pie, went into the Bombay army, and was as disagreeable and ill-conditioned as when he was a bully at school. He was locally celebrated for hanging the wrong Mahommad, and for his cure for Sindee litigiousness, by making complainant and defendant flog each other in turn. The only schoolboy who did anything worthy, was Bobby Delafosse (who was appointed to the 26th Regiment, N.I.), who showed immense pluck, and died fighting bravely in the Indian Mutiny. I met him in Bombay shortly before I went off to the North-West Provinces, but my remembrances of the school were so painful, that I could not bear to recognize him. In fact, that part of life, which most boys dwell upon with the greatest pleasure, and concerning which, most autobiographers tell the longest stories—school and college—was ever a nightmare to us. It was like the "Blacking-shop" of Charles Dickens.
Before the year concluded, an attack of measles broke out in the school, several of the boys died, and it was found necessary to disperse the survivors. We were not hard-hearted, but we were delighted to get home. We worked successfully on the fears of Aunt G., which was assisted by my cadaverous appearance, and it was resolved to move us from school, to our infinite joy. My father had also been thoroughly sick of "Maids of Honour Row" and "Richmond Green." He was sighing for shooting and boar-hunting in the French forests, and he felt that he had done quite enough for the education of the boys, which was turning out so badly. He resolved to bring us up abroad, and picked up the necessary assistance for educating us by tutor and governess. Miss Ruxton, a stout red-faced girl, was thoroughly up in the three R's, and was intended to direct Maria's education. Mr. Du Pré, an undergraduate at Exeter College, Oxford, son of the Rector of Berkhampstead, wanted to see life on the Continent, and was not unwilling to see it with a salary. He was an awkward-looking John Bull article, with a narrow forehead, eyes close together, and thick lips, which secured him a perpetual course of caricaturing. He used to hit out hard whenever he found the caricatures, but only added bitterness to them. Before he had been in the family a week, I obliged him with a sketch of his tomb and the following inscription:—
"Stand, passenger! hang down thy head and weep,
A young man from Exeter here doth sleep;
If any one ask who that young man be,
'Tis the Devil's dear friend and companion—Du Pré"—
which was merely an echo of Shakespeare and John à Combe, but it showed a fine sense of independence.
I really caught the measles at school, and was nursed by Grandmamma Baker in Park Street. It was the only infantine malady that I ever had. The hooping-cough only attacked me on my return from Harar, when staying with my friend Dr. Steinhaüser at Aden, in 1853. As soon as I was well enough to travel, the family embarked at the Tower Wharf for Boulogne. We boys scandalized every one on board. We shrieked, we whooped, we danced for joy. We shook our fists at the white cliffs, and loudly hoped we should never see them again. We hurrah'd for France, and hooted for England, "The Land on which the Sun ne'er sets—nor rises," till the sailor who was hoisting the Jack, looked upon us as a pair of little monsters. In our delight at getting away from school and the stuffy little island, we had no idea of the disadvantages which the new kind of life would inflict on our future careers. We were too young to know. A man who brings up his family abroad, and who lives there for years, must expect to lose all the friends who could be useful to him when he wishes to start them in life. The conditions of society in England are so complicated, and so artificial, that those who would make their way in the world, especially in public careers, must be broken to it from their earliest day. The future soldiers and statesmen must be prepared by Eton and Cambridge. The more English they are, even to the cut of their hair, the better. In consequence of being brought up abroad, we never thoroughly understood English society, nor did society understand us. And, lastly, it is a real advantage to belong to some parish. It is a great thing, when you have won a battle, or explored Central Africa, to be welcomed home by some little corner of the Great World, which takes a pride in your exploits, because they reflect honour upon itself. In the contrary condition you are a waif, a stray; you are a blaze of light, without a focus. Nobody outside your own fireside cares.
No man ever gets on in the world, or rises to the head of affairs, unless he is a representative of his nation. Taking the marking characters of the last few years—Palmerston, Thiers, Cavour, and Bismarck—what were they but simply the types of their various nationalities? In point of intellect Cavour was a first-rate man, Thiers second-rate, Palmerston third-rate, whilst Bismarck was strength, Von Moltke brain. Their success in life was solely owing to their representing the failings, as well as the merits of their several nationalities. Thiers, for instance, was the most thoroughbred possible épicier, and yet look at his success. And his death was mourned even in England, and yet he was the bitterest enemy that England ever had. His Chauvinism did more than the Crimean War to abolish the prestige of England. Unhappily for his Chauvinism, it also thoroughly abolished France.
Mr. Du Pré, the tutor, and Miss Ruxton, the governess, had their work cut out for them. They attempted to commence with a strict discipline; for instance, the family passing through Paris lodged at the Hôtel Windsor, and they determined to walk the youngsters out school fashion. The consequence was that when the walk extended to the boulevards, the young ones, on agreement, knowing Paris well, suddenly ran away, and were home long before the unfortunate strangers could find their way, and reported that their unlucky tutor and governess had been run over by an omnibus. There was immense excitement till the supposed victims walked in immensely tired, having wandered over half Paris, not being able to find their way. A scene followed, but the adversaries respected each other more after that day.
The difficulty was now where to colonize. One of the peculiarities of the little English colonies was the unwillingness of their denizens to return to them when once they had left them. My father had been very happy at Tours, and yet he religiously avoided it. He passed through Orleans—a horrid hole, with as many smells as Cologne—and tried to find a suitable country house near it, but in vain; everything seemed to smell of goose and gutter. Then he drifted on to Blois, in those days a kind of home of the British stranger, and there he thought proper to call a halt. At last a house was found on the high ground beyond the city, which, like Tours, lies mainly on the left bank of the river, and where most of the English colonists dwelt. There is no necessity of describing this little bit of England in France, which was very like Tours. When one describes one colony, one describes them all. The notables were Sir Joseph Leeds, Colonel Burnes, and a sister of Sir Stamford Raffles, who lived in the next-door villa, if such a term may be applied to a country house in France in 1831. The only difference from Tours was, there was no celebrated physician, no pack of hounds, and no parson. Consequently service on Sundays had to be read at home by the tutor, and the evening was distinguished by one of Blair's sermons. This was read out by us children, each taking a turn. The discourse was from one of Blair's old three volumes, which appeared to have a soporific effect upon the audience. Soft music was gradually heard proceeding from the nasal organs of father and mother, tutor and governess; and then we children, preserving the same tone of voice, entered into a conversation, and discussed matters, until the time came to a close.
At Blois we were now entering upon our teens; our education was beginning in real earnest. Poor Miss Ruxton soon found her task absolutely impossible, and threw up the service. A schoolroom was instituted, where time was wasted upon Latin and Greek for six or seven hours a day, besides which there was a French master—one of those obsolete little old men, who called themselves Professeurs-ès-lettres, and the great triumph of whose life was that he had read Herodotus in the original. The dancing-master was a large and pompous oldster, of course an ancien militaire, whose kit and whose capers were by contrast peculiarly ridiculous, and who quoted at least once every visit, "Oh, Richard! oh, mon roi!" He taught, besides country dances, square and round, the Minuet de la Cour, the Gavotte de Vestris, and a Danse Chinoise, which consisted mainly in turning up thumbs and toes. The only favourite amongst all those professors was the fencing-master, also an old soldier, who had lost the thumb of his right hand in the wars, which of course made him a gauché in loose fencing. We boys gave ourselves up with ardour to this study, and passed most of our leisure hours in exchanging thrusts. We soon learned not to neglect the mask: I passed my foil down Edward's throat, and nearly destroyed his uvula, which caused me a good deal of sorrow. The amusements consisted chiefly of dancing at evening parties, we boys choosing the tallest girls, especially a very tall Miss Donovan. A little fishing was to be had, my father being a great amateur. There were long daily walks, swimming in summer, and brass cannons, bought in the toy shops, were loaded to bursting.
The swimming was very easily taught; in the present day boys and girls go to school and learn it like dancing. In our case Mr. Du Pré supported us by a hand under the stomach, taught us how to use our arms and legs, and to manage our breath, after which he withdrew his hand and left us to float as we best could.
This life lasted for a year, till all were thoroughly tired of it. Our father and mother were imperceptibly lapsing into the category of professed invalids, like people who have no other business in life, except to be sick. This was a class exceptionally common in the unoccupied little English colonies that studded the country. It was a far robuster institution than the Parisian invalid, whose object in life was to appear maladive et souffrante. The British malade consumed a considerable quantity of butcher's meat, but although he or she always saw death in the pot, they had not the moral courage to refuse what disagreed with them. They tried every kind of drug and nostrum known, and answered every advertisement, whether it agreed with their complaint or not. Their table de nuit was covered with bottles and gallipots. They dressed themselves three or four times a day for the change of climate, and insensibly acquired a horror of dining out, or passing the evening away from home. They had a kind of rivalry with other invalids; nothing offended them more than to tell them that they were in strong health, and that if they had been hard-worked professionals in England, they would have been ill once a year, instead of once a month. Homœopathy was a great boon to them, and so was hydropathy. So was the grape-cure and all the humbug invented by non-professionals, such as hunger-cure and all that nonsense.
Our parents suffered from asthma, an honest and respectable kind of complaint, which if left to itself, allows you, like gout, to last till your eightieth year, but treated systematically, and with the aid of the doctor, is apt to wear you out. Grandmamma Baker, who came over to Blois, compared them in her homely Scotch fashion to two buckets in a well. She was very wroth with my father, when, remembering the days of his youth, he began to hug the idea of returning to Italy and seeing the sun, and the general conclusion of her philippics ("You'll kill your wife, sir") did not change his resolution. She even insinuated that in the olden day there had been a Sicilian young woman who received the Englishman's pay, and so distributed it as to keep off claims. So Grandmamma Baker was sent off to her beloved England, "whose faults she still loved."
The old yellow chariot was brought out of the dusty coach-house once more, and furbished up, and, after farewell dinners and parties all round, the family turned their back on Blois. The journey was long, being broken by sundry attacks of asthma, and the posting and style of travel were full of the usual discomforts. In crossing over the Tarare a drunken postilion nearly threw one of the carriages over the precipice, and in shooting the Pont de St. Esprit the steamer nearly came to grief under one of the arches. We stayed a short time in Lyons, in those days a perfect den of thieves. From Avignon my tutor and I were driven to the Fountain of Vaucluse, the charming blue well in the stony mountain, and the memories of Petrarch and Laura were long remembered. The driver insisted upon a full gallop, and the protests of the unfortunate Englishman, who declared every quarter of an hour that he was the father of a large family, were utterly disregarded.
The first view of Provence was something entirely new, and the escape was hailed from the flat fields and the long poplar avenues of Central France. Everything, even the most squalid villages, seemed to fall into a picture. It was something like a sun that burst upon the rocks. The olive trees laden with purple fruit were a delight after the apples and pears, and the contrast between the brown rock and the blue Mediterranean, was quite a new sensation. At Marseilles we embarked for Leghorn, which was then, in Italy, very much what Lyons was in France. It was the head-quarters of brigands. Indeed it was reported that a society existed, whose members were pledged to stab their fellow-creatures, whenever they could do it safely. And it was brought to light by the remorse of a son, who had killed his father by mistake. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, with his weak benevolence, was averse to shedding blood, and the worst that these wretches expected was to be dressed in the red or the yellow of the Galeotti, and to sweep the streets and to bully the passenger for bakshish. Another unpleasant development was the quantity of vermin,—even the washerwoman's head appeared to be walking off her shoulders. Still there was a touch of Italian art about the place, in the days before politics and polemics had made Italian art, with the sole exception of sculpture, the basest thing on the Continent: the rooms were large, high, and airy, the frescoes on the ceiling were good, and the pictures had not been sold to Englishmen, and replaced by badly coloured daubs, and cheap prints of the illustrated paper type.
After a few days, finding Leghorn utterly unfit to inhabit, my father determined to transfer himself to Pisa. There, after the usual delay, he found a lodging on the wrong side of the Arno—that is to say, the side which does not catch the winter sun—in a huge block of buildings opposite the then highest bridge. Dante's old "Vituperio delle gante" was then the dullest abode known to man, except perhaps his sepulchre. The climate was detestable (Iceland on the non-sunny, Madeira on the sunny side of the river), but the doctors thought it good enough for their patients; consequently it was the hospital of a few sick Britishers upon a large scale. These unfortunates had much better have been left at home instead of being sent to die of discomfort in Tuscany, but there they would have died upon the doctor's hands. The dullness of the place was something preternatural.
The Italians had their own amusements. The principal one was the opera, a perfect den of impurity, where you were choked by the effluvia of pastrane or the brigands' cloaks, which descended from grandfather to grandson. The singing, instrumentation, and acting were equally vile, but the Pisani had not the critical ferocity of the Livornesi, who were used to visit the smallest defect with "Torni in iscena, bestia!" The other form of amusement was the conversazione. Here you entered about six o'clock, and found an enormous room, with a dwarf sofa and an avenue of two lines of chairs projecting from it perpendicularly. You were expected to walk through the latter, which were occupied by the young women, to the former, upon which sat the dowagers, and after the three saluts d'usage and the compliments of the season, you backed out by the way you came in, and then passed the evening leaning over the back of the chair of the fair dame whose cavaliere servente you were supposed to be. Refreshments were an occasional glass of cold water; in luxurious houses there were water ices and sugared wafers. They complain that we English are not happy in society without eating, and I confess that I prefer a good beefsteak to cold water and water ices.
There was no bad feeling between the Italians and English; they simply ignored one another. Nothing could be shadier than the English colony at Pisa. As they had left England, the farther they were the more wretched they became, till they reached the climax at Naples. They had no club, as at Tours, and they met to read their Gagliani at a grocer's shop on the Lung' Arno. They had their parson and doctor and their tea-caddies, but the inhospitable nature of the country—and certainly Italy is the least given to the savage virtue—seemed to have affected the strangers. Equally unknown were the dinner-parties of Tours and the hops of Blois. No one shot and no one fished. A madman used to plunge through the ice on the Lung' Arno in midwinter, but most of them contented themselves with promenading the Quai and basking in its wintry sun till they returned to their stuffy rooms. A good many of them were half-pay officers. Others were Jamaican planters, men who had made their fortunes in trade; the rest were nondescripts whom nobody knew. At times some frightful scandal broke out in consequence of some gentleman who had left his country for his country's good.
The discomforts of Pisa were considerable. The only fireplace in those days was a kind of brazier, put in the middle of the room. The servants were perfect savages, who had to be taught the very elements of service, and often at the end of the third day a great burly peasant would take leave, saying, "Non mi basta l'anima!" My father started a fearful equipage in the shape of a four-wheeled trap, buying for the same a hammer-headed brute of a horse which at once obtained the name of "Dobbin." Dobbin was a perfect demon steed, and caused incalculable misery, as every person was supposed to steal his oats. One of us boys was sent down to superintend his breakfast, dinner, and supper. On journeys it was the same, and we would have been delighted to see Dobbin hanged, drawn, and quartered. We tried riding him in private, but the brute used to plant his forelegs and kick up and down like a rocking-horse. The trap was another subject of intense misery. The wheels were always supposed to be wanting greasing, and as the natives would steal the grease, it was necessary that one of us should always superintend the greasing. There is no greater mistake than that of trying to make boys useful by making them do servant's work.
The work of education went on nimbly, if not merrily. To former masters was added an Italian master, who was at once dubbed "Signor No," on account of the energy of his negation. The French master unfortunately discovered that his three pupils had poetic talents; the consequence was that we were set to write versical descriptions, which we hated worse than Telemachus and the Spectator.
And a new horror appeared in the shape of a violin master. Edward took kindly to the infliction, worked very hard, and became an amateur almost equal to a professional; was offered fair pay as member of an orchestra in Italy, and kept it up after going into the Army, till the calls of the Mess made it such a nuisance that he gave it up; but took to it again later in life con amore. I always hated my fiddle, and after six months it got me into a terrible scrape, and brought the study to an untimely end. Our professor was a thing like Paganini, length without breadth, nerves without flesh, hung on wires, all hair and no brain, except for fiddling. The creature, tortured to madness by a number of false notes, presently addressed his pupil in his grandiloquent Tuscan manner, "Gli altri scolari sono bestie, ma voi siete un Arci-bestia." The "Arci" offended me horribly, and, in a fury of rage, I broke my violin upon my master's head; and then my father made the discovery that his eldest son had no talent for music, and I was not allowed to learn any more.
Amongst the English at Pisa we met with some Irish cousins, whose names had been Conyngham, but they had, for a fortune, very sensibly added "Jones" to it, and who, very foolishly, were ashamed of it ever after. There was a boy, whose face looked as if badly cut out of a half-boiled potato, dotted with freckles so as to resemble a goose's egg. There was a very pretty girl, who afterwards became Mrs. Seaton. The mother was an exceedingly handsome woman of the Spanish type, and it was grand to see her administering correction to "bouldness." They seemed principally to travel in Italy for the purpose of wearing out old clothes, and afterwards delighted in telling how many churches and palaces they had "done" in Rome per diem. The cute Yankee always travels, when he is quite unknown, in his best bib and tucker, reserving his old clothes for his friends who appreciate him. Altogether the C.J.'s were as fair specimens of Northern barbarians invading the South, as have been seen since the days of Brennus.
The summer of '32 was passed at Siena, where a large rambling old house was found inside the walls. The venerable town, whose hospitality was confined to an inscription over the city gate, was perhaps one of the dullest places under heaven. No country in the world shows less hospitality—even Italians amongst themselves—than Italy, and in the case of strangers they have perhaps many reasons to justify their churlishness.
Almost all the English at Siena were fugitives from justice, social or criminal. One man walked off with his friend's wife, another with his purse. There was only one old English lady in the place who was honourable, and that was a Mrs. Russell, who afterwards killed herself with mineral waters. She lived in a pretty little quinta outside the town, where moonlight nights were delightful, and where the nightingales were louder than usual. Beyond this amusement we had little to do, except at times to peep at the gate of Palone, to study very hard, and to hide from the world our suits of nankin. The weary summer drew to a close. The long-surviving chariot was brought out, and then Dobbin, with the "cruelty van," was made ready for the march.
Travelling in vetturino was not without its charm. It much resembled marching in India during the slow old days. It is true you seldom progressed along more than five miles an hour, and uphill at three. Moreover, the harness was perpetually breaking, and at times a horse fell lame; but you saw the country thoroughly, the vetturino knew the name of every house, and you went slowly enough to impress everything upon your memory. The living now was none of the best; food seemed to consist mostly of omelettes and pigeons. The pigeons, it is said, used to desert the dove-cotes every time they saw an English travelling-carriage approaching. And the omelettes showed more hair in them than eggs usually produce. The bread and wine, however, were good, and adulteration was then unknown. The lodging was on a par with the food, and insect powder was not invented or known. Still, taking all in all, it is to be doubted whether we are more comfortable in the Grand Hotel in these days when every hotel is grand, when all mutton is pré salé, when all the beer is bitter, when all the sherry is dry.
It was now resolved to pass the Holy Week at Rome, and the only events of the journey, which went on as usual, were the breaking down of Dobbin's "cruelty van" in a village near Perugia, where the tutor and boys were left behind to look after repairs. We long remembered the peculiar evening which we passed there. The head ostler had informed us that there was an opera, and that he was the primo violino. We went to the big barn, that formed the theatre. A kind of "Passion play" was being performed, with lengthy intervals of music, and all the mysteries of the faith were submitted to the eyes of the faithful. The only disenchanting detail was, that a dove not being procurable, its place was supplied by a turkey-cock, and the awful gabbling of the ill-behaved volatile caused much more merriment than was decorous.
We, who had already examined Voltaire with great interest, were delighted with the old Etruscan city of Perugia, and were allowed a couple of hours' "leave" to visit Pietro di Aretino's tomb, and we loitered by the Lake Thrasimene.
The march was short, and the family took a house on the north side of the Arno, near the Boboli Gardens, in Florence. The City of Flowers has always had a reputation beyond what it deserved. Though too fair to be looked upon except upon holidays, it has discomforts of its own. The cold, especially during the Tramontana blowing from the Apennines, is that of Scotland. The heat during the dog-days, when the stone pavements seem to be fit for baking, reminds one of Cairo during a Khamsin, and the rains are at times as heavy and persistent as in Central Africa. The Italians and the English, even in those days, despite all the efforts of the amiable Grand Duke, did not mix well.
Colonies go on as they begin, and the Anglo-Florentine flock certainly has contained, contains, and ever will contain some very black sheep. They were always being divided into cliques. They were perpetually quarrelling. The parson had a terrible life. One of the churchwardens was sure to be some bilious old Indian, and a common character was to be a half-pay Indian officer who had given laws, he said, to millions, who supported himself by gambling, and induced all his cronies to drink hard, the whispered excuse being, that he had shot a man in a duel somewhere. The old ladies were very scandalous. There were perpetual little troubles, like a rich and aged widow being robbed and deserted by her Italian spouse, and resident old gentlemen, when worsted at cards, used to quarrel and call one another liars. Amongst the number was a certain old Dr. Harding who had a large family. His son was sent into the army, and was dreadfully wounded under Sir Charles Napier in Sind. He lived to be Major-General Francis Pim Harding, C.B., and died in 1875.
Another remarkable family was that of old Colonel de Courcy. He had some charming daughters, and I met his son John when he was in the Turkish Contingent and I was Chief of the Staff of Irregular Cavalry in the Crimea.
Still Florence was always Florence. The climate, when it was fine, was magnificent. The views were grand, and the most charming excursions lay within a few hours' walk or drive. The English were well treated, perhaps too well, by the local Government, and the opportunities of studying Art were first-rate. Those wonderful Loggie and the Pitti Palace contained more high Art than is to be found in all London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna put together, and we soon managed to become walking catalogues. A heavy storm, however, presently broke the serenity of the domestic atmosphere at Siena.
We boys had been allowed to begin regular shooting with an old single-barrelled Manton, a hard-hitter which had been changed from flint to percussion. We practised gunnery in secret every moment we could, and presently gave our tutor a specimen of our proficiency. He had been instituting odious comparisons between Edward's length and that of his gun, and went so far as to say that for sixpence he would allow a shot at fifty yards. On this being accepted with the firm determination of peppering him, he thought it better to substitute his hat, and he got away just in time to see it riddled like a sieve. We then began to despise shooting with small shot.
Our parents made a grand mistake about the shooting excursions, especially the mother, who, frightened lest anything should occur, used to get up quarrels to have an excuse to forbid the shooting parties, as punishment. It was soon found out and resented accordingly.
We hoarded the weekly francs which each received, we borrowed Maria's savings, i.e. the poor girl was never allowed to keep it for a day, and invested in what was then known as a "case of pistols." My father—who, when in Sicily with his regiment, had winged a brother-officer, an Irishman, for saying something unpleasant, had carefully and fondly nursed him, and shot him again as soon as ever he recovered, crippling him for life—saw the turn that matters were taking, and ordered the "saw-handles" to be ignominiously returned to the shop. The shock was severe to the pun d'onor of we two Don Quixotes.
I have a most pleasant remembrance of Maria Garcia, a charming young girl, before she became wife and "divine devil" to the old French merchant Morbihan. Both she and her sister (afterwards Madame Viardot) were going through severe training under the old Tartar of a father Garcia, who was, however, a splendid musician and determined to see his girls succeed. They tell me she had spites and rages and that manner of thing in after life, but I can only remember her as worthy of Alfred de Musset's charming stanza.
After a slow but most interesting drive we reached the Eternal City, and, like all the world, were immensely impressed by the entrance at the Porto del Popolo. The family secured apartments in the Piazza di Spagna, which was then, as it is now, the capital of English Rome. Everything in it was English, the librarian, the grocer, and all the other little shops, and mighty little it has changed during the third of a century. In 1873, when my wife and I stayed there, the only points of difference observed were the presence of Americans and the large gilded advertisements of the photographers. The sleepy atmosphere was the same, and the same was the drowsy old fountain.
At Rome sight-seeing was carried on with peculiar ardour. With "Mrs. Starke" under the arm, for "Murray" and "Baedeker" were not invented in those days, we young ones went from Vatican to the Capitol, from church to palazzo, from ruin to ruin. We managed to get introductions to the best studios, and made acquaintance with all the shops which contained the best collections of coins, of cameos, of model temples, in rosso-antico, and giallo-antico, and of all the treasures of Roman Art, ancient and modern. We passed our days in running about the town, and whenever we found an opportunity, we made excursions into the country, even ascending Mount Soracte. In those days Rome was not what it is now. It was the ghost of the Imperial City, the mere shadow of the Mistress of the world. The great Forum was a level expanse of ground, out of which the half-buried ruins rose. The Coliseum had not changed for a century. The Palatine hill had never dreamt of excavation. The greater part of the space within the old walls, that represents the ancient City, was a waste, what would in Africa be called bush, and it was believed that turning up the ground caused fatal fevers. It had no pretensions to be a Capital. It wanted fortifications; the walls could be breached with six-pounders. The Tiber was not regulated, and periodically flooded the lower town. The Ghetto was a disgrace. Nothing could be fouler than the Trastevere: and the Leonine City, with the exception of St. Peter's and the Vatican, was a piggery.
At Rome there was then very little society. People met when doing the curiosities, and the principal amusements were conversaziones, when the only conspicuous object was some old Cardinal sitting in red, enthroned upon a sofa. Good old Gregory XVI. did not dislike foreigners, and was even intimate with a certain number of heretics, but that could not disperse the sleepy atmosphere of the place, whilst the classes of society were what the satirical French duchesse called, 'une noblesse de Sacrament'—and yet it was the season of the year. Then, as now, the wandering world pressed to Rome to see ceremonies of the Holy Week, to hear the music of the Sistine Chapel, to assist at the annual conversion of a Jew at St. John of Lateran, to walk gaping about at the interior of St. Peter's, and to enjoy the magnificent illuminations, which were spoiled by a high wind, and a flood of rain. Nothing could be more curious than the contrast between the sons of the Holy City and the barbarians from the North, and the far West, when the Pope stood in the balcony delivering his benediction urbi et orbi; the English and Irish Catholics seemed to be overwhelmed with awe whilst the Romans delivered themselves of small jokes, very audible withal, upon the mien and the demeanor of the Vecchierello. Inside the great cathedral the crowd used to be of the most pushing kind, and young priests attempted to scale one's shoulders. Protestant ladies consumed furtive sandwiches, and here and there an aged sightseer was thrown down and severely trampled upon. In fact, there was a perfect opposition between the occasion of the ceremony and the way it was carried out.
It was necessary to leave Rome in time to reach Naples before the hot season began, and return to summer quarters. In those days the crossing of the Pontine Marshes was considered not a little dangerous. Heavy breakfasts were eaten to avoid the possible effect of malaria upon an empty stomach, and the condemned pistols were ostentatiously loaded to terrify the banditti, who were mostly the servants and hangers-on of the foul little inns.
At Terracina we found an Englishman temporarily under arrest. This was Mr. St. John, who had just shot in a duel Count Controfiani. The history of the latter was not a little curious. He was a red-haired Neapolitan, extremely plain in appearance, and awkward in manner, but touchy and sensitive in the extreme. His friends and his acquaintances chose to make a butt of him, little fancying how things were going to end. One day he took leave of them all, saying that he was going to travel for some years. He disguised himself with a wig, and hid in the suburbs, practising pistol-shooting, foil, and broadsword. When satisfied with his own progress, he reappeared suddenly in society, and was received with a shout of ironical welcome, "Ecco il nostro bel Controfiani." He slapped the face of the ringleader, and in the duel which followed cut him almost to pieces. After two or three affairs of the kind, his reputation was thoroughly made, even in a City where duelling was so common as Naples. At last, by some mischance, he met St. John at Rome, and the two became intimate. They used to practise pistol-shooting together, and popular report declares that both concealed their game. At last a quarrel arose about some young person, and Controfiani was compelled to fight at the pleasure of a member of the Royal family of Naples, of whose suite he was. The duel was to be à la barrière, first shot at twenty-five paces, and leave to advance twelve, after standing the fire. The delay was so great that the seconds began to show signs of impatience, when St. John levelled his pistol, and hit his adversary in the flank, above the hip. Controfiani had the courage to plug his wound with the forefinger of his left hand, and had the folly to attempt advancing, mortally wounded as he was. The movement shook him, his hand was unsteady; his bullet whizzed past St. John's head, and he was dead a few hours later.
The family halted a short while at Capua, then a quiet little country town, equally thoughtless of the honours of the past, or the fierce scenes that waited it in the future; many years afterwards my friend Blakeley of the Guns, and I, offered the Government of King Francis, to go out to rifle the cannon, which was to defend them against Garibaldi and his banditti. Unfortunately the offer came too late, It would have been curious had a couple of Englishmen managed, by shooting Garibaldi, to baffle the plans which Lord Pam. had laid with so much astuteness and perseverance.
At Naples a house was found upon the Chiaja, and after trying it for a fortnight, and finding it perfectly satisfactory and agreeing to take it for the next season, the family went over to Sorrento. This, in those days, was one of the most pleasant villegiature in Italy. The three little villages that studded the long tongue of rock and fertile soil, were separated from one another by long tracts of orchard and olive ground, instead of being huddled together, as they are now. They preserved all their rural simplicity, baited buffalo-calves in the main squares, and had songs and sayings in order to enrage one another. The villas scattered about the villages were large rambling old shells of houses, and Aunt G. could not open her eyes sufficiently wide when she saw what an Italian villa really was. The bathing was delightful; break-neck paths led down the rocks to little sheltered bays with the yellowest of sands, and the bluest of waters, and old smugglers' caves, which gave the coolest shelter after long dips in the tepid seas. There was an immense variety of excursion. At the root of the tongue arose the Mountain of St. Angelo, where the snow harvest, lasting during summer, was one perpetual merry-making. There were boating trips to Ischia, to Procida, to romantic Capri, with its blue grotto and purple figs, to decayed Salerno, the splendid ruin, and to the temples of Pæstum, more splendid still. The shooting was excellent during the quail season; tall poles and immense nets formed a chevaux de frise on the hilltops, but the boys went to windwards, and shot the birds before they were trapped in the nets, in the usual ignoble way. In fact, nothing could be more pleasant than Sorrento in its old and uncivilized days. Amongst the amusements at Sorrento, we indulged ourselves with creeping over the Natural Arch, simply because the Italians said, "Ma non è possibile, Signorini." It was a dangerous proceeding, as the crumbling stone was ready at every moment to give way.
Amongst other classical fads, we boys determined to imitate Anacreon and Horace. We crowned ourselves with myrtle and roses, chose the prettiest part of the garden, and caroused upon the best wine we could afford, out of cups, disdaining to use glasses. Our father, aware of this proceeding, gave us three bottles of sherry, upon the principle that the grocer opens to the young shopboy his drawers of figs and raisins. But we easily guessed the meaning of the kind present, and contented ourselves with drinking each half a bottle a day, as long as it lasted, and then asked for more, to the great disgust of the donor. We diligently practised pistol-shooting, and delighted in cock-fighting, at which the tutor duly attended. Of course the birds fought without steel, but it was a fine game-breed, probably introduced of old by the Spaniards. It not a little resembles the Derby game-cock, which has spread itself half over South America.
There was naturally little variety in amusements. The few English families lived in scattered villas. Old Mrs. Starke, Queen of Sorrento, as she loved to be called, and the authoress of the guide book, was the local "lion," and she was sketched and caricatured in every possible way in her old Meg Merrilies' cloak. Game to the last, she died on the road travelling. An Englishman, named Sparkes, threw himself into one of the jagged volcanic ravines that seam the tongue of Sorrento; but there is hardly a place in Italy, high or low, where some Englishman has not suicided himself. A painter, a Mr. Inskip, brought over an introduction, and was very tipsy before dinner was half over. The Marsala wine supplied by Iggulden & Co. would have floored Polyphemus. The want of excitement out of doors, produced a correspondent increase of it inside. We were getting too old to be manageable, and Mr. Du Pré taking high grounds on one occasion, very nearly received a good thrashing. My father being a man of active mind, and having nothing in the world to do, began to be unpleasantly chemical; he bought Parke's "Catechism;" filled the house with abominations of all kinds, made a hideous substance that he called soap, and prepared a quantity of filth that he called citric acid, for which he spoiled thousands of lemons. When his fit passed over it was succeeded by one of chess, and the whole family were bitten by it. Every spare hour, especially in the evening, was given to check and checkmating, and I soon learned to play one, and then two games, with my eyes blindfolded. I had the sense, however, to give it up completely, for my days were full of Philidor, and my dreams were of gambits all night.