The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (Vol. 1&2). Lady Isabel Burton
to be knocked down, and pulled up, slashed, tickled, and buttered à discrétion for the benefit of a manual-pleasantry-loving Public. So it would be weakness in him to complain of bruised back, scored elbows, and bumped head.
"Besides, the treatment you receive varies prodigiously according to the temper and the manifold influences from without that operate upon the gentleman that operates upon you. For instance—
"''Tis a failure at being funny,' says surly Aristarchus, when, for some reason or other, he dislikes you or your publisher.
"'It is a smart book,' opines another, who has no particular reason to be your friend.
"'Narrated with freshness of thought,' declares a third, who takes an honest pride in 'giving the devil his due.'
"'Very clever,' exclaims the amiable critic, who for some reason or another likes you or your publisher.
"'There is wit and humour in these pages,' says the gentleman who has some particular reason to be your friend.
"'Evinces considerable talent.'
"And—
"'There is genius in this book,' declare the dear critics who in any way identify themselves or their interests with you.
"Now for the extract:—
"'Mr. Burton was, it appears, stationed for several years in Sind with his regiment, and it is due to him to say that he has set a good example to his fellow-subalterns by pursuing so diligently his inquiries into the language, literature, and customs of the native population by which he was surrounded. We are far from accepting all his doctrines on questions of Eastern policy, especially as regards the treatment of natives; but we are sensible of the value of the additional evidence which he has brought forward on many important questions. For a young man, he seems to have adopted some very extreme opinions; and it is perhaps not too much to say, that the fault from which he has most to fear, not only as an author, but as an Indian officer, is a disregard of those well-established rules of moderation which no one can transgress with impunity.'
"The greatest difficulty a raw writer on Indian subjects has to contend with, is a proper comprehension of the ignorance crasse which besets the mind of the home-reader and his oracle the critic. What a knowledge these lines do show of the opportunity for study presented to the Anglo-Indian subaltern serving with his corps! Part of the time when I did duty with mine we were quartered at Ghárrá, a heap of bungalows surrounded by a wall of milk-bush; on a sandy flat, near a dirty village whose timorous inhabitants shunned us as walking pestilences. No amount of domiciliary visiting would have found a single Sindian book in the place, except the accounts of the native shopkeepers; and, to the best of my remembrance, there was not a soul who could make himself intelligible in the common medium of Indian intercourse—Hindostani. An ensign stationed at Dover Castle might write 'Ellis's Antiquities;' a sous-lieutenant with his corps at Boulogne might compose the 'Legendaire de la Morinie,' but Ghárrá was sufficient to paralyse the readiest pen that ever coursed over foolscap paper.
"Now, waiving, with all due modesty, the unmerited compliment of 'good boy,' so gracefully tendered to me, I proceed to the judgment which follows it, my imminent peril of 'extreme opinions.' If there be any value in the 'additional evidence' I have 'brought forward on important questions,' the reader may, perchance, be curious to know how that evidence was collected. So, without further apology, I plunge into the subject.
"After some years of careful training for the Church in the north and south of France, Florence, Naples, and the University of Pisa, I found myself one day walking the High Street, Oxford, with all the emotions which a Parisian exquisite of the first water would experience on awaking—at 3 p.m.—in 'Dandakaran's tangled wood.'
"To be brief, my 'college career' was highly unsatisfactory. I began a 'reading man,' worked regularly twelve hours a day, failed in everything—chiefly, I flattered myself, because Latin hexameters and Greek iambics had not entered into the list of my studies—threw up the classics, and returned to old habits of fencing, boxing, and single-stick, handling the 'ribbons,' and sketching facetiously, though not wisely, the reverend features and figures of certain half-reformed monks, calling themselves 'fellows.' My reading also ran into bad courses—Erpenius, Zadkiel, Falconry, Cornelius Agrippa, and the Art of Pluck.
"At last the Afghan War broke out. After begging the paternal authority in vain for the Austrian service, the Swiss Guards at Naples, and even the Légion étrangère, I determined to leave Oxford, coûte qui coûte. The testy old lady, Alma Mater, was easily persuaded to consign, for a time, to 'country nursing' the froward brat who showed not a whit of filial regard for her. So, after two years, I left Trinity, without a 'little go,' in a high dog-cart—a companion in misfortune too-tooing lustily through a 'yard of tin,' as the dons started up from their game of bowls to witness the departure of the forbidden vehicle. Thus having thoroughly established the fact that I was fit for nothing but to be 'shot at for sixpence a day,' and as those Afghans (how I blessed their name!) had cut gaps in many a regiment, my father provided me with a commission in the Indian army, and started me as quickly as feasible for the 'Land of the Sun.'
"So, my friends and fellow-soldiers, I may address you in the words of the witty thief—slightly altered from Gil Blas—'Blessings on the dainty pow of the old dame who turned me out of her house; for had she shown clemency I should now doubtless be a dyspeptic Don, instead of which I have the honour to be a lieutenant, your comrade.'
"As the Bombay pilot sprang on board, twenty mouths agape over the gangway, all asked one and the same question. Alas! the answer was a sad one!—the Afghans had been defeated—the avenging army had retreated! The twenty mouths all ejaculated a something unfit for ears polite.
"To a mind thoroughly impressed with the sentiment that
'Man wants but little here below,
Nor wants that little long,'
the position of an Ensign in the Hon. E. I. Company's Service is a very satisfactory one. He has a horse or two, part of a house, a pleasant Mess, plenty of pale ale, as much shooting as he can manage, and an occasional invitation to a dance, where there are thirty-two cavaliers to three dames, or to a dinner-party when a chair unexpectedly falls vacant. But some are vain enough to want more, and of these fools was I.
"In India two roads lead to preferment. The direct highway is 'service;'—getting a flesh wound, cutting down a few of the enemy, and doing something eccentric, so that your name may creep into a despatch. The other path, study of the languages, is a rugged and tortuous one, still you have only to plod steadily along its length, and, sooner or later, you must come to a 'staff appointment.' Bien entendu, I suppose you to be destitute of or deficient in Interest whose magic influence sets you down at once a heaven-born Staff Officer, at the goal which others must toil to reach.
"A dozen lessons from Professor Forbes and a native servant on board the John Knox enabled me to land with éclat as a griff, and to astonish the throng of palanquin bearers that jostled, pushed, and pulled me at the pier head, with the vivacity and nervousness of my phraseology. And I spent the first evening in company with one Dosabhai Sohrabji, a white-bearded Parsee, who, in his quality of language-master, had vernacularized the tongues of Hormuzd knows how many generations of Anglo-Indian subalterns.
"The corps to which I was appointed was then in country quarters at Baroda, in the land of Gujerat; the journey was a long one, the difficulty of finding good instructors there was great, so was the expense, moreover fevers abounded; and, lastly, it was not so easy to obtain leave of absence to visit the Presidency, where candidates for the honours of language are examined. These were serious obstacles to success; they were surmounted, however, in six months, at the end of which time I found myself in the novel position of 'passed interpreter in Hindostani.'
"My success—for I had distanced a field of eleven—encouraged me to a second attempt, and though I had to front all the difficulties over again, in four months my name appeared in orders as qualified to interpret in the Guzerattee tongue.
"Meanwhile