THE LIFE OF
CAPTAIN
SIR RICHARD F. BURTON,
K.C.M.G., F.R.G.S.
BY HIS WIFE,
ISABEL BURTON.
WITH NUMEROUS PORTRAITS, ILLUSTRATIONS,AND MAPS.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, LD.
1893.
RICHARD BURTON IN HIS TENT IN AFRICA.
CONSECRATION.
TO MY EARTHLY MASTER,
WHO IS WAITING FOR ME ON HEAVEN'S FRONTIERS.
Whilst waiting to rejoin you, I leave as a message to the World weinhabited, the record of the Life into which both our lives were fused.Would that I could write as well as I can love, and do you that justice,that honour, which you deserve! I will do my best, and then I will leave itto more brilliant pens, whose wielders will feel less—and write better.
Meet me soon—I wait the signal!
ISABEL BURTON.
FOREWORD.
"No man can write a man down except himself."
In speaking of my husband, I shall not call him "SirRichard," or "Burton," as many wives would; nor yet by thepet name I used for him at home, which for some reasonwhich I cannot explain was "Jemmy;" nor yet what he wasgenerally called at home, and what his friends called him,"Dick;" but I will call him Richard in speaking of him, and"I" where he speaks on his own account, as he does in hisprivate journals. I always thought and told him that hedestroyed much of the interest of his works by hardly everalluding to himself, and now that I mention it, people mayremark it, that in writing he seldom uses the pronoun I. Ihave therefore drawn, not from his books, but from his privatejournals. It was one of his asceticisms, an act of humility,which the world passed by, and probably only thought oneof his eccentricities. In his works he would generally speakof himself as the Ensign, the Traveller, the Explorer, theConsul, and so on, so that I often think that people whoare not earnest readers never understood who it was that didthis, thought that, or saw the other. If I make him speakplainly for himself, as he does in his private journals, butnever to the public, it will give twenty times the interest inrelating events; so I shall throughout let him speak forhimself where I can.
In early January, 1876, Richard and I were on our wayto India for a six months' trip to visit the old haunts. We[Pg viii]divided our intended journey into two lots. We cut Indiadown the middle, the long way on the map, from north tosouth, and took the western side, leaving the eastern side fora trip which was deferred, alas! for our old age and retirement.We utilized the voyage out (which occupied thirty-threedays in an Austrian Lloyd, used as a Haj, or pilgrim-ship),and also the voyage back, in the part of the followingpages which refers to his early life, he dictating and I writing.
In 1887, when my husband was beginning to be a realinvalid, he lent some of these notes to Mr. Hitchman (whoasked leave to write his biography), Richard promising notto tread upon his heels by his own Autobiography till heshould be free f