The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (Vol. 1&2). Lady Isabel Burton
weed to the horizontal and puffs out a cloud of smoke. They passed their spare time in playing the guitar and singing party songs, and were very much disgusted when asked to indulge the company with Riego el Cid. There was a marriage at Argélés, when a Scotch maiden of mature age married M. Le Maire, an old French mousquetaire, a man of birth, of courtly manners, and who was the delight of the young ones, but his plaisanteries are utterly unfit for the drawing-room. There was also a Baron de Meydell, his wife, her sister, and two very handsome daughters. The eldest was engaged to a rich young planter in the Isle of Bourbon. We two lads of course fell desperately in love with them, and the old father, who had served in the Hessian Brigade in the English army, only roared with laughter when he saw and heard our polissoneries. The old man liked us both, and delighted in nothing more than to see us working upon each other with foil and sabre. The parting of the four lovers was something very sad, and three of us at least shed tears. The eldest girl was beyond such childishness.
As the mountain fog began to roll down upon the valley, our father found that his poor chest required a warmer climate. This time we travelled down the Grand Canal du Midi in a big public barge, which resembled a Dutch trekschuyt. At first, passing through the locks was a perpetual excitement, but this very soon palled. The L'Estranges were also on board, and the French part of the company were not particularly pleasant. They were mostly tourists returning home, mixed with a fair proportion of commis-voyageurs, a class that corresponds with, but does not resemble, our commercial traveller. The French species seems to have but two objects in social life: first, to glorify himself, and secondly, to glorify Paris.
Monsieur Victor Hugo has carried the latter mania to the very verge of madness, and left to his countrymen an example almost as bad as bad can be. The peculiarity of the commis-voyageur in those days, was the queer thin varnish of politeness, which he thought it due to himself to assume. He would help himself at breakfast or dinner to the leg, wing, and part of the breast, and pass the dish to his neighbour when it contained only a neck and a drumstick, with a pleased smile and a ready bow, anxiously asking "Madame, veut elle de la volaille?" and he was frightfully unprogressive. He wished to "let sleeping dogs lie," and hated to move quiet things. It almost gave him an indigestion to speak of railways. He found the diligence and the canal boat quite fast enough for his purpose. And in this to a certain extent he represented the Genius of the Nation.
With the excellent example of the Grand Canal du Midi before them, the French have allowed half a century to pass before they even realized the fact that their rivers give them most admirable opportunities for inland navigation, and that by energy in spending money they could have a water line leading up from Manches to Paris, and down from Paris to the Mediterranean. In these days of piercing isthmuses, they seem hardly to have thought of a canal that would save the time and expense of running round Spain and Portugal, when it would be so easy to cut the neck that connects their country with the Peninsula. The rest of the journey was eventless as usual. The family took the steamer at Marseille, steamed down to Leghorn, and drove up to Pisa. There they found a house on the south side of the Lung' Arno, belonging to a widow of the name of Pini. It was a dull and melancholy place enough, but it had the advantage of a large garden that grew chiefly cabbages. It was something like a return home; a number of old acquaintances were met, and few new ones were made.
Drawing.
The studies were kept up with unremitting attention. I kept up drawing, painting, and classics, and it was lucky for me that I did. I have been able to make my own drawings, and to illustrate my own books. It is only in this way that a correct idea of unfamiliar scenes can be given. Travellers who bring home a few scrawls and put them into the hands of a professional illustrator, have the pleasure of seeing the illustrated paper style applied to the scenery and the people of Central Africa and Central Asia and Europe. Even when the drawings are carefully done by the traveller-artist, it is hard to persuade the professional to preserve their peculiarities. For instance, a sketch from Hyderabad, the inland capital of Sind, showed a number of mast-like poles which induced the English artist to write out and ask if there ought not to be yards and sails. In sending a sketch home of a pilgrim in his proper costume, the portable Korán worn under the left arm narrowly escaped becoming a revolver. On the chocolate-coloured cover of a book on Zanzibar, stands a negro in gold, straddling like the Colossus of Rhodes. He was propped crane-like upon one leg, supporting himself with his spear, and applying, African fashion, the sole of the other foot to the perpendicular calf.
Music.
But music did not get on so well. We all three had good speaking voices, but we sang with a "voce di gola," a throaty tone which was terrible to hear. It is only in England that people sing without voices. This may do very well when chirping a comic song, or half-speaking a ballad, but in nothing higher. I longed to sing, began singing with all my might at Pau in the Pyrenees, and I kept it up at Pisa, where Signor Romani (Mario's old master) rather encouraged me, instead of peremptorily or pathetically bidding me to hold my tongue. I wasted time and money, and presently found out my mistake and threw up music altogether. At stray times I took up the flageolet, and other simple instruments, as though I had a kind of instinctive feeling how useful music would be to me in later life. And I never ceased to regret that I had not practised sufficiently, to be able to write down music at hearing. Had I been able to do so, I might have collected some two thousand motives from Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, and have produced a musical note-book which would have been useful to a Bellini, or Donizetti, or a Boito.
We had now put away childish things; that is to say, we no longer broke the windows across the river with slings, or engaged in free fights with our coevals. But the climate of Italy is precocious, so, as the Vicar of Wakefield has it, "we cocked our hats and loved the ladies." And our poor father was once appalled by strange heads being put out of the windows, in an unaccustomed street, and with the words, "Oh! S'or Riccardo, Oh! S'or Edoardo."
Madame P——, the landlady, had three children. Sandro, the son, was a tall, gawky youth, who wore a cacciatore or Italian shooting-jacket of cotton-leather, not unlike the English one made loose, with the tails cut off. The two daughters were extremely handsome girls, in very different styles. Signorina Caterina, the elder, was tall, slim, and dark, with the palest possible complexion and regular features. Signorina Antonia, the younger, could not boast of the same classical lines, but the light brown hair, and the pink and white complexion, made one forgive and forget every irregularity. Consequently I fell in love with the elder, and Edward with the latter. Proposals of marriage were made and accepted. The girls had heard that, in her younger days, mamma had had half a dozen strings to her bow at the same time, and they were perfectly ready to follow parental example. But a serious obstacle occurred in the difficulty of getting the ceremony performed. As in England there was a popular but mistaken idea that a man could put a rope round his wife's neck, take her to market, and sell her like a quadruped, so there was, and perhaps there is still, in Italy, a legend that any affianced couple standing up together in front of the congregation during the elevation of the Host, and declaring themselves man and wife, are very much married. Many inquiries were made about this procedure, and at one time it was seriously intended. But the result of questioning was, that promessi sposi so acting, are at once imprisoned and punished by being kept in separate cells, and therefore it became evident, that the game was not worth the candle. This is like a Scotch marriage, however—with the Italian would be binding in religion, and the Scotch in law.
Edward and I made acquaintance with a lot of Italian medical students, compared with whom, English men of the same category were as babes, and they did us no particular good. At last the winter at Pisa ended, badly—very badly. The hard studies of the classics during the day, occasionally concluded with a revel at night. On one hopeless occasion a bottle of Jamaica gin happened to fall into the wrong hands. The revellers rose at midnight, boiled water, procured sugar and lemons, and sat down to a steaming soup tureen full of punch. Possibly it was followed by a second, but the result was that they sallied out into the streets, determined upon what is called a "spree." Knockers did not exist, and Charleys did not confine themselves to their sentry-boxes, and it was vain to ring at bells, when every one was sound asleep. Evidently the choice of amusements was limited, and mostly confined to hustling inoffensive passers-by. But as one of these feats had been performed, and cries for assistance had been uttered, up came the watch at the