The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (Vol. 1&2). Lady Isabel Burton
in her outlandish Persian, pointing to the venerable Darby as he sat in the cool shade, nodding his head and winking his eyes over a pair of pantaloons which took him a month to sew, 'but you should have seen him fifteen years ago, what a wonderful youth he was!'
"The knowledge of one mind is that of a million—after a fashion. I addressed myself particularly to that of 'Darby;' and many an hour of tough thought it took me before I had mastered its truly Oriental peculiarities, its regular irregularities of deduction, and its strange monotonous one-idea'dness.
"Khanum Jan's house was a mud edifice, occupying one side of a square formed by tall, thin, crumbling mud walls. The respectable matron's peculiar vanity was to lend a helping hand in all manner of affaires du cœur. So it often happened that Mirza Abdullah was turned out of the house to pass a few hours in the garden. There he sat upon his felt rug spread beneath a shadowy tamarind, with beds of sweet-smelling basil around him, his eyes roving over the broad river that coursed rapidly between its wooded banks and the groups gathered at the frequent ferries, whilst the soft strains of mysterious, philosophical, transcendental Hafiz were sounded in his ears by the other Mirza, his companion; Mohammed Hosayn—peace be upon him!
"Of all economical studies this course was the cheapest. For tobacco daily, for frequent draughts of milk, for hemp occasionally, for four months' lectures from Mohammed Bakhsh, and for sundry other little indulgences, the Mirza paid, it is calculated, the sum of six shillings. When he left Haydarábád, he gave a silver talisman to the dame, and a cloth coat to her protector: long may they live to wear them!"
"Thus it was I formed my estimate of the native character. I am as ready to reform it when a man of more extensive experience and greater knowledge of the subject will kindly show me how far it transgresses the well-established limits of moderation. As yet I hold, by way of general rule, that the Eastern mind—I talk of the nations known to me by personal experience—is always in extremes; that it ignores what is meant by 'golden mean,' and that it delights to range in flights limited only by the ne plus ultra of Nature herself. Under which conviction I am open to correction.
"Richard F. Burton."
His Books on India.
Richard's works on India are—A grammar of the Játakí, or Belochi dialect. Here I would remark he mixed with the Játs of Sind, a race extending from the mouth of the Indus to the plains of Tartary, and who he believed to be the origin and head of the numerous tribes of Oriental gypsies, and he worked with the Camel men to assimilate himself with them. The next work was a grammar of the Mooltanee language, "Notes on the Pushtû, or Afghan Dialect," Reports to Bombay, (1) "General Notes on Sind," (2) "Notes on the Population of Sind."
These were all preparatory to becoming an author, and were brought out in 1849 by the Royal Asiatic Society, Bombay branch, and the Government Records. I have a single copy of each, but they must be out of print; meantime he prepared "Goa and the Blue Mountains," 1 vol.; "Scinde, or the Unhappy Valley," 2 vols.; and "Sindh and the Races that inhabit the Valley of the Indus," 1 vol.; but these did not appear until 1851.
"Scinde, or the Unhappy Valley," is, I think, the freshest, most witty and spirited thing I ever read. He had not been to war with the critics and Mrs. Grundy then, and there is all the boy's fun and fire in it. "Falconry in the Valley of the Indus" was produced in 1852, and is worthy of any sportsman's attention. That is Van Voorst's, now Gurney and Jackson, whom Richard used to say was the only honest publisher he ever met. It is not out of print. In 1870 appeared "Vikram and the Vampire," 1 vol. These tales are thoroughly witty, and make those laugh heartily who have lived in the East, but it was a great amusement to Richard and me, when the publisher, having accepted "Vikram," which is full of "chaff," said to me with a long face, "My eldest boy and I read over some of the tales last night, and we were so disappointed we could not laugh." I could not help saying drily, "No, I dare say you couldn't."
The last book on India was "Sind Revisited," 2 vols., 1877. It was written in maturer years and after hard experience of the world. It may be more valuable, but to my mind has not the sparkle of twenty-six years earlier. All these eight or ten books, including my own "A.E.I."—"Arabia, Egypt, and India"—brought out in 1879, I boiled down into Christmas books for boys. I took my manuscript (enough for three Christmas books) to David Bogue, King William Street, Strand, and went abroad, and the next thing I heard was, that David Bogue was bankrupt, and my manuscript had disappeared.
I give a few pages in the appendixes out of his first book on Scinde as a sample. One describes his visit to the village of a Scindian chief, a perfect picture of an Oriental visit; the other is a description of a cock-fight. After his transfer to the Goanese Church, his bungalow was nicknamed the "Inquisition," and there he buried Bhujang, when his favourite game-cock departed this life, and people declared it was a baby's grave. For all that my husband said of India, he talked exactly as Mr. Rudyard Kipling writes, and when I read him, I can hear Richard talking; hence I knew how true and to the point are his writings. Also I think Mr. Kipling must have taken his character of "Strickland" from my husband, who mixed with, and knew all about, the natives and their customs, as Strickland did.
During those first seven years in India, Richard passed in Hindostani, Guzaratee, Persian, Maharattee, Sindhee, Punjaubee, Arabic, Telugu, Pushtû (Afghan tongue), with Turkish and Armenian. In 1844 he went to Scinde with the 18th Native Infantry, and Colonel Walter Scott put him on Sir Charles Napier's staff, who soon found out what he was worth, and turned his merits to account, but he accompanied his regiment to Mooltan to attack the Sikhs. He became much attached to his Chief; they quite understood each other, and remained together for five years. Richard's training was of the uncommon sort, and glorious as it was, dangerous as it was, and romantic as it will ever be to posterity, he did not get from dense and narrow-minded Governments those rewards which men who risk their lives deserve, and which would have been given to the man who took care of "number one," and who, with average stupidity, worked on red-tape lines. He was sent out amongst the wild tribes of the hills and plains to collect information for Sir Charles. He did not go as a British officer or Commissioner, because he knew he would see nothing but what the natives chose him to see; he let down a curtain between himself and Civilization, and a tattered, dirty-looking dervish would wander on foot, lodge in mosques, where he was venerated as a saintly man, mix with the strangest company, join the Beloch and the Brahui tribes (Indo-Scythians), about whom there was nothing then known. Sometimes he appeared in the towns; as a merchant he opened a shop, sold stuffs or sweetmeats in the bazar. Sometimes he worked with the men in native dress, "Játs" and Camel men, at levelling canals.
When Richard was in India he at one time got rather tired of the daily Mess, and living with men, and he thought he should like to learn the manners, customs, and habits of monkeys, so he collected forty monkeys of all kinds of ages, races, species, and he lived with them, and he used to call them by different offices. He had his doctor, his chaplain, his secretary, his aide-de-camp, his agent, and one tiny one, a very pretty, small, silky-looking monkey, he used to call his wife, and put pearls in her ears. His great amusement was to keep a kind of refectory for them, where they all sat down on chairs at meals, and the servants waited on them, and each had its bowl and plate, with the food and drinks proper for them. He sat at the head of the table, and the pretty little monkey sat by him in a high baby's chair, with a little bar before it. He had a little whip on the table, with which he used to keep them in order when they had bad manners, which did sometimes occur, as they frequently used to get jealous of the little monkey, and try to claw her. He did this for the sake of doing what Mr. Garner is now doing, that of ascertaining and studying the language of monkeys, so that he used regularly to talk to them, and pronounce their sounds afterwards, till he and the monkeys at last got quite to understand each other. He obtained as many as sixty words, I think twenty more than Mr. Garner—that is, leading words—and he wrote them down and formed a vocabulary, meaning to pursue his studies at some future time. Mr. Garner has now the advantage of phonographs, and all sorts of appliances. Had Richard been alive, he could have helped him greatly. Unfortunately his monkey vocabulary was burnt in Grindlay's fire. He also writes—but this was with his regiment—
Burying a Sányasi.
"Amongst other remarkable experiments made by me, a Sányasi, whom I knew,