103. With Cameron at Venice, August 1881.
Burton had for several years been acquainted with the African traveller V. Lovett Cameron,[FN#338] and in August 1881 they met accidentally at Venice. A geographical conference was being held in the city and representatives from all nations were assembled; but, naturally, the first geographer of the day, Captain Burton, was not invited either to speak or even to be present. On the morning of the conference, Burton, Mrs. Burton and Cameron gave themselves the treat of going over to the Lido for bathing and breakfast; and being in puckish mood, the two men, notwithstanding the great crowd of pleasure seekers, took off their shoes and stockings, turned up their trousers, and made sand castles. “Look, nurse,” bawled Burton to his wife, “see what Cammy and I have done!” “If you please, nursey,” whined Cameron, “Dick’s snatched away my spade.” At that moment Lord Aberdeen, President of the Royal Geographical Society, and a party of grave antiquaries and geographers, mostly run to nose, spectacles, and forehead, arrived on the scene; with the result of infinite laughter, in which Burton and Cameron joined heartily; and henceforward Mrs. Burton answered to no name but “Nursey.” Burton, however, was justly indignant on account of his not having been invited to the conference, and his revenge took the shape of a pungent squib which he wrote on his card and left in the Congress Room. Next day, while Burton and Cameron were strolling in front of St. Mark’s, a Portuguese gentleman came up and saluted them. To Burton’s delight it was his old friend Da Cunha, the Camoens enthusiast; and then ensued a long argument, conducted in Portuguese, concerning Burton’s rendering of one of Camoens’ sonnets, Burton in the end convincing his friend of its correctness. Having parted from Da Cunha, they ran against an Egyptian officer who had just visited Mecca and brought back a series of photographs. The conversation this time was conducted in Arabic, and Burton explained to the Egyptian the meaning of much of the ritual of the pilgrimage. “As a cicerone,” says Cameron, “Burton was invaluable. His inexhaustible stock of historical and legendary lore furnished him with something to relate about even the meanest and commonest buildings.”[FN#339] There were trips about the green canals in a long black gondola on the day and night of the regatta, when the Grand Canal and St. Mark’s were illuminated, all of which Burton enjoyed thoroughly, for round him had gathered the elite of Venice, and his brilliant personality, as usual, dazzled and dominated all who listened to him.
104. John Payne, November 1881.
We now come to that absorbing period of Burton’s life which is connected principally with The Arabian Nights. Amazing as the statement may seem, we feel ourselves compelled to say at once, though regretfully, that Burton’s own account of the history of the translation, given in his Translator’s Foreword to the Arabian Nights, and Lady Burton’s account, given in her life of her husband, do not tally with the facts as revealed in his letters. In matters relating to his own history Burton often spoke with amazing recklessness,[FN#340] and perhaps he considered he was justified in stating that his translation of The Arabian Nights was well advanced by November 1881, seeing that it had for thirty years intermittently occupied his thoughts. As regards Lady Burton, no doubt, of some of the facts presently to be given, she was unaware. But she was one who easily deceived herself. Whatever she wished, she was apt to believe. The actual facts compiled from existing documentary evidence–including Burton’s own letters–will now be revealed for the first time; and it will be found, as is generally the case, that the unembroidered truth is more interesting than the romance. The story is strangely paralleled by that of the writing of The Kasidah; or in other words it recalls traits that were eminently characteristic of Burton. As early as 1854, as we have seen, Burton and Steinhauser had planned a translation of The Arabian Nights, Steinhauser was to furnish the prose, Burton the poetry. They corresponded on the subject, but made only trifling progress. Steinhauser died in 1866, his manuscripts were scattered, and Burton never heard of them again. Absolutely nothing more was done, for Burton was occupied with other matters–travelling all over the world and writing piles of voluminous books on other subjects. Still, he had hoards of Eastern manuscripts, and notes of his own on Eastern manners and customs, which had for years been accumulating and an even greater mass of curious information had been stored in his brain. Again and again he had promised himself to proceed, but something every time hindered.
In November 1881, Burton, who was then at Trieste, noticed a paragraph in The Athenaeum[FN#341] to the effect that Mr. John Payne, the well-known author of The Masque of Shadows and of a famous rendering of The Poems of Francois Villon, was about to issue a Translation of The Book of the Thousand Nights and one Nights. Burton, who was an enthusiastic admirer of the Villon and who, moreover, had not relinquished his own scheme, though it had lain so long quiescent, wrote at once to The Athenaeum a letter which appeared on 26th November 1881. He said: “Many years ago, in collaboration with my old and lamented friend, Dr. F. Steinhauser, of the Bombay Army, I began to translate the whole[FN#342] of The Thousand Nights and a Night. The book, mutilated in Europe to a collection of fairy tales, and miscalled the Arabian Nights, is unique as a study of anthropology. It is a marvellous picture of Oriental life; its shiftings are those of the kaleidoscope. Its alternation of pathos and bathos–of the boldest poetry (the diction of Job) with the baldest prose (the Egyptian of to-day) and finally, its contrast of the highest and purest morality with the orgies of Apuleius and Petronius Arbiter, take away the reader’s breath. I determined to render every word with the literalism of Urquhart’s Rabelais, and to save the publisher trouble by printing my translation at Brussels.
“Not non omnia possumus. Although a host of friends has been eager to subscribe, my work is still unfinished, nor could it be finished without a year’s hard labour. I rejoice, therefore, to see that Mr. John Payne, under the Villon Society, has addressed himself to a realistic translation without ‘abridgments or suppressions.’ I have only to wish him success, and to express a hope that he is resolved verbum reddere verbo, without deference to any prejudice which would prevent his being perfectly truthful to the original. I want to see that the book has fair play; and if it is not treated as it deserves, I shall still have to print my own version.[FN#343] ‘Villon,’ however, makes me hope for the best.”
In this letter Burton oddly enough speaks of his own work as “still unfinished.” This was quite true, seeing that it was not even begun, unless two or three pages which he once showed to Mr. Watts-Dunton,[FN#344] and the pigeon-holing of notes be regarded as a commencement. Still, the announcement of Mr. Payne’s edition– the first volume of which was actually in the press–must have caused him a pang; and the sincere good wishes for his rival’s success testify to the nobility, unselfishness and magnanimity of his character.
Mr. Payne, supposing from his letter that Burton had made considerable progress with his translation, wrote on November 28th to Burton, and, using the words Tantus labor non sit cassus, suggested collaboration. Thus commenced one of the most interesting friendships in the annals of literature. Before relating the story, however, it will be helpful to set down some particulars of the career of Mr. Payne. John Payne was born in 1842 of a Devonshire family, descended from that breezy old sea-dog, Sir John Hawkins. Mr. Payne, indeed, resembles Hawkins in appearance. He is an Elizabethan transferred bodily into the 19th and 20th centuries, his ruff lost in transit. Yet he not infrequently has a ruff even– a live one, for it is no uncommon event to see his favourite Angora leap on to his shoulders and coil himself half round his master’s neck, looking not unlike a lady’s boa–and its name, Parthenopaeus, is long enough even for that. For years Mr. Payne followed the law, and with success, but his heart was with the Muses and the odorous East. From a boy he had loved and studied the old English, Scotch and Welsh writers, with the result that all his productions have a mediaeval aroma. The Faerie Queene, Chaucer and his successors–the Scottish poets of the 15th and 16th Centuries, The Morte d’Arthur, the authorised version of the Bible and North’s Plutarch have always lain at his elbow. Then, too, with Dante, Shakespeare and Heine’s poems he is supersaturated; but the authorised version of the Bible has had more influence on him than any other book, and he has so loved and studied it from boyhood that he had assimilated its processes and learned the secrets of the interior mechanism of its style. It is not surprising that his first publication should have been a book of poetry. The merits of The Masque of Shadows and other Poems were acknowledged on all sides. It was seen that the art of ballad writing–which Goethe calls the most difficult of arts–was not, as some averred, a forgotten one. The Masque of Shadows itself is melodious and vivid from the first line to the end, but the captain jewel is the necromantic and thrilling Rime of Redemption–the story of a woman who erred and of a man who prayed and wrestled with God in prayer for her, and ultimately wrung her salvation by self-sacrifice from Divine Justice. Here and there are passages that we could have wished modified, but surely such a terrific fantasy was never before penned! It is as harrowing as The Ancient Mariner, and appeals to one more forcibly than Coleridge’s “Rime,” because it seems actual truth. Other volumes, containing impassioned ballads, lyrics, narrative poems and sonnets, came from Mr. Payne’s pen. His poems have the rush and bound of a Scotch waterfall. This is explained by the fact that they are written in moments of physical and mental exaltation. Only a mind in a quasi-delirious state, to be likened to that of the pythoness on the tripod, could have evolved the Rime of Redemption[FN#345] or Thorgerda[FN#346]. No subject comes amiss to him. His chemic power turns everything to gold. “He sees everything,” as Mr. Watts-Dunton once said to the writer–“through the gauze of poetry.” His love for beautiful words and phrases leads him to express his thoughts in the choicest language. He puts his costliest wine in myrrhine vases; he builds his temple with the lordliest cedars. Mr. Payne does not write for the multitude, but few poets of the day have a more devoted band of admirers. Some readers will express a preference for The Building of the Dream,[FN#347] others for Lautrec[FN#348] or Salvestra[FN#349], and others for the dazzling and mellifluous Prelude to Hafiz. Mr. A. C. Swinburne eulogised the “exquisite and clear cut Intaglios.”[FN#350] D. G. Rossetti revelled in the Sonnets; Theodore de Banville, “roi des rimes,” in the Songs of Life and Death, whose beauties blend like the tints in jewels.[FN#351]
Mr. Payne first took up the work of a translator in 1878, his earliest achievement in the new province being his admirable rendering of Villon, in which he gives the music of the thief poet, and all his humour, and this reminds us that Mr. Payne, unlike most poets, is a skilled musician. Of his life, indeed, music, in its most advanced and audacious manifestations had always been as much an essential a part as literature, hence the wonderful melodic effects of the more remarkable of his poems. Already an excellent Arabic scholar, he had as early as 1875 resolved upon a translation of The Arabian Nights, and he commenced the task in earnest on 5th February 1877. He worked with exhausting sedulity and expended upon it all the gifts in his power, with the result that his work has taken its places as a classic. The price was nine guineas. Imagining that the demand for so expensive a work would not be large, Mr. Payne, unfortunately, limited himself to the publication of only 500 copies. The demand exceeded 2,000, so 1,500 persons were disappointed.
It was at this moment that Mr. Payne became acquainted with Burton. Mr. Payne admired Burton as a traveller, an explorer, and a linguist, and recognised the fact that no man had a more intimate knowledge of the manners and customs of the East; and Burton on his part paid high tribute to Mr. Payne’s gifts as a translator and a poet.[FN#352]
105. To the Gold Coast, 25th November 1881-20th May 1882.
When Mr. Payne’s letter reached Trieste, Burton had just started off, with Commander Verney Lovett Cameron, on an expedition to the Gold Coast. In his Fernando Po period he had, as we have seen, been deeply interested in the gold digging and gold washing industries,[FN#353] had himself, indeed, to use his own words, “discovered several gold mines on that coast.” For years his mind had turned wistfully towards those regions, and at last, early in 1881, he was able to enter into an arrangement with a private speculator concerning the supposed mines. He and Cameron were to have all their expenses paid, and certain shares upon the formulation of the company. The travellers left Trieste on November 18th, being accompanied as far as Fiume by Mrs. Burton and Lisa, who on the 25th returned to Trieste; and on December 17th they reached Lisbon, whither Mr. Payne’s letter followed them. Burton, who replied cordially, said “In April, at the latest, I hope to have the pleasure of shaking hands with you in London, and then we will talk over the 1,000 Nights and a Night. At present it is useless to say anything more than this–I shall be most happy to collaborate with you. …. Do you know the Rev. G. Percy Badger (of the Dictionary)? If not, you should make his acquaintance, as he is familiar with the Persian and to a certain extent with the Egyptian terms of the Nights. He is very obliging and ready to assist Arabists[FN#354] ….. I am an immense admirer of your Villon.”
Writing to Burton early in the year Payne observed that as his first volume was in type, apparently it should at once go to press, but that he would be pleased to submit subsequent volumes to Burton. Terms were also suggested.
Burton’s reply, addressed Axim, Gold Coast, and received by Mr. Payne, 20th March, 1882, runs as follows: “I received your welcome letter by the steamer of yesterday, and to-morrow morning my companion Cameron and I again proceed to the ‘bush.’ Of course you must go to press at once. I deeply regret it, but on arriving in England my time will be so completely taken up by the Gold Coast that I shall not have a moment’s leisure. It would be a useless expense to keep up the type. Your terms about the royalty,” he said, “are more than liberal. I cannot accept them, however, except for value received, and it remains to be seen what time is at my disposal. I am working out a scheme for Chinese immigration to the West African coast, and this may take me next winter to China. I can only say that I shall be most happy to render you any assistance in my power; at the same time I must warn you that I am a rolling stone. If I cannot find time you must apply in the matter of the introductory essay to the Rev. Percy Badger, Professor Robertson Smith (Glasgow) and Professor Palmer (Trinity, Cambridge). I have booked your private address and have now only to reciprocate your good wishes.”
On April 18th Mrs. Burton and Lisa set out for England in order to rejoin Burton–Lisa, as usual, without any headgear–a condition of affairs which in every church they entered caused friction with the officials. When this began Mrs. Burton would explain the position; and the officials, when they came to find that nothing they could say or do make the slightest difference to Lisa, invariably expressed themselves satisfied with the explanation.
Burton and Cameron reached Liverpool on May 20th, and were able to report both “that there was plenty of gold, and that the mines could easily be worked.” The expedition, however, was unproductive of all anticipated results and no profit accrued to Burton. Indeed it was Iceland and Midian over again. “I ought,” he says in one of his letters to Payne, “to go down to history as the man who rediscovered one Gold Country and rehabilitated a second, and yet lost heavily by the discoveries.”[FN#355]
Chapter XXIII
20th May 1882-July 1883
The Meeting of Burton and Payne
Bibliography
66. Lord Beaconsfield.
67. To the Gold Coast for Gold. 2 vols. 1883. 68. Stone Implements from the Gold Coast. Burton and Cameron.
106. Mrs. Grundy begins to roar. May 1882.
In May 1882, Burton called on Mr. Payne, and the matter of The Arabian Nights was fully discussed. It then transpired that Burton’s project was still entirely in nubibus. He told Mr. Payne that he had no manuscript of any kind beyond “a sheet or two of notes,”[FN#356] and it was afterwards gathered from his words that these notes were a mere syllabus of the contents of the Boulac edition of the Nights–the only one of the four printed texts (Calcutta, Macnaghten, Boulac and Breslau) used and combined by Mr. Payne with which Burton was then acquainted.[FN#357] Mr. Payne’s first volume was completely in type and had for some weeks been held over for Burton’s return to England. Of the remaining volumes three were ready for press, and the rest only awaited fair copying. Burton’s thoughts, however, were then completely occupied with the Gold Coast, consequently the whole project of collaboration fell through. Mr. Payne’s first volume duly appeared; and as the result of further conversations it was arranged that Burton should read Mr. Payne’s subsequent proofs, though he declined to accept any remuneration unless it should turn out that his assistance was necessary. In June, Mr. Payne submitted the first proofs of Vol. ii. to Burton. Meantime the literalism of Mr. Payne’s translation had created extraordinary stir, and Burton wrote thus forcefully on the matter (June 3rd): “Please send me a lot of advertisements.[FN#358] I can place a multitude of copies. Mrs. Grundy is beginning to roar; already I hear the voice of her. And I know her to be an arrant w—- and tell her so, and don’t care a —– for her.”
The event at Trieste that summer was the opening of a Grand International Exhibition–the hobby of the Governor of the town– Baron de Pretis, and Burton thus refers to it in a letter written to Mr. Payne, 5th August (1882). “We arrived here just in time for the opening of the Exhibition, August 1st. Everything went off well, but next evening an Orsini shell was thrown which killed one and wounded five, including my friend Dr. Dorn, Editor of the Triester Zeitung. The object, of course, was to injure the Exhibition, and the effect will be ruinous. I expect more to come and dare not leave my post. So while my wife goes to Marienbad, I must content myself with the Baths at Monfalcone,[FN#359] distant only one hour by rail” In the next letter (August 14th) Burton refers to a proposed special quarto (large paper) edition of Mr. Payne’s Nights, the scheme for which, however, fell through. “I am delighted with the idea,” he says, “for though not a bibliophile in practice (£ s. d. preventing) I am entirely in theory.” There is also an amusing reference to a clergyman who after giving his name for a copy withdrew it. Says Burton, “If the Rev. A. miss this opportunity of grace he can blame only himself. It is very sad but not to be helped. … And now good luck to the venture.” Later he observes, “The fair sex appears wild to get at the Nights.[FN#360] I have received notes from two upon the nice subject, with no end of complaints about stern parients, brothers and brothers-in-law.”
In September Burton asks for the loan of Payne’s copy of the Calcutta Edition (Macnaghten) and enquires after Vol. i. He says “What news of Vol. i.? I am very anxious to see it, and so are many female correspondents. I look forward with great pleasure to the work.”
It was now understood that an attack was to be made on Payne’s volume in the press. Says Burton, September 29th (1882). “Perhaps it will be best to let ——-[FN#361] sing his song. ——– has no end of enemies, and I can stir up a small wasp’s nest without once appearing in the matter. The best answer will be showing up a few of Lane’s mistakes, but this must be done with the greatest care, so that no hole can be picked in the critique.[FN#362] I enclose three sonnets, a specimen of my next volume of Camoens, and should much like any suggestions from you. They are line for line and mostly word for word. But that is nothing; the question is, are they readable English? They’ll be printed at my own expense, so they will ruin nobody. Switzerland has set you up and don’t let the solicitor’s office pull you down.”
On October 2nd he says: “Glad to hear of a new edition of Lane: it will draw attention to the subject. I must see what can be done with reviewers. Saturday and I are at drawn daggers, and ——– of —— is such a stiff young she-prig that I hardly know what to do about him. However, I shall begin work at once by writing and collecting the vulnerable points of the clique. —– is a very much hated man, and there will be no difficulty.” On the 8th, in reference to the opposing “clique,” Burton writes: “In my own case I should encourage a row with this bete noire; but I can readily understand your having reasons for wishing to keep it quiet.” Naturally, considering the tactics that were being employed against them, the Villon Society, which published Mr. Payne’s works, had no wish to draw the attention of the authorities to the moral question. Indeed, of the possible action of the authorities, as instigated by the clique, the Society stood in some fear.
Burton goes on: “I shall write to-day to T—– to know how —- is best hit. T—– hates me–so do most people. Meanwhile, you must (either yourself or by proxy) get a list of Lane’s laches. I regret to say my copy of his Modern Egyptians has been lost or stolen, and with it are gone the lists of his errata I had drawn up many years ago. Of course I don’t know Arabic, but who does? One may know a part of it, a corner of the field, but all! Bah! Many thanks for the notes on the three sonnets [Camoens]. Most hearty thanks for the trouble you have taken. The remarks are those of a scholar and a translator.”
Later, Burton sent Payne other Camoens sonnets to look over. Writing on 29th October 1882, he says, “Many thanks for the sonnet. Your version is right good, but it is yourself, not me. In such a matter each man expresses his own individuality. I shall follow your advice about the quatrains and tercets. No. 19 is one of the darkest on account of its extreme simplicity. I shall trouble you again.”
The first proofs (pp. 1-144) of Vol. ii. were read by Burton in October 1882, and returned by him October 21st. In his letter to Mr. Payne of that date he says, “It will only be prudent to prepare for an attack. I am perfectly ready to justify a complete translation of the book. And if I am obliged to say what I think about Lane’s Edition there will be hard hitting. Of course I wish to leave his bones in peace, but — may make that impossible. Curious to see three editions of the 1,000 Nights advertised at the same time, not to speak of the bastard.[FN#363] I return you nine sheets [of proofs] by parcels post registered. You have done your work very well, and my part is confined to a very small amount of scribble which you will rub out at discretion.”
Subsequently Burton observed that Mr. Payne required no assistance of any kind; and therefore he re-refused to accept remuneration for reading the proofs. Naturally, they differed, as Arabists all do, upon certain points, but on all subjects save two Burton allowed that Mr. Payne’s opinion was as good as his own.
The first concerned the jingles in the prose portions of the Nights, such as “The trees are growing and the waters flowing and Allah all good bestowing.” Burton wanted them to be preserved, but to this Mr. Payne could not consent, and he gives the reasons in his Terminal Essay. The second exception was the treatment of the passages referring to a particular subject; and this indicates to us clearly the difference in the ideas and aims of the two men. Of artistry, of what FitzGerald calls “sinking and reducing,” Burton had no notion. “If anything is in any redaction of the original, in it should go,” he said. “Never mind how shocking it may be to modern and western minds. If I sin, I sin in good company–in the company of the authors of the Authorised Version of the Bible, who did not hesitate to render literatim certain passages which persons aiming simply at artistic effect would certainly have omitted.”
Payne on the other hand was inclined to minimise these passages as much as possible. Though determined that his translation should be a complete one, yet he entirely omitted coarsenesses whenever he could find excuse to do so–that is to say, when they did not appear in all the texts. If no such excuse existed he clothed the idea in skilful language.[FN#364] Nothing is omitted; but it is of course within the resources of literary art to say anything without real offence. Burton, who had no aptitude for the task; who, moreover, had other aims, constantly disagreed with Payne upon this point.
Thus, writing 12th May 1883, he says: “You are drawing it very mild. Has there been any unpleasantness about plain speaking? Poor Abu Nuwas[FN#365] is (as it were) castrated. I should say ‘Be bold or audace,’ &c., only you know better than I do how far you can go and cannot go. I should simply translate every word.”
“What I meant by literalism,” he says, 1st October 1883, “is literally translating each noun (in the long lists which so often occur) in its turn, so that the student can use the translation.”
This formed no part of Mr. Payne’s scheme, in fact was directly opposed to the spirit of his work, which was to make the translation, while quite faithful to the original, a monument of noble English prose and verse.
“I hold the Nights,” continues Burton, the best of class books, and when a man knows it, he can get on with Arabs everywhere. He thus comments on Payne’s Vol. iv., some of the tales of which, translate them as you will, cannot be other than shocking. “Unfortunately it is these offences (which come so naturally in Greece and Persia, and which belong strictly to their fervid age) that give the book much of its ethnological value. I don’t know if I ever mentioned to you a paper (unpublished) of mine showing the geographical limits of the evil.[FN#366] I shall publish it some day and surprise the world.[FN#367] I don’t live in England, and I don’t care an asterisk for Public Opinion.[FN#368] I would rather tread on Mrs. Grundy’s pet corn than not, she may howl on her *** *** to her heart’s content.” On August 24th (1883) Burton says, “Please keep up in Vol. v. this literality in which you began. My test is that every Arab word should have its equivalent English. …Pity we can’t manage to end every volume with a tidbit! Would it be dishonest to transfer a tale from one night or nights to another or others? I fancy not, as this is done in various editions. A glorious ending for Vol. iv. Would have been The Three Wishes or the Night of Power[FN#369] and The Cabinet with Five Shelves.”[FN#370]
107. The Search for Palmer, October 1882.
Burton was now to make what proved to be his last expedition. All the year Egypt had been ablaze with the rebellion of Arabi Pasha. Alexandria was bombarded by the English on July 11th, Arabi suffered defeat at Tell-el-Kebir three months later. On the commencement of the rebellion the British Government sent out Burton’s old friend Professor Palmer to the Sinaitic peninsula with a view to winning the tribes in that part of the British side, and so preventing the destruction of the Suez Canal. The expedition was atrociously planned, and the fatal mistake was also made of providing it with £3,000 in gold. Palmer landed at Jaffa at the end of June, and then set out via Gaza across the “Short Desert,” for Suez, where he was joined by Captain Gill and Lieutenant Charrington. In fancy one hears him as he enters on his perilous journey asking himself that question, which was so absurdly frequent in his lips, “I wonder what will happen?”
It is customary for travellers, before entering the Arabian wastes, to hire a Ghafir, that is, a guide and protector. Palmer, instead of securing a powerful chief, as the case required, selected a man of small account named Matr Nassar, and this petty shaykh and his nephew were the expedition’s only defence.
The doomed party left Suez on August 8th. On the 10th at midnight they were attacked by the Bedawin. “Palmer expostulated with his assassins; but all his sympathetic facility, his appeals to Arab honour and superstition, his threats, his denunciations, and the gift of eloquence which had so often prevailed with the wild men, were unheeded.” As vainly, Matr Nassar[FN#371] covered his proteges with his aba[FN#372] thus making them part of his own family. On the evening of August 11th the captives were led to the high bank of the Wady Sudr, where it received another and smaller fiumara yet unnamed, and bidden to prepare for death. Boldly facing his enemies, Palmer cursed them[FN#373] in Biblical language, and in the name of the Lord. But while the words were in his mouth, a bullet struck him and he fell. His companions also fell in cold blood, and the bodies of all three were thrown down the height[FN#374]– a piteous denouement–and one that has features in common with the tragic death scene of another heroic character of this drama– General Gordon.
The English Government still believed and hoped that Palmer has escaped; and on October 17th it sent a telegram to Burton bidding him go and assist in the search for his old friend.
Like the war horse in the Bible, the veteran traveller shouted “Aha!” and he shot across the Mediterranean like a projectile from a cannon. But he had no sooner reached Suez than he heard–his usual luck–that Sir Charles Warren, with 200 picked men, was scouring the peninsula, and that consequently his own services would not be required. In six weeks he was back again at Trieste and so ended Viator’s[FN#375] last expedition. The remains of Palmer and his two companions were discovered by Sir Charles and sent to England to be interred in St. Paul’s Cathedral. To Palmer’s merits as a man Burton paid glowing tributes; and he praised, too, Palmer’s works, especially The Life of Harun Al Raschid and the translations of Hafiz,[FN#376] Zoheir and the Koran. Of the last Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole says finely: It “has the true desert ring in it; .. the translator has carried us among the Bedawin tents, and breathed into us the strong air of the desert, till we fancy we can hear the rich voice of the Blessed Prophet himself as he spoke to the pilgrims on Akabah.”
In his letter to Payne of 23rd December 1882, Burton adumbrates a visit eastward. “After January,” he says, “I shall run to the Greek Islands, and pick up my forgotten modern Greek.” He was unable, however, to carry out his plans in their entirety. On January 15th he thanks Payne for the loan of the “Uncastrated Villon,”[FN#377] and the Calcutta and Breslau editions of the Nights, and says “Your two vols. of Breslau and last proofs reached me yesterday. I had written to old Quaritch for a loan of the Breslau edition. He very sensibly replied by ignoring the loan and sending me a list of his prices. So then the thing dropped. What is the use of paying £3 odd for a work that would be perfectly useless to me. … But he waxes cannier every year.”
Chapter XXIV
July 1883-November 1883
The Palazzone
108. Anecdotes of Burton.
In 1883 the Burtons removed from their eyrie near the Railway Station and took up their abode in a palazzone[FN#378]–“the Palazzo Gosleth”–situated in a large garden, on the wooded promontory that divides the city from the Bay of Muggia. It was one of the best houses in Trieste, and boasted an entrance so wide that one could have driven a carriage into the hall, a polished marble staircase and twenty large rooms commanding extensive and delightful views. The garden, however, was the principal amenity. Here, in fez and dressing-gown, Burton used to sit and write for hours with nothing to disturb him except the song of birds and the rustle of leaves. In the Palazzo Gosleth he spent the last eight years of his life, and wrote most of his later works.
Perhaps this is the best place to introduce a sheaf of miscellaneous unpublished anecdotes which have been drawn together from various sources. We are uncertain as to their dates, but all are authentic. To the ladies Burton was generally charming, but sometimes he behaved execrably. Once when he was returning alone to Trieste, a lady past her prime, being destined for the same place, asked whether she might accompany him. Burton, who hated taking care of anyone, frowned and shook his head. “There can be no scandal, Captain Burton,” pleaded the lady, “because I am old.”
“Madame,” replied Burton, “while fully appreciating your kindness, I must decline. Had you been young and good-looking I would have considered the matter.”
109. Burton and Mrs. Disraeli.
But Burton could be agreeable enough even to plain ladies when he wished. In one of his books or pamphlets he had said “There is no difference except civilization between a very old woman and an ape.” Some time after its publication, when he was the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Disraeli, Mrs. Disraeli, herself both elderly and very plain, laid a plan to disconcert him. She seated herself close to a low mirror, in the hopes that Burton would presently join her. He soon fell into the trap and was observed a few minutes later leaning over her and “doing the amiable.”
“Captain Burton,” said Mrs. Disraeli, with affected annoyance, and pointing to her reflection, “There must be an ape in the glass. Do you not see it?”
Burton instantly recalled the remark in his book, but without exhibiting the least disconcertion, he replied, “Yaas, yaas, Madam, quite plainly; I see myself.”
It was altogether impossible for Burton to do anything or to be in anything without causing a commotion of some kind. Generally it was his own fault, but sometimes the Fates were to blame. Few scenes at that period could have been more disgraceful than those at the official receptions held in London by the Prime Minister. Far too many persons were invited and numbers behaved more like untutored Zulus than civilised human beings.
“Now darling,” said Mrs. Burton to her husband, just before one of these functions, “You are to be amiable, remember, and not lose your temper.” Burton readily promised compliance, but that day, unfortunately, the crush on the staircase was particular disgraceful. Apparently Burton, his wife on arm, was pushed on to the train of a lady in front of him, but whatever he was doing the crush had rendered him helpless.
“Oh dear!” cried the lady, “this horrid man is choking me.”
“It’s that blackguard of a Burton!” followed the lady’s husband.
Burton’s eyes flashed and his lips went livid, “I’ll have you out for this,” he cried, “and if you won’t fight I’ll thrash you like a dog.”
“That’s how you keep your promise,” said Mrs. Burton to him, when they got home. “You don’t get half a dozen steps up the staircase before you have a row with someone.” Then he burst out with his “pebble on ice” laughter.
For Burton to overhear remarks uncomplimentary to himself was no uncommon occurrence, but he rarely troubled to notice them. Now and again, however, as the previous anecdote shows, he broke his rule. Once at a public gathering a lady said, loudly, to a companion, “There is that infamous Captain Burton, I should like to know that he was down with some lingering and incurable illness.”
Burton turned round, and fixing his eyes upon her, said with gravity: “Madame, I have never in all my life done anything so wicked as to express so shocking a wish as that.”
The next anecdote shows how dangerous Burton could be to those who offended him. When the Sultan of Zanzibar was paying a visit to England, Burton and the Rev. Percy Badger were singled out to act as interpreters. But Burton had quarrelled with Badger about something or other; so when they approached the Sultan, Burton began addressing him, not in Arabic, but in the Zanzibar patois. The Sultan, after some conversation, turned to Badger, who, poor man, not being conversant with the patois, could only stand still in the dunce’s cap which Burton, as it were, had clapped on him and look extremely foolish; while the bystanders nodded to each other and said, “Look at that fellow. He can’t say two words. He’s a fraud.” Burton revelled in Badger’s discomfiture; but a little later the two men were on good terms again; and when Badger died he was, of course, Burton’s “late lamented friend.”
Another of Burton’s aversions was “any old woman made up to look very young.” “Good gracious,” he said, one day to a painted lady of that category. “You haven’t changed since I saw you forty years ago. You’re like the British flag that has braved a thousand years of the battle and the breeze.” But the lady heaped coals of fire on his head.
“Oh, Captain Burton,” she cried, “how could you, with that musical– that lovely voice of yours–make such very unpleasant remarks.”
110. “I am an Old English Catholic.”
In England, whatever objections Protestants may make to Roman Catholic services, they admit that everything is done decently and in order. The laxity, however, in the Italian churches is, or was until recently, beyond belief, and every traveller brought home some queer tale. Mrs. Burton, who prided herself on being “an old English Catholic,” was frequently distressed by these irregularities, and she never hesitated to reprove the offending priests. One day a priest who had called at Burton’s house was requested to conduct a brief service in Mrs. Burton’s private chapel. But the way in which he went through the various ceremonies so displeased Mrs. Burton that she called out to him, “Stop! stop! pardon me, I am an old English Catholic–and therefore particular. You are not doing it right–Stand aside, please, and let me show you.” So the astonished priest stood aside, and Mrs. Burton went through all the gesticulations, genuflexions, etcetera, in the most approved style. Burton, who was standing by, regarded the scene with suppressed amusement. When all was over, he touched the priest on the shoulder and said gravely and slowly, pointing to Mrs. Burton: “Do you know who this is? It is my wife. And you know she will some day die–We all must die–And she will be judged– we must all be judged–and there’s a very long and black list against her. But when the sentence is being pronounced she will jump up and say: ‘Stop! stop! please pardon my interruption, but I am an old English Catholic.'”
To one house, the hostess of which was one of the most fashionable women in London, Burton, no matter how much pressed, had never been prevailed upon to go. He disliked the lady and that was enough. “Here’s an invitation for all of us to Lady —-‘s,” said Mrs. Burton to him one day in honied tones. “Now, Dick, darling, this time you must go just for Lisa’s sake. It’s a shame she should lose so excellent a chance of going into good society. Other people go, why shouldn’t we? Eh, darling?”
“What won’t people do,” growled Burton, “for the sake of a dinner!”
Eventually, however, after an explosion, and he’d be asterisked if he would, and might the lady herself be asterisked, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, “Dick Darling” was coaxed over, and he, Mrs. Burton and Lisa at the appointed time sallied forth in all the glory of war paint, and in due course were ushered into the detested house.
As he approached the hostess she looked steadily at him through her lorgnon, and then, turning to a companion, said with a drawl: “Isn’t it horrid, my dear! Every Dick, Tom and Harry’s here to-night.”
“That’s what comes of being amiable,” said Burton to his wife, when they got home again–and he’d be asterisked, and might everybody else be asterisked, if he’d enter that asterisked house again. Then the humour of it all appealed to him; and his anger dissolved into the usual hearty laughter.
One very marked feature of Burton’s character was that, like his father, he always endeavoured to do and say what he thought was right, quite regardless of appearances and consequences. And we may give one anecdote to illustrate our meaning.
On one occasion[FN#379] he and another Englishman who was known by Burton to have degraded himself unspeakably, were the guests at a country house. “Allow me, Captain Burton,” said the host, “to introduce you to the other principal guest of the evening, Mr. —-” Looking Mr. —- in the face, Burton said: “When I am in Persia I am a Persian, when in India a Hindu, but when in England I am an English gentleman,” and then he turned his back on Mr. —- and left him. As Mr. —-‘s record was not at the time generally known, those who were present at the scene merely shrugged their shoulders and said: “Only another of Burton’s eccentricities.” A few months, later, however, Mr. —‘s record received publicity, and Burton’s conduct and words were understood.
One of Burton’s lady relations being about to marry a gentleman who was not only needy but also brainless, somebody asked him what he thought of the bridegroom-elect.
“Not much,” replied Burton, drily, “he has no furniture inside or out.”
To “old maids” Burton was almost invariably cruel. He found something in them that roused all the most devilish rancours in his nature; and he used to tell them tales till the poor ladies did not know where to tuck their heads. When reproved afterwards by Mrs. Burton, he would say: “Yaas, yaas, no doubt; but they shouldn’t be old maids; besides, it’s no good telling the truth, for nobody ever believes you.” He did, however, once refer complimentarily to a maiden lady–a certain Saint Apollonia who leaped into a fire prepared for her by the heathen Alexandrians. He called her “This admirable old maid.” Her chief virtue in his eyes, however, seems to have been not her fidelity to her principles, but the fact that she got rid of herself, and so made one old maid fewer.
“What shall we do with our old maids?” he would ask, and then answer the question himself–“Oh, enlist them. With a little training they would make first-rate soldiers.” He was also prejudiced against saints, and said of one, “I presume she was so called because of the enormity of her crimes.”
Although Mrs. Burton often reproved her husband for his barbed and irritating remarks, her own tongue had, incontestibly, a very beautiful edge on it. Witness her reply to Mrs. X., who declared that when she met Burton she was inexpressibly shocked by his Chaucerian conversation and Canopic wit.
“I can quite believe,” commented Mrs. Burton, sweetly, “that on occasions when no lady was present Richard’s conversation might have been startling.”
How tasteful is this anecdote, as they say in The Nights, “and how enjoyable and delectable.”
111. Burton begins his Translation, April 1884.
As we have already observed, Mr. Payne’s 500 copies of the Thousand Nights and a Night were promptly snapped up by the public and 1,500 persons had to endure disappointment. “You should at once,” urged Burton, “bring out a new edition.” “I have pledged myself,” replied Mr. Payne, “not to reproduce the book in an unexpurgated form.”
“Then,” said Burton, “Let me publish a new edition in my own name and account to you for the profits–it seems a pity to lose these 1,500 subscribers.” This was a most generous and kind-hearted, but, from a literary point of view, immoral proposition; and Mr. Payne at once rejected it, declaring that he could not be a party to a breach of faith with the subscribers in any shape or form. Mr. Payne’s virtue was, pecuniarily and otherwise, its punishment. Still, he has had the pleasure of a clear conscience. Burton, however, being, as always, short of money, felt deeply for these 1,500 disappointed subscribers, who were holding out their nine-guinea cheques in vain; and he then said “Should you object to my making an entirely new translation?” To which, of course, Mr. Payne replied that he could have no objection whatever. Burton then set to work in earnest. This was in April, 1884. As we pointed out in Chapter xxii., Lady Burton’s account of the inception and progress of the work and Burton’s own story in the Translator’s Foreword (which precedes his first volume) bristle with misstatements and inaccuracies. He evidently wished it to be thought that his work was well under weigh long before he had heard of Mr. Payne’s undertaking, for he says, “At length in the spring of 1879 the tedious process of copying began and the book commenced to take finished form.” Yet he told Mr. Payne in 1881 that beyond notes and a syllabus of titles nothing had been done; and in 1883 he says in a letter, “I find my translation is a mere summary,” that is to say, of the Boulac edition, which was the only one familiar to him till he met Mr. Payne. He admits having made ample use of the three principal versions that preceded his, namely, those of Jonathan Scott, Lane and Payne, “the whole being blended by a callida junctura into a homogeneous mass.” But as a matter of fact his obligations to Scott and Lane, both of whom left much of the Nights untranslated, and whose versions of it were extremely clumsy and incorrect, were infinitesimal; whereas, as we shall presently prove, practically the whole of Burton is founded on the whole of Payne. We trust, however, that it will continually be borne in mind that the warm friendship which existed between Burton and Payne was never for a moment interrupted. Each did the other services in different ways, and each for different reasons respected and honoured the other. In a letter to Mr. Payne of 12th August, 1884, Burton gave an idea of his plan. He says “I am going in for notes where they did not suit your scheme and shall make the book a perfect repertoire of Eastern knowledge in its most esoteric form.” A paper on these subjects which Burton offered to the British Association was, we need scarcely say, courteously declined.
Writing to Payne on September 9th (1884) he says, “As you have been chary of notes my version must by way of raison d’etre (amongst others) abound in esoteric lore, such as female circumcision and excision, etc. I answer all my friends that reading it will be a liberal education, and assure them that with such a repertory of esotericism at their finger ends they will know all the Scibile[FN#380] requisite to salvation. My conviction is that all the women in England will read it and half the men will cut me.”
112. The Battle over the Nights.
Although, as we have seen, Burton’s service to Mr. Payne’s translation was almost too slight to be mentioned, Burton was to Mr. Payne in another way a tower of strength. Professional spite, jealousy and other causes had ranged against his Nights whole platoons of men of more or less weight. Jealousy, folly and ignorance made common cause against the new translation–the most formidable coterie being the group of influential men who for various reasons made it their business to cry up the commonplace translation of E. W. Lane, published in 1840, and subsequently reprinted–a translation which bears to Payne’s the relation of a glow-worm to the meridian sun. The clique at first prepared to make a professional attack on the work, but the appearance of Volume i. proved it to be from a literary, artistic and philological point of view quite unassailable. This tactic having failed, some of these gentlemen, in their meanness, and we fear we must add, malevolence, then tried to stir up the authorities to take action against Mr. Payne on the ground of public morality.[FN#381] Burton had long been spoiling for a fight–and now was his opportunity. In season and out of season he defended Payne. He fell upon the Lane-ites like Samson upon the Philistines. He gloried in the hurly-burly. He wallowed, as it were, in blood. Fortunately, too, at that time he had friends in the Government–straightforward, commonsense men– who were above all pettinesses. Lord Houghton, F. F. Arbuthnot, and others, also ranged themselves on the same side and hit out manfully.
Before starting on the Palmer expedition, Burton, in a letter of October 29th, had written to Mr. Payne: “The more I read your translation the more I like it. You have no need to fear the Lane clique; that is to say, you can give them as good as they can give you. I am quite ready to justify the moral point. Of course we must not attack Lane till he is made the cheval de bataille against us. But peace and quiet are not in my way, and if they want a fight, they can have it.” The battle was hot while it lasted, but it was soon over. The Lane-ites were cowed and gradually subsided into silence. Mr. Payne took the matter more coolly than Burton, but he, too, struck out when occasion required. For example, among the enemy was a certain reverend Professor of Semitic languages, who held advanced opinions on religious matters. He had fought a good fight, had suffered persecution on that account, and is honoured accordingly. “It is usual,” observed Burton, “with the weak, after being persecuted to become persecutors.”[FN#382] Mr. —– had the folly to put it about that Payne’s translation was made not direct from the Arabic but from German translations. How he came to make so amazing a statement, seeing that at the time no important German translation of the Nights existed,[FN#383] it is difficult to say; but Mr. Payne sent him the following words from the Nights, written in the Arabic character: “I and thou and the slanderer, there shall be for us an awful day and a place of standing up to judgment.”[FN#384] After this Mr. —– sheathed his sword and the Villon Society heard no more of him.
113. Completion of Mr. Payne’s Translation.
Mr. Payne’s first volume appeared as we have seen in 1882. The last left the press in 1884. The work was dedicated to Burton, who writes, “I cannot but feel proud that he has honoured me with the dedication of ‘The Book of the Thousand Nights and one Night.’ …He succeeds admirably in the most difficult passages, and he often hits upon choice and special terms and the exact vernacular equivalent of the foreign word so happily and so picturesquely that all future translators must perforce use the same expression under pain of falling far short.”
Having finished the Nights, Mr. Payne commenced the translation of other Eastern stories–which he published under the title of Tales from the Arabic.[FN#385]
Chapter XXV
1883 to May 1885
The Kama Shastra Society
Bibliography:
69. Publications of the Kama Shastra Society.
Author. Translator. 1. The Kama Sutra. 1883 Vatsyayana. Bhagvanlal Indraji. 2. The Ananga Ranga. 1885 Kullianmull. ” 3. The Arabian Nights. 1885-1886. ” Burton. 4. The Scented Garden
(“My old version”). 1886. Nafzawi. Burton and others. 5. The Beharistan. 1887. Jami. Rehatsek. 6. The Gulistan 1888. Sadi. “
or Rose Garden.
Works still in Manuscript.
Author. Translator 7. The Nigaristan Jawini. Rehatsek. 8. The Observances of the Zenanah ” 9. Etiquette of eating and Drinking ” (A Persian Essay).
10. Physiognomies (A Persian MS.) Al-R’azy ” 11. Anecdotes from the Nuzhat al Yaman. ” (Persian).
12. The Merzuban Namah. (Persian). 13. Extracts from Al Mostatraf. (Arabic). ” 14. Extracts from Siraj-ul-moluk. (Arabic). ” 15. Extracts from Tuhfat al akhwan us Safa.* “
* For further particulars respecting these works see Appendix.
114. The Azure Apollo.
If Payne’s translation had been met by the wind, Burton anticipated that his own, with its blunt faithfulness to the original and its erotic notes, would be met by whirlwind. Considering the temper of the public[FN#386] at the time he thought it not improbable that an action would be brought against him, and in fancy he perceived himself standing at bay with the Authorised Version of the Bible in one hand as a shield, and Urquhart’s Rabelais in the other as a missile.
But though a man of amazing courage, Burton was not one to jeopardise himself unnecessarily. He was quite willing to take any reasonable precautions. So he discussed the matter with his friend F. F. Arbuthnot, who had recently returned from India, married,[FN#387] and settled at a charming place, Upper House Court, near Guildford. Mr. Arbuthnot, who, as we have seen, had for years given his whole soul to Eastern literature, had already published a group of Hindu stories[FN#388] and was projecting manuals of Persian[FN#389] and Arabic[FN#390] literature and a series of translations of famous Eastern works, some of which were purely erotic. He now suggested that this series and Burton’s Arabian Nights should be published nominally by a society to which might be given the appropriate name, “The Kama Shastra”–that is the cupid-gospel–Society, Kama being the Hindu god of love. This deity is generally represented as a beautiful youth riding on an emerald-plumaged lorry or parrot. In his hand he holds a bow of flowers and five arrows–the five senses; and dancing girls attend him. His favourite resort is the country round Agra, where Krishna[FN#391] the azure Hindu Apollo,
“Tunes harps immortal, and to strains divine Dances by moonlight with the Gopia nine.”[FN#392]
The books were to be translated by Rehatsek and a Hindu pundit named Bhagvanlal Indraji, Burton and Arbuthnot were to revise and annotate, and Arbuthnot was to find the money. Burton fell in with the idea, as did certain other members of Arbuthnot’s circle, who had always been keenly interested in Orientalism, and so was formed the famous Kama Shastra Society. That none of the particulars relating to the history of the Society has before been made public, is explained by the fact that Burton and Arbuthnot, conversant with the temper of the public, took pains to shroud their proceedings in mystery. It cannot, however, be too strongly insisted upon that Arbuthnot’s standpoint, like Burton’s, was solely for the student. “He wished,” he said, “to remove the scales from the eyes of Englishmen who are interested in Oriental literature.” These erotic books in one form or another are in the hands of 200,000,000 of Orientals. Surely, argued Arbuthnot, a few genuine English students–a few, grave, bald-headed, spectacled, happily married old gentlemen–may read them without injury.[FN#393] The modern student seeks his treasure everywhere, and cares not into what midden he may probe so long as he finds it. No writer on 18th century French History, for example, would nowadays make half apologies, as Carlyle did, for having read Casanova. Indeed, he would lay himself open to censure unless he admitted having studied it carefully. Still, every genuine and right-minded student regards it as a duty to keep books such as these, which are unsuited for the general public, under lock and key–just as the medical man treats his books of plates and other reference volumes. Then again it is entirely a mistake to suppose that the works issued or contemplated by the Kama Shastra Society were all of them erotic. Two out of the six actually done: The Beharistan and The Gulistan, and the whole of the nine still in manuscript, might, after a snip or two with the scissors, be read aloud in almost any company.
We have the first hint of the Kama Shastra Society in a letter to Payne, 5th August 1882. “I hope,” says Burton, “you will not forget my friend, F. F. Arbuthnot, and benefit him by your advice about publishing when he applies to you for it. He has undertaken a peculiar branch of literature–the Hindu Erotic, which promises well.” On Dec. 23th he writes: “My friend Arbuthnot writes to me that he purposes calling upon you. He has founded a society consisting of himself and myself.” After further reference to the idea he adds, “I hope that you will enjoy it.” A few days later Mr. Arbuthnot called on Mr. Payne. Mr. Payne did not “enjoy” the unfolding of the Kama Shastra scheme, he took no interest in it whatever; but, of course, he gave the information required as to cost of production; and both then and subsequently assisted in other matters of business. Moreover, to Mr. Arbuthnot himself, as a man of great personal charm, Mr. Payne became sincerely attached, and a friendship resulted that was severed only by death.
The arrangement about financing the books did not, of course, apply to The Arabian Nights. That was Burton’s own affair; for its success was supposed to be assured from the first. Of the books other than The Arabian Nights published by the Kama Shastra Society–each of which purported, facetiously, to be printed at Behares, the name which Burton chose to give to Stoke Newington, we shall now give a brief account.
Several, we said, are erotic. But it should be clearly understood what is here meant by the term. The plays of Wycherley and other Caroline dramatists are erotic in a bad sense. We admit their literary qualities, but we cannot hide from ourselves the fact that they were written by libertines and that an attempt is made to render vice attractive. The injured husband, for example, is invariably ridiculed, the adulterer glorified. The Hindu books, on the other hand, were written by professedly religious men whose aim was “not to encourage chambering and wantonness, but simply and in all sincerity to prevent the separation of husband and wife”– not to make them a married couple look afield, but “to lead them to love each other more by understanding each other better.” Vatsyayan and Kullianmull,[FN#394] indeed, though they poetized the pleasures of the flesh, would have been horrified could they have read the plays of Wycherley and Etheridge. The erotic books that Arbuthnot wished to be translated were the following–all by Hindu poets more or less famous:–
The Kama Sutra (Book of Love) by Vatsyayana. Ananga Ranga (Stage of Love) by Kullianmull. Ratirahasya (Secrets of Love) by Kukkoka. Panchasakya (The Five Arrows) by Jyotirisha. Smara Pradipa (Light of Love) by Gunakara. Ratimanjari (Garland of Love) by Jayadeva. Rasmanjari (Sprout of Love) by Bhanudatta.
Of these seven books two only were issued, namely the Kama Sutra and the Ananga Ranga or Lila Shastra. The precise share that Burton[FN#395] had in them will never be known. It is sufficient to say that he had a share in both, and the second, according to the title page, was “translated from the Sanskrit and annotated by A. F. F. and B. F. R.,” that is F. F. Arbuthnot and Richard Francis Bacon–the initials being purposely reversed.
115. The Kama Sutra.
When commencing upon The Kama Sutra, Indraji–for he was the actual translator–found his copy, which had been procured in Bombay, to be defective, so he wrote to Benares, Calcutta and Jeypoor for copies of the manuscripts preserved in the Sanskrit libraries of those places. These having been obtained and compared with each other, a revised copy of the entire work was compiled and from this Indraji made his translation. “This work,” he says, “is not to be used merely as an instrument for satisfying our desires. A person acquainted with the true principles of this science, who preserved his Dharma (virtue or religious merit), his Artha (worldly wealth) and his Kama (pleasure, or sensual gratification), and who has regard to the customs of the people, is sure to obtain the mastery over his senses. In short, an intelligent and knowing person, attending to Dharma, and Artha and also to Kama, without becoming the slave of his passions, will obtain success in everything that he may do.” According to Vatsyayana, Kama should be taught just as is taught–say, hygiene or political economy. “A man practising Dharma, Artha and Kama enjoys happiness both in this world and in the world to come.” It must not be supposed that the work is entirely erotic. There are also directions for one’s conduct at religious festivals, especially that in honour of Saraswati,[FN#396] picnics, drinking parties and other social gatherings. Still, the erotic preponderates. The work is mainly a handbook on Love. One is informed respecting what women are or are not worthy of affection. There are full instructions respecting kissing, an art which is not so easy to learn as some persons think. Still, a man who could not kiss properly after reading the Kama Sutra would be a dullard indeed. Some of the remarks are quaint enough. Thus we are told that “nothing tends to increase love so much as the effects of marking with the nails[FN#397] and biting.” Some girls when asked in marriage are slow to make up their minds. With that situation there are, it seems, several ways of dealing. The simplest is the following: “When the girl goes to a garden, or to some village in the neigbourhood, the man should, with his friends, fall on her guards, and having killed them, or frightened them away, forcibly carry her off.” Sometime it is the man who is shy. In such cases the girl “should bring him to her house under the pretence of seeing the fights of quails, cocks and rams, of hearing the maina (a kind of starling) talk …. she should also amuse him for a long time by telling him such stories and doing such things as he may take most delight in.”
For Edwin and Angelina when they get married there is also much wholesome instruction. “The wife, whether she be a woman of noble family or a virgin widow re-married,[FN#398] should lead a chaste life.” “When the man sets out on a journey she should make him swear that he will return quickly.[FN#399] … When the man does return home she should worship the God Kama.” Ladies will be interested to learn that there are twenty-seven artifices by which a woman can get money out of a man. One is “Praising his intelligence to his face.” Then there are useful directions for the personal adornment of both sexes. “If the bone of a peacock or of a hyena be covered with gold and tied to the right hand, it makes a man lovely in the eyes of other people.”
Of the essential portions of the book it is sufficient to say that they are similar to those of the other avowedly erotic Eastern works, the contents of the principal of which have been touched upon by Burton in the Terminal Essay to his Arabian Nights and in some of his notes. Finally we are told that the Kama Sutra was composed for the benefit of the world by Vatsyayana, while leading the life of a religious student, and wholly engaged in the contemplation of the Deity. At the same time, the teaching of this holy man amounts to very much the same as that of Maupassant, which is, to use Tolstoy’s words, “that life consists in pleasures of which woman with her love is the chief, and in the double, again reflected delight of depicting this love and exciting it in others.”[FN#400]
The work lets a flood of light on Hindu manners and customs; and it must be borne in mind that the translation was issued privately at a high price and intended only for “curious students.” In the Preface, Burton and Arbuthnot observe that after a perusal of the Hindoo work the reader will understand the subject upon which it treats, “At all events from a materialistic, realistic and practical point of view. If all science is founded more or less on a stratum of facts, there can be no harm in making known to mankind generally certain matters intimately connected with their private, domestic and social life. Alas! complete ignorance of them has unfortunately wrecked many a man and many a woman, while a little knowledge of a subject generally ignored by the masses would have enabled numbers of people to understand many things which they believed to be quite incomprehensible, or which were not thought worthy of their consideration.”
Writing to Payne, 15th January, 1883, Burton says, “Has Arbuthnot sent you his Vatsyayana?[FN#401] He and I and the Printer have started a Hindu Kama Shastra (Ars Amoris Society). It will make the Brit(ish) Pub(lis) stare. Please encourage him.” Later Arbuthnot, in reply to a question put to him by a friend, said that the Society consisted practically of himself, Sir Richard Burton and the late Lord Houghton.[FN#402]
Chapter XXVI
The Ananga Ranga or Lila Shastra
Bibliography:
70. The Book of the Sword. 1884.
116. The Ananga Ranga.[FN#403]
The title page of the second book, the Ananga Ranga, which was issued in 1885, was as follows:
ANANGA RANGA
(Stage of the Bodiless One)
or
THE HINDU ART OF LOVE
(Ars Amoris Indica)
Translated from the Sanskrit
and annotated
by
A. F. F. and B. F. R.
Cosmopoli MDCCCLXXXV, for the Kama Shastra Society of London and Benares, and for private circulation only.
Dedicated to that small portion of the British Public which takes enlightened interest in studying the manners and customs of the olden East.
We are told that this book was written about 1450 by the arch-poet Kalyana Mull,[FN#404] that lithographed copies have been printed by hundreds of thousands, that the book is in the hands of almost every one “throughout the nearer East,” and also that it is “an ethnological treasure, which tells us as much of Hindu human nature as The Thousand Nights and a Night of Arab manners and customs in the cinquecento.” In India the book is known as the Kama Shastra or Lila Shastra, the Scripture of Play or Amorous Sport. The author says quaintly, “It is true that no joy in the world of mortals can compare with that derived from the knowledge of the Creator. Second, however, and subordinate only to his are the satisfaction and pleasure arising from the possession of a beautiful woman.”
“From the days of Sotades and Ovid,” says the writer of the Preface, who is certainly Burton, “to our own time, Western authors have treated the subject either jocularly or with a tendency to hymn the joys of immorality, and the gospel of debauchery. The Indian author has taken the opposite view, and it is impossible not to admire the delicacy with which he has handled an exceedingly difficult theme. ….Feeling convinced that monogamy is a happier state than polygamy, he would save the married couple from the monotony and satiety which follow possession, by varying their pleasures in every conceivable way and by supplying them with the means of being psychically pure and physically pleasant to each other.”
There is a reference to this work in Burton’s Vikram and the Vampire, where we read:[FN#405] “As regards the neutral state, that poet was not happy in his ideas who sang,
‘Whene’er indifference appears, or scorn, Then, man, despair! then, hapless lover, mourn!’
for a man versed in the Lila Shastra can soon turn a woman’s indifference into hate, which I have shown is as easily permuted to love.”
This curious book concludes: “May this treatise, Ananga Ranga, be beloved of man and woman, as long as the Holy River Ganges, springeth from Shiva with his wife Gauri on his left side; as long as Lakshmi loveth Vishnu; as long as Brahma is engaged in the study of the Vedas, and as long as the earth, the moon and the sun endure.”
The Kama Shastra Society also issued a translation of the first twenty chapters of The Scented Garden.[FN#406] In reality it was a translation of the French version of Liseux, but it was imperfect and had only a few notes. It has been repeatedly denied that Burton had anything to do with it. All we can say is that in a letter to Mr. A. G. Ellis of 8th May 1887, he distinctly calls it “my old version,”[FN#407] and he must mean that well-known edition of 1886, because all the other impressions are like it, except in respect to the title page.
117. The Beharistan, 1887.
The Society now determined to issue unexpurgated editions of the three following great Persian classics:
The Gulistan or Rose Garden, by Sadi (A.D. 1258). The Nigaristan or Picture Gallery, by Jawini (A.D. 1334). The Beharistan or Abode of Spring, by Jami (A.D. 1487).
The first to appear was The Beharistan in 1887. Jami, the author, is best known in England on account of his melodious poems Salaman and Absal, so exquisitely rendered by Edward FitzGerald, and Ysuf and Zuleika (Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife), familiar to Englishmen mainly through Miss Costello’s fragrant adaptation.[FN#408] To quote from the Introduction of the translation of The Beharistan, which is written in Arbuthnot’s bald and hesitating style, “there is in this work very little indeed to be objected to. A few remarks or stories scattered here and there would have to be omitted in an edition printed for public use or for public sale. But on the whole the author breathes the noblest and purest sentiments, and illustrates his meanings by the most pleasing, respectable, and apposite tales, along with numerous extracts from the Koran.” The work consists of stories and verses– two or three of which will be found in our Appendix–pleasantly intermingled; but as Rehatsek, the translator, made no attempt to give the verses rhythmical form, only an inadequate idea is conveyed of the beauty of the original. It would require an Edward FitzGerald or a John Payne to do justice to Jami’s jewelled verses.
118. The Gulistan, 1888.
The Gulistan of Sadi,[FN#409] which was the next book issued, is best known in England from the translations by James Ross (1823) and Edward B. Eastwick (1852). Sadi’s aim was to make “a garden of roses whose leaves the rude hand of the blast of Autumn could not affect.”[FN#410] “The very brambles and rubbish of this book,” says an ancient enthusiastic admirer, “are of the nature of ambergris.” Men treasured the scraps of Sadi’s writing “as if they were gold leaf,” and The Gulistan has attained a popularity in the East “which has never been reached in this Western world.” The school-boy lisps his first lessons in it, the pundit quotes it, and hosts of its sayings have become proverbial. From end to end the “unity, the unapproachable majesty, the omnipotence, the long-suffering and the goodness of God” are nobly set forth–the burden of every chapter being:
“The world, my brother! will abide with none, By the world’s Maker let thy heart be won.”
119. The Nigaristan.
The third of the great trio, Jawini’s Nigaristan, did not reach the press owing to Arbuthnot’s death. The manuscript, however, in Rehatsek’s hand-writing, is still in the possession of the Royal Asiatic Society, 22, Albermarle Street, and we trust to see it some day suitably edited and published. Arbuthnot, who contributes the preface, points out that it contains 534 stories in prose and verse, and that it abounds “in pure and noble sentiments, such as are to be found scattered throughout the Sacred Books of the East, the Old and New Testaments and the Koran.” A few citations from it will be found in our Appendix.
120. Letters to Payne, 19th January 1884.
On January 19th, Burton, after asking for the remaining volumes of Mr. Payne’s Nights, says “A friend here is reading them solemnly and with huge delight: he would be much disappointed to break off perforce half way. When do you think the 9 vols. will be finished? Marvellous weather here. I am suffering from only one thing, a want to be in Upper Egypt. And, of course, they won’t employ me. I have the reputation of ‘independent,’ a manner of ‘Oh! no, we never mention it, sir,’ in the official catalogue, and the one unpardonable Chinese Gordon has been sacked for being ‘eccentric,’ which Society abominates. England is now ruled by irresponsible clerks, mostly snobs. My misfortunes in life began with not being a Frenchman. I hope to be in London next Spring, and to have a talk with you about my translation of the 1001.”
All the early months of 1884, Burton was seriously ill, but in April he began to mend. He writes to Payne on the 17th: “I am just beginning to write a little and to hobble about (with a stick). A hard time since January 30th! Let me congratulate you on being at Vol. ix. Your translation is excellent and I am glad to see in Academy that you are working at Persian tales.[FN#411] Which are they? In my youth I read many of them. Now that your 1001 are so nearly finished I am working at my translation.” He then asks what arrangements Mr. Payne made with the publishers and the cost of the printing. “All I want,” he says, on April 27th, “is a guide in dealing with that dragon the publisher;” and in later letters he thanks Mr. Payne for answering his questions. On June 20th (1884) writing from Marienbad he says, “I should much like to know what you are doing with the three supplemental volumes, and I hope that each will refer readers to the source whence you borrow it. This will be a great aid to the students. The more I examine your translation the better I like it. Mine will never be so popular because I stick so much to the text.[FN#412] No arrangements yet make about it, and MS. will not be all ready till end of January. We (my wife and I) have enjoyed our ten days at Marienbad muchly, but the weather has as yet prevented bathing; a raw wester with wind and rain. Bad for poor people who can afford only the 21 days de rigueur. Cuthbert Bede (Rev. Edward Bradley) is here and my friend J. J. Aubertin is coming.”
121. At Sauerbrunn, 12th August 1884.
The next letter to Payne, written from Sauerbrunn, in Austria, is dated 12th August 1884. After enquiring concerning “the supererogatory three vols.” he says, “We left Marienbad last of last month, and came to this place (a very pretty little spa utterly clear of Britishers), where we shall stay till the end of the month and then again for Trieste to make plans for the winter. Will you kindly let me have the remaining volumes, and when you have a spare quarter of an hour I want a little assistance from you. When you sent me your Breslau you pencilled in each volume the places from which you had taken matter for translation (How wretchedly that Breslau is edited!) I want these notes scribbled out by way of saving time. Of course I shall have to read over the whole series; but meanwhile will content myself with your references. Have you the Arabian Nights published in Turkish by Mr. Clermont Ganneau? You will want it for the supererogatory. If you can’t get it I have it somewhere, and will look for it on return to Trieste. Have you a copy of Trebutien? Cotton, of Academy has just sent me Clouston’s Book of Sindibad[FN#413] for review. I thought it was our old friend the sailor, but find out my mistake. You will have no objection to my naming (in my review) your style in the 1001 as that he should have taken for a model.”
He writes again on September 9th (1884): “On return here I found Vol. ix., with the dedication which delighted me hugely. I did not notice your fine work in reviewing the Clouston treatise. I had not your express permission. Living so far from the world I am obliged to be very careful in these matters: one never knows what harm one may be doing unawares. Of course I shall speak of your translation in my preface, as it deserves to be spoken of. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to look over your proofs; in fact, I should be sorry not to do so. I have not yet found Ganneau’s Nights, but I hope to do so. My Turkish Edition was burnt many years ago in a fire at Grindlay’s; but you will easily find a copy. I suppose you read Turkish;[FN#414] and if you do not you will in three months; the literary style is a mass of Persian and Arabic. You must find out which is the best Turkish Edition. My copy had evidently been translated from a MS. very unlike the Calcutta and Bulak. … I have told Quartich to send you a cop of Camoens (Lyrics), which will be out in a few days.”
122. Burton’s Circulars, September 1884.
By September 1884 the first volumes of Burton’s Arabian Nights were almost ready for print, and Burton asked himself how many copies would suffice the public. He was aware that 1,500 persons were disappointed of being able to obtain copies of Mr. Payne’s Edition, but it did not necessarily follow that all these 1,500 would subscribe to his. Finally he decided upon 1,000, and he had three circulars printed respecting the work.
The first began “Captain Burton, having neither agent nor publisher for his forthcoming Arabian Nights, requests that all subscribers will kindly send their names to him personally (Captain Burton, Trieste, Austria), when they will be entered in a book kept for the purpose.” It was then mentioned that there would be ten volumes at a guinea apiece,[FN#415] each to be paid for on delivery, that 1,000 copies would be printed, and that no cheaper edition would be issued. The second dealt with the advantages of the work to students of Arabic. The third consisted of an article welcoming the work from The Daily Tribune, New York, written by G. W. S(malley). Burton posted about 20,000 of these circulars at an expense of some £80, but received only 300 favourable replies. Lady Burton, in dismay, then wrote to Mr. Payne begging for advice. Several letters passed between them, and Mr. Payne sent her the names of the subscribers to his own book and lists of other likely persons. A second shower of circulars effected the desired purpose. Indeed it did far more, for the number of favourable replies ultimately rose to 2,000. But as we have seen, Burton had restricted himself to the issue of 1,000. So he found that he had made precisely the same mistake as Mr. Payne. However, it could not be remedied.
123. The Book of the Sword.
This year was published Burton’s The Book of the Sword, which he dedicated, appropriately, to the memory of his old friend Alfred Bates Richards, who had died in 1876. It is a history of the sword in all times and countries down to the Middle Ages,[FN#416] with numerous illustrations, the interest being mainly archaeological. Of “The Queen of Weapons” he ever spoke glowingly. “The best of calisthenics,” he says, “this energetic educator teaches the man to carry himself like a soldier. A compendium of gymnastics, it increases strength and activity, dexterity, and rapidity of movement. The foil is still the best training tool for the consensus of eye and hand, for the judgment of distance and opportunity, and, in fact, for the practice of combat. And thus swordsmanship engenders moral confidence and self-reliance, while it stimulates a habit of resource.”
124. The Lyrics of Camoens, 1884.
This same year, too, he published his translation of the Lyrics of Camoens, in which, as will have been judged from the letters already quoted, he had been assisted by Mr. John Payne, who was also a Portuguese scholar and a lover of Camoens. “The learning and research of your work,” wrote Mr. A. C. Swinburne, in reference to Burton’s six Camoens volumes, “are in many points beyond all praise of mine, but not more notable than the strength and skill that wield them. I am hungrily anticipating the Arabian Nights.”
125. More Letters to Payne, 1st October 1884.
On October 1st 1884, Burton wrote to thank Mr. Payne for a splendid and complete set (specially bound) of his edition of the Nights. He says, “I am delighted with it, especially with the dedication.[FN#417] … To my horror Quaritch sent me a loose vol. of his last catalogue with a notice beginning, ‘The only absolutely true translation of the [Arabian Nights], &c.’ My wife telegraphed to him and followed with a letter ordering it not to be printed. All in vain. I notice this only to let you know that the impertinence is wholly against my will. Life in Trieste is not propitious to work as in the Baths; yet I get on tolerably. Egypt is becoming a comedy.” Then follows the amazing remark: “I expect to see Gordon (who is doubtless hand in hand with the Mahdi) sent down to offer to guide Wolseley up to Khartum.”
126. Death of Gordon, January 1885.
Burton little dreamt that the days of the heroic Englishman were numbered. Sent by the English Government to the Soudan, Gordon had been at Khartum hardly a month before it was invested by the Mahdi. The relief expedition arrived just two days too late. Gordon was slain! This was in January 1885. The shock to Burton was comparable only to that which he received by the death of Speke. In one of the illustrated papers there was a picture of Gordon lying in the desert with vultures hovering around. “Take it away!” said Burton. “I can’t bear to look at it. I have had to feel like that myself.”
127. W. F. Kirby,[FN#418] 25th March 1885.
Shortly after the announcement of his edition of the Nights, Burton received a letter from Mr. W. F. Kirby,[FN#418] better known as an entomologist, who had devoted much study to European editions of that work, a subject of which Burton knew but little. Mr. Kirby offered to supply a bibliographical essay which could be used as an appendix. Burton replied cordially, and this was the beginning of a very pleasant friendship. Mr. Kirby frequently corresponded with Burton, and they often met at Mr. Kirby’s house, the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, or the British Museum. Says Mr. Kirby: “At the British Museum, Burton seemed more inclined to talk than to work. I thought him weak in German[FN#419] and when I once asked him to help me with a Russian book, he was unable to do so.” Thus even a Burton has his limitations. “He told me,” continues Mr. Kirby, “that he once sat between Sir Henry Rawlinson and a man who had been Ambassador at St. Petersburg, and he spoke to one in Persian, and the other in Russian, but neither of them could understand him. I have never, however, been able to make up my mind whether the point of the story told against him or against them.[FN#420] Although Burton was a student of occult science, I could never lead him to talk about crystals or kindred subjects; and this gave me the idea that he was perhaps pledged to secrecy. Still, he related his experiences freely in print.” Oddly, enough, Burton used to call Mr. Kirby “Mr. Rigby,” and he never could break himself of the habit. “Apparently,” says Mr. Kirby, “he associated my name with that of his old opponent, Colonel, afterwards Major-General Rigby,[FN#421] Consul at Zanzibar.” In a letter of 25th March 1885, Burton asks Mr. Kirby to draw up “a full account of the known MSS. and most important European editions, both those which are copies of Galland and (especially) those which are not. It will be printed in my terminal essay with due acknowledgment of authorship.”[FN#422] On April 8th (1885) he says, “I don’t think my readers will want an exhaustive bibliography, but they will expect me to supply information which Mr. Payne did not deem necessary to do in his excellent Terminal Essay. By the by, I shall totally disagree with him about Harun al Rashid and the Barmecides,[FN#423] who were pestilent heretics and gave rise to the terrible religious trouble of the subsequent reigns. A tabular arrangement of the principal tales will be exceedingly useful.”
Chapter XXVII
May 1885-5th February 1886
A Glance through “The Arabian Nights”
Bibliography:
71. The Thousand Nights and a Night. 1st Vol. 12th September 1885. 10th Vol. 12th July 1886.
72. Il Pentamerone. (Translated–not published till 1893). 73. Iracema or Honey Lips; and Manoel de Moraes the Convert. Translated from the Brazilian. 1886.
128. Slaving at the Athenaeum, May 1885.
In May 1885, Burton obtained leave of absence, and on arriving in England he made various arrangements about the printing of The Arabian Nights and continued the work of translation. When in London he occupied rooms at the St. James’s Hotel (now the Berkeley) in Piccadilly. He used to say that the St. James’s Hotel was the best place in the world in which to do literary work, and that the finest place in the whole world was the corner of Piccadilly. Still, he spent most of his time, as usual, at the Athenaeum. Mr. H. R. Tedder, the Secretary, and an intimate friend of Burton’s, tells me that “He would work at the round table in the library for hours and hours–with nothing for refreshment except a cup of coffee and a box of snuff, which always stood at his side;” and that he was rarely without a heavy stick with a whistle at one end and a spike at the other–the spike being to keep away dogs when he was travelling in hot countries. This was one of the many little inventions of his own. Mr. Tedder describes him as a man of great and subtle intellect and very urbane. “He had an athletic appearance and a military carriage, and yet more the look of a literary man than of a soldier.” In summer as usual he wore white clothes, the shabby old beaver, and the tie-pin shaped like a sword. Mr. Tedder summed him up as “as a compound of a Benedictine monk, a Crusader and a Buccaneer.”
The Hon. Henry J. Coke, looking in at the Athenaeum library one day, and noticing the “white trousers, white linen coat and a very shabby old white beaver hat,” exclaimed, “Hullo Burton, do you find it so very hot?”
“I don’t want,” said Burton, “to be mistaken for anyone else.”
“There’s not much fear of that, without your clothes,” followed Coke.[FN#424]
During this holiday Burton visited most of his old friends, and often ran down to Norwood to see his sister and her daughter, while everyone remarked his brightness and buoyancy. “It was delightful,” says Miss Stisted, “to see how happy he was over the success of his venture.” He had already resolved to issue six additional volumes, to be called Supplemental Nights. He would then take sixteen thousand pounds. He calculated printing and sundries as costing four thousand, and that the remainder would be net profit. As a matter of fact the expenses arose to £6,000, making the net profit £10,000[FN#425] Burton had wooed fortune in many ways, by hard study in India, by pioneering in Africa, by diplomacy at Court, by gold-searching in Midian and at Axim, by patent medicining. Finally he had found it in his inkstand; but as his favourite Jami says, it requires only a twist of the pen to transmute duvat into dulat[FN#426]–inkstand into fortune.
Except when his father died, Burton had never before possessed so large a sum, and, at the time, it appeared inexhaustible. Bubbling over with fun, he would pretend to make a great mystery as to the Kama Shastra Society at Benares, where he declared the Nights were being printed.
129. A Visit to Mr. Arbuthnot’s.
Of all the visits to be made during this holiday Burton had looked forward to none with so much pleasure as those to Mr. Arbuthnot, or “Bunny,”[FN#427] as he called him, and Mr. Payne. Mr. Arbuthnot was still living at Upper House Court, Guildford, studying, writing books, and encouraging struggling men of letters with a generosity that earned for him the name of “the English Mecaenas;” and it was there the friends discussed the publications of the Kama Shastra Society and made arrangements for the issue of fresh volumes. While the roses shook their odours over the garden, they talked of Sadi’s roses, Jami’s “Aromatic herbs,” and “Trees of Liberality,”[FN#428] and the volume Persian Portraits,[FN#429] which Arbuthnot, assisted by Edward Rehatsek, was at the moment preparing for the press. Among the objects at Mr. Arbuthnot’s heart was, as we have said, the resuscitation of the old Oriental Translation fund, which was originally started in 1824, the Society handling it having been established by Royal Charter. A series of works had been issued between 1829 and 1879, but the funds were completely exhausted by the publication of Al Biruni’s Memoirs of India, and there were no longer any subscribers to the Society. Mr. Arbuthnot now set himself assiduously to revive this fund, he contributed to it handsomely himself and by his energy induced a number of others to contribute. It is still in existence, and in accordance with his suggestion is worked by the Royal Asiatic Society, though the subscriptions and donations to the Translation Fund are kept entirely separate, and are devoted exclusively to the production of translations of Oriental works, both ancient and modern. Thanks to the fund, a number of translations of various Oriental works has been issued, including volumes by Professor Cowell, Rehatsek, Miss C. M. Ridding, Dr. Gaster and Professor Rhys Davids. Its most important publication, however, is the completion of the translation of Hariri’s Assemblies,[FN#430] done by Steingass.[FN#431]
130. Dr. Steingass.
Born in 1825, Dr. Steingass came to England in 1873, and after five years as Professor of Modern Languages at Wakefield Grammar School, Birmingham, was appointed Professor at the Oriental Institute, Woking. Though entirely self-taught, he was master of fourteen languages.[FN#432] His Arabic Dictionary (1884) and his Persian English Dictionary (1892) are well known, the latter being the best extant, but he will, after all, be chiefly remembered by his masterly rendering of Hariri. Dr. Steingass presently became acquainted with Burton, for whom he wrote the article “On the Prose Rhyme and the Poetry of the Nights.”[FN#433] He also assisted Burton with the Notes,[FN#434] supervised the MSS. of the Supplemental Volumes and enriched the last three with results of his wide reading and lexicographical experience.[FN#435] The work of transcribing Burton’s manuscript and making the copy for the press fell to a widow lady, Mrs. Victoria Maylor, a Catholic friend of Mrs. Burton. Mrs. Maylor copied not only The Arabian Nights, but several of Burton’s later works, including The Scented Garden.
131. Anecdotes.
When asked why he spent so much time and money on Orientalism, Arbuthnot gave as excuse his incompetency to do anything else. He admitted, indeed, that for the higher walks of life, such as whist and nap, he had no aptitude. Occasionally at Upper House Court, politics were introduced, and Arbuthnot, a staunch Liberal in a shire of Tories, was sometimes rallied upon his opinions by the Conservative Burton and Payne. He took it all, however, as he took everything else, good humouredly, and even made some amiable attempts to convert his opponents. “His Radicalism,” says Mr. Payne, amusingly, “was entirely a matter of social position and connection. He was good enough for a Tory.” As usual, Burton paid a visit to Fryston, and he occasionally scintillated at Lord Houghton’s famous Breakfasts in London. Once the friends were the guests of a prosperous publisher, who gave them champagne in silver goblets. “Doesn’t this,” said Lord Houghton, raising a bumper to his lips, “make you feel as if you were drinking out of the skulls of poor devil authors?” For reply Burton tapped his own forehead.
About this time an anonymous letter of Burton’s appeared in The World, but we forget upon what subject. It excited wide interest, however, and hundreds of persons wrote to Mr. Yates, the editor, for the name of the author.
“Did you see my letter in The World?” enquired Burton of Mrs. E. J. Burton.
“The Christian World?” asked Mrs. Burton innocently.
“No,” replied Burton, sharply, “The Unchristian World.”
Once when Burton was present at some gathering, a missionary caused a shudder to run through the company by saying that he had had the dreadful experience of being present at a cannibal feast. The cannibals, he said, brought in their prisoner, butchered him, cut him up, and handed the pieces round smoking hot. With his curious feline laugh, Burton enquired, “Didn’t they offer you any?” “They did,” replied the missionary, “but of course I refused.” “What a fool you were,” cried Burton, “to miss such a unique opportunity.”
132. The Pentameron. Burton and Gladstone.
We must next record a visit to Mr. Payne, who then resided in London. Burton talked over his projects, and said that he had been wondering what book to take up after the completion of The Nights. “I think,” said he, “I shall fix upon Boccaccio next.”
“My dear boy,” followed Mr. Payne, “I’ve just done him.”[FN#436] As his poem “Salvestra” shows, Mr. Payne’s mind had for long been running on “that sheaf of flowers men call Decameron.” His brilliant translation was, indeed, already in the press, and it appeared the following year in three volumes.
“You are taking the bread out of my mouth,” commented Burton plaintively.
“But,” continued Mr. Payne, “there is another work that I thought of doing–The Pentameron,[FN#437] by Giambattista Basile, and if you care to take my place I will not only stand aside but lend you the materials collected for the purpose.” Burton, who had some knowledge of the Neapolitan dialect but had never met with the work referred to, welcomed the idea; and as soon as he had finished the Nights he commenced a translation of The Pentameron, which, however, was not published until after his death. His rendering, which cannot be praised, was aptly described by one of the critics as “an uncouth performance.” Burton also told Payne about the proposed Ariosto translation, and they discussed that too, but nothing was done.
On July 19th 1885, the Burtons lunched with Lord Houghton–“our common Houghton,” as Mr. Swinburne used to call him; and found his lordship unwell, peevish, and fault-finding. He had all the trials of the successful man who possesses everything that wealth can purchase or the mind conceive.
“Good-bye, my dear old friend,” cried Burton, when parting, “Would that I could share your troubles with you!”[FN#438]
But poor Lord Houghton was too far gone to appreciate the jest. Indeed, he was on the brink of the grave. A few days later he left for Vichy, where he died on August 11th. His remains were brought to Fryston, and Burton and Arbuthnot were present at his funeral.
In October, while he was the guest of Lord Salisbury at Hatfield, Burton solicited the consulate of Morocco, and as his application was supported by fifty men of prominence he felt almost certain of obtaining it.
Apparently, it was during this visit to England, too, that Burton committed the frightful sin of contradicting Mr. Gladstone. At some great house after dinner, Mr. Gladstone, who was the guest of the evening, took it upon himself, while every one listened in respectful silence, to enlarge on Oriental matters.
After he had finished, Burton, who had been fidgeting considerably, turned to him and said, “I can assure you, Mr. Gladstone, that everything you have said is absolutely and entirely opposite to fact.”
The rest of the company were aghast, could scarcely, indeed, believe their ears; and one of them, as soon as he had recovered from the shock, was seen scribbling like mad on a menu card. Presently Burton felt the card tucked into his hand under the table. On glancing at it he read “Please do not contradict Mr. Gladstone. Nobody ever does.”
133. A Brief Glance through the Nights.
By this time Burton had finished the first volume of his translation of The Arabian Nights, which left the press 12th September 1885. The book was handsomely bound in black and gold, the colours of the Abbaside caliphs; and contained a circular “earnestly requesting that the work might not be exposed for sale in public places or permitted to fall into the hands of any save curious students of Moslem manners.” The last volume was issued in July 1886. Let us turn over the pages of this remarkable work, surrender ourselves for a few moments to its charms, and then endeavour to compare it calmly and impartially with the great translation by Mr. Payne.
What a glorious panorama unfolds itself before us! Who does not know the introduction–about the king who, because his wife was unfaithful, vowed to take a new wife every evening and slay her in the morning! And all about the vizier’s daughter, the beautiful Shahrazad, who, with a magnificent scheme in her head, voluntarily came forward and offered to take the frightful risk.
Did ever tale-teller compare with Shahrazad? Who does not sympathise with the Trader who killed the invisible son of the jinni? Who has not dreamt of the poor fisherman and the pot that was covered with the seal of King Solomon? The story of Duban, who cured King Yunon of leprosy and was sent home on the royal steed reads like a verse out of Esther,[FN#439] and may remind us that there is no better way of understanding the historical portions of the Bible than by studying The Arabian Nights. King Yunan richly deserved the death that overtook him, if only for his dirty habit of wetting his thumb when turning over the leaves of the book.[FN#440] What a rare tale is that of the Ensorcelled Prince, alias The Young King of the Black Isles, who though he sat in a palace where fountains limbecked water “clear as pearls and diaphanous gems,” and wore “silken stuff purfled with Egyptian gold,” was from his midriff downwards not man but marble! Who is not shocked at the behaviour of the Three Ladies of Baghdad! In what fearful peril the caliph and the Kalendars placed themselves when, in spite of warning, they would ask questions! How delightful are the verses of the Nights, whether they have or have not any bearing upon the text! Says the third Kalendar, apropos of nothing:
“How many a weal trips on the heels of ill Causing the mourner’s heart with joy to thrill.”
What an imbecile of imbeciles was this same Kalendar when he found himself in the palace with the forty damsels, “All bright as moons to wait upon him!” It is true, he at first appreciated his snug quarters, for he cried, “Hereupon such gladness possessed me that I forgot the sorrows of the world one and all, and said, ‘This is indeed life!'” Then the ninny must needs go and open that fatal fortieth door! The story of Nur al-Din Ali and his son Badr al-Din Hasan has the distinction of being the most rollicking and the most humorous in the Nights. What stupendous events result from a tiff! The lines repeated by Nur al-Din Ali when he angrily quitted his brother must have appealed forcibly to Burton:
Travel! and thou shalt find new friends for old ones left behind; toil! for the sweets of human life by toil and moil are found; The stay at home no honour wins nor ought attains but want; so leave thy place of birth and wander all the world around.[FN#441]
As long as time lasts the pretty coquettish bride will keep on changing her charming dresses; and the sultan’s groom (poor man! and for nothing at all) will be kept standing on his head. The moribund Nur al-Din turns Polonius and delivers himself of sententious precepts. “Security,” he tells his son, “lieth in seclusion of thought and a certain retirement from the society of thy fellows…. In this world there is none thou mayst count upon. …so live for thyself, nursing hope of none. Let thine own faults distract thine attention from the faults of other men.[FN#442] Be cautious, kind, charitable, sober, and economical.” Then the good old man’s life “went forth.” This son, when, soon after, confronted with misfortune, gives utterance to one of the finest thoughts in the whole work:
“It is strange men should dwell in the house of abjection, when the plain of God’s earth is so wide and great.”[FN#443]
But there is another verse in the same tale that is also well worth remembering–we mean the one uttered by Badr al-Din Hasan (turned tart merchant) when struck by a stone thrown by his son.
Unjust it were to bid the world be just; and blame her not: She ne’er was made for justice:
Take what she gives thee, leave all griefs aside, for now to fair and
Then to foul her lust is.[FN#444]
We need do no more than mention the world-famous stories of the unfortunate Hunchback and the pragmatical but charitable Barber. Very lovely is the tale of Nur al-Din and the Damsel Anis al Jalis[FN#445] better known as “Noureddin and the Beautiful Persian.” How tender is the scene when they enter the Sultan’s garden! “Then they fared forth at once from the city, and Allah spread over them His veil of protection, so that they reached the river bank, where they found a vessel ready for sea.” Arrived at Baghdad they enter a garden which turns out to be the Sultan’s. “By Allah,” quoth Nur al-Din to the damsel, “right pleasant is this place.” And she replied, “O my lord, sit with me awhile on this bench, and let us take our ease. So they mounted and sat them down … and the breeze blew cool on them, and they fell asleep, and glory be to Him who never sleepeth.” Little need to enquire what it is that entwines The Arabian Nights round our hearts.
When calamity over took Nur al-Din he mused on the folly of heaping up riches:
“Kisra and Caesars in a bygone day stored wealth; where is it, and ah! where are they?”[FN#446]
But all came right in the end, for “Allah’s aid is ever near at hand.” The tale of Ghanim bin Ayyub also ends happily. Then follows the interminable history of the lecherous and bellicose King Omar. Very striking is its opening episode–the meeting of