VIII. TRIESTE LIFE AGAIN
1881.
Early this year two sad things happened, which interested Richard very much--the death of Carlyle, 5th of February, with all the different opinions expressed at the time; the disappearance of the Rev. Benjamin Speke; and a third was the annexation of Tunis through the medium of our former colleague at Damascus, Monsieur Roustan.
On the 3rd of February we had a very bad earthquake, and if I may quote it as a proof of animals having some knowledge of what is coming, the dog, a large setter, who slept in our rooms, sprang suddenly into our beds, and insisted on getting under the clothes. We were rather frightened, and thought he had gone mad. Richard opened the door, and ordered him to go into the passage; he obeyed, but whined his objections. Two minutes after, we were shaken by an earthquake; so we jumped up and ran to the door and let him in, because we knew what was the matter with him--he looked awfully scared.
We made a day or two's excursion to Monfalcone, and then H.M.S. Iris, Captain (now Admiral) Seymour, came in to meet the Ambassador, Mr. Goschen. We went down to join him in receiving Mr. Goschen, and the Iris started at once for Constantinople.
On the 10th H.I.H. Prince Rudolf came to Trieste to start for the East. Later I had the honour of receiving a telegram from Prince Rudolf to thank me for my "Inner Life of Syria," which he found very useful in his travels in the East.
We went to a village ball at Opçina, which was very amusing. Baron Morpurgo this month gave a grand ball in honour of H.I.H. the Archduke Carl Stefan, to which we were invited.
About this time we had the pleasure of a visit from one of the best women we had ever known, Mrs. Louisa Birt of Liverpool, who is a female Don Bosco, and spends the whole of her time in rescuing poor children from the streets. I believe in one year five thousand had passed through her establishment. At parting she gave me her little bag, with her initials on it, which I have still.
We also had seen a good deal of Lieutenant Karl Weyprecht, of the Austrian Navy, who, with Lieutenant Payer, discovered Franz Josef's Land during the Austrian Arctic Expedition, 1872-74; but this year he died, at the age of forty-three.
We had a short excursion to Laibach, to see the Littai Mines, in Krain, in which Richard was employed as reporter. They are lead and cinnabar, which concession embraces 1 3/5. Now there were great preparations for the return of Prince Rudolf. Of course the Austrian Squadron was in, and he was received with great honour. The City was illuminated, the streets were full; and in the evening there was a grand opera, and three thousand in the theatre. When the Prince entered there was great applause and "Vivas!" ladies clapping hands and waving handkerchiefs; the National Hymn was played, and all stood up for over ten minutes. The people showed immense loyalty, and the Prince left next day.
On the 19th of April Lord Beaconsfield died, and our journals were full of him for several pages. Richard wrote a "Sketch," which made twelve pages of print, which will appear in "Labours and Wisdom." My journal is four pages of lament. As a girl of fifteen, his "Tancred" formed all my ardent desires of an Eastern career, and was my first gate to Eastern knowledge and occult science. As a Statesman I put him on a pedestal as my political Chief and model. He had that peculiar prescience and foresight belonging to his Semitic blood. I think a certain period of things passed away with him. He was one of the last relics of England's greatness. Just as the Duke of Wellington died before the Crimean War, so Lord Beaconsfield foreshadowed England's temporary decline, or fusion into another state of things, and this feeling helped his decay. Anyway, one great man is gone.
We were very fond of going to the fairs, especially where the Hungarian Gypsies congregated. They used to sing, dance, tell fortunes, and Richard talked Romany with them.
We determined this year to take our gout baths from Duino, and not from Monfalcone; it is a forty minutes' drive from Duino to Monfalcone, and the baths are exactly halfway between.
[Sidenote: Duino.]
Duino is a village picturesquely situated on an eminence overhanging the sea, two hours' drive from Trieste, and right in the Karso, the wild stony district before described. This village and castle remind one of old times. The village is completely towered over and dominated by the feudal castle and fortress of the Hohenlöhes, which stand on the rocky cliff, once surrounded by a keep, a moat, and a drawbridge in which now grow flowers. The village and everything around them is theirs, and their flag flies from the tower. The Prince, who was a very handsome man, died in 1868, and is buried in the family vault in the chapel. The Princess (the châtelaine), who is a sad invalid, was in her youth a beautiful, gentle, aristocratic blonde, full of talent and esprit. She was a Countess Della Torre (de la Tour d'Auvergne), Thurn being the Austrian branch. Her early history was very romantic. She resides there, and has two sons and three daughters, of which one is married to Prince Thurn and Taxis, and one son to a young and pretty Countess Kaünitz. The rural inn of the village was within a stone's-throw of the castle, and we remained there for six weeks taking the baths, and living every day in their pleasant society. The castle is filled with antiquities, family relics, old china, and is one of the show places of the country. It has its ghost (a white lady), and amongst other curiosities is a small portrait of a family saint, the famous Cardinal Hohenlöhe. The old Salle d'Armes (all the ancient armoury was stolen by the French) is made to represent a cave under the sea, full of shells and stalactites against a white sand wall, which, lit up at night, look like diamonds.
The grounds and shrubberies descend to the sea, where there is a bath-house, and where we used to have great fun swimming. On the opposite side is an old ruined castle in which Dante took refuge, and it is said the scene suggested his "Inferno," but it is more likely that the Caves of Adelsberg did that. The park is not quite our idea of a park; it is a space enclosed in four walls, with four large gateways, bearing armorial carvings. The ground is stony, covered with holm oak, in which the deer and birds flourish. It is closed against smugglers; the only lock has a secret, and the key is kept by one old retainer. In the old days the smugglers put out the eyes of a celebrated stag reindeer which always followed them. The tiny village inn is not uncomfortable, if you do not mind roughing it; there is a post, a telegraph office, and a Catholic chapel, belonging to the castle, and the only drawbacks are bad food and forty minutes' drive to reach a train, the Princesses having very sensibly, for their own peace, refused to have a station. The Trieste Sunday-trippers and ill-treaters of animals cannot get so far, so it is beautifully still and rural. There is a pretty bay, and an old monastery some way off, which is a pleasant walk.
We went for a day or two to Trieste to meet Lord Bath, and we came in for a scientific excursion by ship, with two hundred people, to Sipar, to Salona, and Pirano, where there was a band and dancing and lunch.
About this time, on April 30th, died Gessi Pasha, at Suez; he was Gordon's right-hand man.
We had charming walks to hunt for castellieri.[1] We walked to Slivno, to Ronchi; drove to Atila's Palace, and got some curios from the ruins. We drove out also to see some new caves, and once we all drove together to see a Sagra, or village dance, at Monfalcone, and going in we sat in the carriage to hear the band. Here I must relate a little story showing the force of imagination:--
In the carriage were two of the Princesses, Richard, and me. Suddenly, at the top of a roof, I caught sight of a rat, which appeared to me to be fascinated and spellbound by the music. "Look!" I said. "Don't move; but watch that rat, fascinated by the music." So we all sat and watched it, and thought it a most interesting fact in nature, that rats should share this in common with lizards and snakes and other things. We all saw it move; we all saw its head turn and its tail move, and we kept still, not to frighten it away. It lasted so long, however, that we were compelled to drive on; and next day we sent to inquire, and we found it was made of painted tin, and fixed to the top of a house--an Italian scherzo!
We then went on to Gorizia--already described--where we dined with Mr. Frederick Smart and his mother, a most beautiful, sweet, and venerable Italian lady, his sister, Mrs. Fehr, and Mr. and Mrs. Baird. Richard afterwards went to study bees with Father Pauletic, of the Deaf and Dumb Institute.
We used to spend many hours on the rocks with the Princesses, fishing for crabs, swimming, boating, telling ghost stories, and playing cards. Here we read Sinnett's "Occult World," which I reviewed.
The Princess's married son lives at Sagrado--a comfortable gentleman's seat, with a park, stags, good stables, and an unrivalled view. It has a remarkable bath-house in the park. They were both charming people, and we enjoyed our visit to them very much.
On the 24th of June, Mr. and Mrs. Freeman, of Somerleaze, and their two daughters (one since became Mrs. Arthur Evans) came over to Duino to see us. It was the day of the horse-fair with the Hungarian Gypsies, which afforded them some amusement. We were very sorry to leave Duino and our friends; but all pleasant things come to an end, and we had to go down to Trieste to prepare to receive our own Squadron.
On the 11th of this month our friend, Mr. Andrew Wilson, aged fifty-one, the author of the "Abode of Snow," one of those who wrote the little sketch of Richard's career, died.
From Truth, July 7, 1881.
"Dear Mistress Truth,--I am truly flattered by the genial and un-Grundy-like 'Anecdotal Photograph' of my Husband.
"But, dear Madam, allow me one word. Don't let your readers confound a bruise on the brow with a spear-wound through the mouth, splitting the palate-bone, and received in a 'thrilling fight' when some three hundred and fifty savages made a night attack on four Englishmen. Captain Burton usually spares Society any allusion to his adventures, but at times 'lions' are expected to roar, and are held contumacious if they keep silence.
"Knowing you only by good report, I do myself the pleasure of enclosing my card, and of requesting you, dear Madam, to believe me
"Your admirer,
"ISABEL BURTON.
"Trieste, June 29th."
[Sidenote: Our Squadron.]
On the 1st of July H.M.S. Iris, the avant courier of the Squadron, arrived. The Squadron itself arrived on the 7th. Richard and I went on board an hour later, to every ship--there were eleven all told--to invite the Captains and officers to a night fête-champêtre and ball at Opçina, as we wanted, as early as possible in the beginning of their visit, to put them on cordial terms with our friends in the City.
We issued eight hundred invitations to the Captains and officers of our Squadron, the Captains and officers of the Austrian Navy and other Men-of-war anchored there, the Colonels and officers of the Austrian regiments stationed there, the Governor and family and Staff, all the Austrian authorities, the Consular corps, the chief English and Americans, the private friends, who numbered about a hundred and fifty of the cream of Trieste, the Press, Austrian-Lloyd's, and the Police.
We created a kind of Vauxhall in the grounds surrounding the Inn at Opçina. In a large field at the back of the Inn we had eight tables fifty feet long; a hut for tea, coffee, and refreshments, one of barrels of wine and beer, to be drawn off and served at the tables, a large wooden ball-room, three tents for toilettes, or for resting, and seats and benches all round, raised like an amphitheatre, for those who wanted to watch. These were adorned with five hundred and fifty large bouquets of flowers, several thousand coloured lamps, and two hundred flags of all nations. There were four entrances, each with transparencies exhibiting illuminated sentences, such as "Welcome!" "Ave!" "Austria and England" crossed. The English Admiral and the Austrian Commander-in-Chief each lent us their bands. We had no end of fireworks, and Catherine wheels, and Bengal lights. Austrian-Lloyd's lent us forty stewards; the Chief of Police lent us a cordon of police to keep the ground. Every omnibus and carriage in the place was engaged to bring up such guests as had not their own private carriages, and I chose twelve aide-de-camps to help me to make the affair go off; in short, we looked forward to having a regular good time.
Everything was in high gala, and the first waltz had begun, when the weather, which had been as dry as a bone all the summer till that moment, suddenly opened out; and it did not rain, but it poured in buckets, with tremendous thunder and lightning. It just lasted two hours, putting out all our lamps, damping our fireworks, reducing our transparencies to pulp; there was a regular sauve qui peut to the inn. The police went for the drinking-booth, and were soon incapable; the mob broke in; they seized all the best things to eat and drink, they jumped on the plates and dishes and broke them. Richard looked up to the sky and ejaculated, "So like Provy!" I cried with rage and mortification for a few minutes, and then, rallying round, Richard and I got a party of young men to the rescue, who went and cleared the grounds, already over ankle-deep in mud; they rescued all that was left of food and drink. I got another party to clear away the furniture of the lower part of the Inn, set the two bands to work in different parts, and my friends to dancing, whilst my aide-de-camps and I rigged up several supper-rooms. I had forty waiters from Lloyd's, but half of them had followed the example of the police. Our friends, quite unconscious of the havoc behind the scenes, danced right merrily the whole night, and supped, and were good-natured enough to enjoy themselves thoroughly with the greatest good humour; and the party did not break up until five.
I went out into the back scenes, where I found that my own things were being sold at the bar of the inn, to our own Squadron's bandsmen, at a big price. I soon put a stop to that, and obliged the vendors to restore them their money, and gave them their suppers and wine. It was a pandemonium. The natives were all too far gone to know me, so that I could hardly get any order obeyed; they were breaking bottles of wine, two together, like clashing cymbals. The tipsy coachmen were dancing with the tipsy villagers, and every now and then they jumped on a dish, or destroyed property in other ways. It was not encouraging, but it was useless to struggle against the inevitable, so I only saw that the Squadron bandsmen got all they wanted without paying for it. (Such is the wild animal when it can do what it likes without restraint.)
Meanwhile we managed to do a lot of fireworks, and everything went off beautifully. After all our guests were departed, Everard Primrose and Mr. Welby, the well-known popular attaché, finding their coachman helplessly drunk, put him inside the carriage, and got on the box and drove themselves down; and the very last thing of all was seeing our staggering, hiccoughing policemen into omnibuses to go down to Trieste. Thus ended our first fête for the Squadron. The damage the natives did us was immense, as we borrowed all our plates and dishes from a Company, and any one can imagine what that would be, to give a sit-down supper to eight hundred people.
[Sidenote: Our Squadron leaves.]
The Emperor, who always honours the English fleet--the only one he notices--ordered entertainments to be given, one at the castle at Miramar, and the other by the Austrian Admiral; so on the 11th came off the dinner at Miramar, and on the 13th the Austrian Admiral's dinner. Then the English Admiral gave us a dinner, and then a ball was given by H.M.S. Alexandra, where the officers kindly asked me to help them to receive the Trieste guests. On the 14th we had "teas" on board the Invincible and the Alexandra, and Admiral Beauchamp Seymour's (now Lord Alcester) dinner; the 15th, a tea-party on board the Falcon, and a ball on the Superb. On the 16th we organized a monster picnic to the Caves of Adelsberg, which were illuminated expressly. On the 17th Baron Morpurgo gave a banquet with music, and then followed our dinner to the Captains of the Men-of-war. The fleet departed on the 18th, and we went round to say good-bye. Baron Marco Morpurgo kindly gave us a steamer to see the fleet off; he provided refreshments and music, and we asked our best friends to join. The flagship Alexandra moved first, the ships forming two lines behind her. We steamed in our little vessel alongside the flagship, at a proper distance, till we escorted them out of our Gulf for about a couple of hours; then, shooting ahead, we stopped our engines, dipped our flag thrice, cheered, and turned back, cheering every ship as we passed. They all played "Auld Lang Syne" and "Good-bye, Sweetheart, Good-bye." It was the prettiest sight in the world on a summer evening in the Gulf of Trieste, to see that "going out," and we were awfully sorry to lose them. Captain Selby, of H.M.S. Falcon, was left behind to pick up deserters. We dined with him after parting with the Squadron, and some of his men did a very pretty hornpipe in the moonlight to amuse us.
It is wonderful how popular our sailors became at Trieste; they did such fresh, innocent, playful sort of jokes, and withal so manly and so generous, that they cannot but fail to attract foreigners, whose soldiers and sailors are much more like a patent machine. Most respectable families of the middle classes made great friendships with them, and received them into their families in intimacy, and I am told that they say that the men save up all their money for coming to Trieste. When they fraternized with the Austrian soldiers and sailors, who had not much money in their pockets, they always treated them, which won all hearts.
One man, who evidently had not tasted beer for a long time, went to the Café Specchi, where he asked for a bottle of beer (they are very small); he drank it, paid for it, and called for another. I was not there, but rumour said that he did not get up till he had drank fifty of these little bottles, and had collected quite a crowd around him. One day they were larking about, and they ran away bodily with an old woman's fruit-stall, she following them shrieking. When they had had their fun out of her, they ran back with it, and put it down again, and then gave her two and sixpence. She was so delighted that she wanted them to do it again, and called after them every time they passed, asking them to run away with her stall, like a big child. Another day a lot of them played leap-frog in the Piazza. The Triestines had never seen leap-frog, consequently quite a crowd collected. Once a party of them went into the market, and they each bought one of those large feather kitchen blowers, which they used like fans, and then they came back joining arms and dancing a step all down the street, fanning themselves. All these things "fetched" the Triestines immensely.
One day I saw one of them standing by the Austrian Admiral's garden; an apple tree hung over into the road, so he plucked an apple and ate it. He was in the public road, and of course the apple had no business there. Immediately the sentry came out, and a crowd of soldiers and sailors around him were all jabbering at him. He looked at them quietly, and went on munching his apple till they touched him, and then he gave a sort of a quiet, sweeping back-hander, which knocked one or two of them down. I foresaw a row, so I stepped up to him and said, "I am your Consul's wife, and I want to tell you that they are trying to make you understand that those are the Austrian Admiral's apples, and that you must not eat them." So he smiled and said, "I am sure I am exceedingly obliged to you, ma'am. I did not know that there was any reason why I should not eat the apple, and I wondered what they were all jabbering at me for." And he saluted and went. Then I explained to the irritated men that he had not known; that he did not understand a word they said, and that if an apple was in the road, it seemed as if any one might take it, and that he was very sorry that he had not understood. When the Squadron left Trieste, eighteen of them hid, and did not join their ships; and when at last they were caught, and brought off, they said, "It was such a ---- ideal place that they had not really the heart to leave it." I begged Captain Selby so hard not to punish them much. And he said, "Oh no, the darlings! Wait until I get them on board a ship; I'll have them tucked up comfortably in bed with a nice hot grog." We then had a visit from Captain Maude, who had got a little longer leave.
We never saw poor Captain Selby again, as he was afterwards murdered.
[Sidenote: We go to Veldes.]
On the 8th of August we started for a new trip, and went viâ Laibach to Veldes, viâ Radmannsdorf. Veldes consists of a lake, with a few houses around, chiefly people's villas, and a very comfortable inn (Mallner's). It is a lovely spot, but rather shut in. This place has its little romance. We rowed about two hours in a boat to a small island in the middle of the lake. On the island is a little church, and the house of a peasant family who keep the church. In the church is a long rope, by which you ring a bell (a big church bell); it is called the "wishing bell." You kneel down and wish for something, and pray for it, and then you get up and ring the bell. If you have several wishes, they say you are sure to get the first. After I had finished, Richard rowed off to a spring, and I went and visited the people. There was an old man of ninety, his daughter, her daughter, and a baby--four generations. After talking to them for some time, I noticed a little carved wooden figure of Death with a scythe, and I said, "Oh, do you know, there is something in this little cottage that I rather envy you." "What is that?" said the old man. I said, "That death figure." "Why," he said, "ladies are generally frightened of that;" but he added, "I could not part with that. My grandfather carved it when he was a boy. I am over ninety; it must have been there for a hundred and fifty years. We have a superstition that it keeps us alive to a great old age." I said, "Pray excuse me; I had no idea that it had any importance attached to it, or I would not have noticed it." And I turned the conversation to other things; but when I got up to go, he said, "What did you mean to give me for that death's head?" I said, "Why, hardly anything--perhaps a couple of florins; you must forget that I said such a thing." "Oh no," he said, "I could not afford to lose so much money as that." So the end of it was that I gave him five florins, and brought away the skeleton, and we were both delighted, and I mean to leave it when I die to the person whose life is most important to the country.
Now, Richard was absent without leave from F.O., but of course he never left without the Consulate being in the charge of the Vice-Consul, and all money affairs settled. We were dreadfully frightened of meeting any one we knew. Think of our horror when we saw coming into the restaurant the Chaplain of the Embassy at Vienna--our Chief's Chaplain! Fortunately, the Rev. G. L. Johnston was one of the most charming and gentlemanly men I ever saw. Richard bolted up to bed; but I thought it would be wiser to take the bull by the horns, so I went up to him, and confided our difficulty to him. He burst out laughing, and said, "My dear child, I am just doing exactly the same thing myself." I ran upstairs and fetched Richard down again.
We then went on to Tarvis and St. Michele, and from thence to Salzburg; it was a seventeen hours' journey with many changes of train. Salzburg is a beautiful place, and its Hôtel Europa one of the dearest and best I ever was in. We had come up to a Scientific Congress, and passed our time with Count Würmbrandt the Governor of Istria, Count Bombelles, in attendance on Prince Rudolf, Prince Windisgrätz, Professor Müllner, Abbate Glübich, the African travellers Holúb and Nachtigall, all scientific men. We had an expedition to the salt mines, and went to the bottom of the mines, and the museum, which is lovely and of great interest. Then we went to Lend, where we took a four-horse carriage, and had a magnificent three-hours' drive up the Salz Kammergut, reaching Gastein at five o'clock, one of the most beautiful places in Austria, and were enchanted with the scenery, the air, and the waterfall. Richard and I used to sit out and read and look at the view all day. Then we took train to Steinach-Irding, to visit Mr. Zech, the proprietor of Shepherd's Hotel, Cairo. He was a good and jolly old man, with a nice gentlemanly son, a Parisian wife, and some married daughters. Other members of the family also arrived, and presently came a little officer who had lost his way. We were heartily welcomed; it was a Liberty Hall, comfortable, hospitable, and you were expected to ask for everything you wanted. We then started for Ischl. The whole Court was here; it was a very pretty place, situated between two rivers, with beautiful air and a very fashionable promenade, and we were very gay. There were illuminations and fireworks for Prince Rudolf's birthday, and a very amusing little German theatre.
[Sidenote: We part company--I am sent to Maríenbad.]
Here, at Ischl, Richard and I parted company. I was ordered to go to Maríenbad; Richard returned to Steinach-Irding, to Steyr, and back to Steinach, and from there to Vienna.
I had an eighteen-hours' journey, changing trains three times, baggage twice visited. I first had to get from Jehl to Wels, there to change for Passau, thence to Regensburg, where we again changed train; then began bad driving and bad manners, and I turned round to somebody and said, "My dear Austrians are not quite so nice or civil up here, as they are in other parts," and my fellow-traveller said, "Oh, don't you know, you are just crossing a corner of Prussia for a couple of hours;" after which we picked up the niceness of Austria once more. From Regensburg to Eger, and from thence to Maríenbad, completed the journey. Hôtel Klinger is very comfortable, and Dr. Basch, to whom I was recommended, was out with the Emperor Maximilian in Mexico. You hardly see any English at Maríenbad, but Austrians, Hungarians, Bohemians of course, and many Jews, chiefly Polish.
The cure is an unlimited quantity of Kreuzbrunner water at six o'clock a.m., with an hour's walk, an exquisite band--just as good as Godfrey's, if not better--playing the while. The Maríenbad band is, I think, the best I have ever heard; the conductor is a very big "swell," and has lots of decorations. Later you have fifteen minutes' bath of Marien Quelle, which is wonderfully electric, and then you have a Moor-fuss-bad, which means mud up to the knees. To a novice this sort of thing is very amusing; to see the procession to the springs, almost like a religious procession, each with a glass in their hand. I think all this is a great mistake for some people, and only produces congestion--I think that Maríenbad exhales congestion out of the very ground. I found a good German professor to read with, and I established a little branch for prevention of cruelty to animals, which was very much needed, especially by the dogs which draw the carts.
I here made acquaintance with Madame Olga di Novikoff, who certainly kept me from feeling dull, for she was capital company--most amusing, and was to me a new and interesting study of the sort of life that one reads so much of, but in England rarely meets.
[Sidenote: The Scientific Congress at Venice.]
On the 7th of September I was so ill that I did not know how to get to Vienna, but I had myself put into a coupé to myself, with room to lie down, and I never stirred off it during the eleven hours and forty minutes viâ Pilsen and Budweis to Vienna, when at the station Richard awaited me with the information that he had got a dinner-party to meet me, and so I had to dress and receive. We had after this one delightful dinner and evening with Baron Pino and his wife at Hietzing, and next day we went down to Trieste. We just changed baggage and went to Venice for the great Geographical Congress, which was opened on the 15th. The illuminations at Venice were something to remember all one's life, every bit of tracery of the buildings, and especially that of St. Marco, being picked out with little lamps, and the artistic part of it was to throw the electric light only on the Basilica. I never in my life saw, and never shall again see, anything to equal it. Lady Layard gave a party to all the English and Americans, and the chief of the Venetian Society. Captain Vernon Lovett-Cameron, R.N., V.C., was staying with us, and we collected around us all the pleasantest people there at our breakfasts and dinners. The regatta was also a never-to-be-forgotten sight. The King and Queen were there. All the gondolas represented some country; there were the old Venetian gondoliers, there were Esquimaux, there were troubadours--you could not imagine a country or character that was not represented; and every gondola that assumed no character was dressed in gala array, and their men in gondolier uniform and sash. Ours was covered with pale blue velvet. Another day was the opening of the gardens of St. Giobbe by the Royalties. Here, amongst other friends, we met Mr. Labouchere, General de Horsey, who was a very dear friend of Richard's, General Fielding, and many others. There was a night serenade on the water with every boat illuminated, which was also a grand sight.
Captain Cameron was wild with spirits, and we had many amusing episodes and one especial sort of picnic day at the Lido, where, just as Lord Aberdare and some of the primmest people of the Congress were coming, Richard and he insisted on taking off their shoes and stockings and digging mud-pies, like two naughty little boys, and they kept calling out to me, "Look, nurse, we have made such a beautiful pie," and "Please tell Dick not to touch my spade." I could not speak to the people for laughing, especially as some of them looked so grave. However, Richard was exceedingly angry, as he had a good right to be. Here was a Geographical Congress just outside the City of which he was Consul, and, as if it had been done on purpose to let him down before foreigners, he was not only not asked to be the representative from Austria, but not even asked to meet his fellow-geographers, not even asked to take any part in it, not even asked to speak at it; so he held himself entirely aloof from them, as far as Congress was concerned, and he left his card in the Congress-room with the following squib, as spoken by the British representatives from London to Venice:--
"We're Saville Row's selected few, Let all the rest be damned; The pit is good enough for you, We won't have boxes crammed."
Would they have ventured so to treat Stanley or Livingstone or any other Traveller? No! they would not. Every nation had put forth its best men, but it must be acknowledged--whether it is jealousy or what, I cannot imagine--ours get crushed and ignored on every possible occasion, and the men of intellectual straw shoot up to make fools of themselves and their country. The following letter was sent afterwards to Richard by our old friend, H. W. Bates:--
"1, Saville Row, Burlington Gardens, W., October 1st, 1881.
"DEAR BURTON,
"I read your very amusing and clever account of the Venice Congress in the Academy before receiving your letter of the 26th. There cannot be any doubt that your estimate of the meeting is correct, and that it was a vain show without any serious import for science. But then the question arises, 'Who expected it to be otherwise?' We in London did not. A proof of which, take the fact that the R.G.S. did not send anything for exhibition. Lord Aberdare to a certain extent represented us there, but there was no intention, as far as I know, of British geographical science being represented there for serious purposes, because nobody here believed anything serious would be done at the Congress. Notwithstanding all this, I cannot understand how it came to pass, that you and Cameron were not asked to take the active part that was your due in the meetings and discussions. Nobody of course wanted geographical information, but for the European éclat of the thing you ought to have been put forward.
"Yours sincerely,
"H.W. BATES.
"P.S.--You will not see a word about Venice in our October number. We shall perhaps give a page about it in November, if I can get authentic report of what little work was done. Can you supply it, i.e. a dry, serious compte-rendu, professionally?
"Mrs. Burton's communication has not yet arrived. Give my kind regards to her."
On the 24th we all broke up and went back to Trieste. Captain Cameron then came to us at Trieste, and Colonel Gould, and Abbate Glübich.
On the 18th of November Richard, who had all this while been arranging the journey with Captain Cameron, had been employed by a private speculator to go out to the West Coast of Africa, especially to the Guinea Coast, and to report on certain mines there, which Richard had discovered in 1861-64 (when he was Consul for that coast, and was wandering about, discovering and publishing his discoveries), if he could conscientiously give a good one. He was to have all his expenses paid, a large sum for his report, and shares in the mines; so on the 18th of November we embarked at two o'clock in the day.
We left the quay at four, hung on to a buoy outside the breakwater till midnight, and then left by the Demerara steamship (Cunard), Captain Jones, from Trieste to Venice. At six a.m. we anchored in a rolling sea, with a heavy fog a couple of miles outside the Lido, but at twelve it lifted sufficiently to let us see the entrance to Malamocco, and we got in. It was so raw, damp, and thick, and cold to the bones, that everybody was ill, and we took rooms at the Britannia so long as the ship should stay. We then had a splendid passage to Fiume, where we had a very pleasant time with old friends for nearly a week. On the 25th we had just finished writing up the biography, when they came to tell me that the ship had to sail that day, which caused me a good deal of sorrow, as I was to be left at Fiume; my expenses were not paid, and we personally had not enough money for two, so Richard was to go on to the Guinea Coast alone. I watched the ship till it was out of sight, and felt very lonely. I had supper with Consul Faber, and we looked over his splendid book of "Fishes," which was going home to the "Fisheries." The next day we had an expedition to Tersate with Count and Countess Hoyos, and the following day I went back to Trieste. Meantime Richard went on to Petras and Zante, Messina, Sardinia, Gibraltar, Lisbon, and Madeira. Then arrived at Trieste Lady Mary Primrose, now Lady Mary Hope (Everard Primrose's sister).
1882.
[Sidenote: Life and Incidents of Trieste.]
Our usual parties took place, the children's, the servants', the English party, and the Foreign party; that was a regular Christmas thing.
About this time, at the end of January, arrived Mdlle. Sara Bernhardt, who gave us three or four performances. I had the pleasure of calling on her, and found her very charming, and she wrote something for me. Her performance enchanted every one; but the theatre, the only one disengaged, was quite unworthy of her.
This year I fretted dreadfully at Richard's absence, and not being allowed to join him, and made myself quite ill. I worked at my usual occupations for the poor, and preventing cruelty to animals, studying and writing, and carrying out all the numerous directions contained in his letters.
On the 25th we got the intelligence of poor Captain Selby's (of H.M.S, Falcon) death, who was murdered by Albanian shepherds. Two hours after his skull had been broken by the axe of the assailants, he was able to climb on board the ship, and died on the 22nd of February, 1882. He was a brave and good man, and could ill be spared.
On the 1st of March I had a telegram from the present Lord Houghton to tell me that his father lay dangerously ill at Athens. He arrived himself at Trieste on the 4th, and I saw him off the same day to Athens.
I got a sort of feverish cold in April, and was confined to my bed, and I was very much surprised at getting a summons to the Tribunal. My doctor (Professor Liebman) arrived, and I said, "I wonder what I am wanted at the Tribunal for; I have not done anything wrong that I know of?" and he said, "I shall certainly write and say that you cannot come." Later in the day my door opened, and in marched a solemn procession of gentlemen in black, with pens and ink and papers. I was rather taken aback, and asked them "what they wanted." They then produced a letter in Italian, which purported to be, though it was very incorrect, a translation of a letter I had written to Mr. Arthur Evans in Herzegovina. They asked me what I knew about Mr. Evans. I said, "I know nothing but good of him; but why do you ask?" "Because," they said, "he is in prison for conspiring against the Austrian Empire." "Oh," I said, "what has he done?" They said, "You must know something about it, because you have written to warn him. What do you know?" I said, "I only know that I heard some of the officers here saying that he was meddling in what did not concern him, and that, if they could catch him off civilized ground, they would hang him up to the first tree, and as I know his wife and her family, and they are my own compatriots, I thought I would write and say to him, 'What are you doing? Whatever it is, leave it off, as you are incurring ill will in Austria by it.'" I meant to be very kind, but I ought not to have done it, as it not only vexed Mrs. Evans, whom I liked very much, but unluckily, as the post was slow between Trieste and Herzegovina, it did not reach until after he had been put into political confinement, and consequently the authorities had opened it, read it, and had it translated, and had summoned me to give an account of myself. However, on my assuring them that I knew nothing but what I had heard from themselves, they were quite satisfied, and took their departure.
It was now discovered by Professor Liebman that I had the germs of an internal complaint of which I am suffering at present, possibly resulting from my fall downstairs in Paris in 1879. I had noticed all this year that I had been getting weaker and weaker in the fencing-school, and sometimes used to turn faint, and Reich (my fencing-master) used to say, "Why, what is the matter with you? Your arms are getting so limp in using the broadsword." I did not know, but I could not keep up for long at a time. I think I went no more after that.
Nigh six months had passed, and it was now time for me to go and meet Richard at Liverpool, so I left the 18th of April, spending a few happy days in Vienna, thence to Paris and Boulogne, where I found a howling tempest. Two houses had been destroyed, a steamer was signalling distress, and the Hôtel Impérial Pavilion had to open its back door to let me in, the gale being too strong in front. I had brought a Trieste girl with me as maid, whose class or race did not admit of the wearing of hat or bonnet. They wanted to turn me out of the church at Boulogne, because the girl was bareheaded, and I had to explain that nothing would induce her to wear one for fear of losing caste. I got off in a very bad sea two days later, and to London on the 3rd of May.
On the 15th I went up to Liverpool. Richard and Captain Cameron arrived in the African mail Loanda on the 20th, and there was a great dinner that night, given by the Liverpudlians to welcome them back. It was a great success, and they were all very merry. On the 22nd we came up to London, but no sooner did we arrive there, than Richard was taken quite ill and had to go to bed. He was to have lectured at the Society of Arts, but he could not, which was an awful disappointment to them and to us; but he soon got well under home care, and he lectured on the 31st at the Anthropological.
[Sidenote: Gold in West Africa.]
He notices in his journal the death of the poet and artist, Gabriel Rossetti, on the 10th of April, and Darwin's death on the 19th. We were immediately occupied in bringing out "To the Gold Coast for Gold" (2 vols,), where he gives an account of the different places to which he and Captain Cameron went, the chief place being Axim, on the Guinea coast. There were two obstacles which were deemed fatal to success. One was Ashantee obstruction, and the other was the expense of transporting machinery and working still labour in a wild country, a lack of hands, and the climate; but they were only bugbears. "He knew nothing to equal it as to wealth, either in California or in Brazil. Gold dust was panned by native women from the sands of the seashore, gold spangles glittered after showers in the streets of Axim; their washings weighed from half an ounce to four ounces per ton. The gold is there, and it is our fault if it stays there. We have in our hands the best of workmen--the tireless machine, the steam navvy, and the quartz stamp; and those called 'Long Tom' and 'Broad Tom' would do more work in a day than a whole gang of negroes."
He says that in the last century the Gold Coast exported to Europe three and a half millions of sterling gold, but the abolition of slavery and manumissions brought it down to £126,000 value. A few years ago England's annual supply was £25,000,000, and was then (1882) £18,000,000. England wants gold, and he says that the Gold Coast can supply it to any amount that England may want. There was a threatened action a while ago about the way the moneys were supplied for the carrying out of these mines, called the Guinea Coast Trial. My husband was not employed to take charge, or to work there, and nearly all who were sent out (with one or two notable exceptions) thought more of feathering their own nests, even for a couple of years, than of the public good; hence the thing failed, but will live again.
[Sidenote: Mining.]
My husband was passionately fond of mining for the sake of developing the resources of any country in which he travelled and made discoveries. I was always sorry when he got on the mine track, because he always ended in one way. Shady people, partially or wholly dishonest, would praise up his knowledge to the skies. They would sometimes go so far as to send him to the spot, to draw up a report of such or such a mine; with written (legal) agreements contracting to pay him perhaps £2000 or more for his report, his expenses paid, and shares in the mine. As soon as they got his report, they would ask him to come home, and send some one else to run the mine down. Nevertheless they made their own money out of it. I always trembled, but I always helped him all I could whenever any of these grand money plans were on hand, because it interested him; and I keep and leave to my heirs all the correspondence and agreements concerning them, as well as other matters of business.
He did his work in his simple, gentlemanly, scientific way, fully knowing the worth of the mine, but nothing about business. Then, as soon as they had got all his secrets and information from him, they would send their own agent, who in one case pretended that he could not find the spot, purposely avoiding to take the guide Richard had commissioned for the purpose. But the chief speculator did find them, and sell them too, although Richard never got a penny for his trouble. He never knew how to get himself paid without going to law, which they knew was undesirable for a Consul, and, so far from getting anything, very often he was largely out of pocket. He was very much out of pocket about the Guinea Coast Mines, and, had the trial threatened by Mr. Johns come off, I should have asked to have been subpœnaed, as my husband was dead, and I should have produced all the papers and his depositions written before his death, and asked to be refunded his losses. In the Khedivial Mines of Midian he dropped much money in expenses, which Ismail Khedive was to have paid him back, but never did. However, this last only resulted from the accident of abdication, and not with intent to hurt him. The others were men that he ought never to have pitted himself against; that is, pitted the straightforward, unsuspecting ignorance of a gentleman against men who have been bred for generations to know how much percentage they can get out of the fraction of a farthing.
I purposely omit names, as I do not care to hurt anybody unless necessary. These very mines, which I believe Mr. Johns and his Board have been depreciating so much, have been bought by a man who knew the gold mine well, and because of its wealth has acquired it from the natives. He says (1893), "Ever since it was ruined by the weakness of the directors in London, and the utter incapacity or worse of the managers on the Guinea Coast, the natives themselves have been mining it and getting lots of gold out of it, and the writer has just bought it up again." The thing became a failure entirely through incapacity and dishonesty abroad, as will be proved by the success of the mine in proper hands. I had at one time several lumps of quartz with bits of gold sticking out of it, which Richard picked up himself on the property.
About eight weeks before Richard died, he dictated a paper to me, and left papers in my hands which thoroughly prove that he had lost instead of receiving, and that what he did receive was demanded back again; and though not obliged, he did pay it, even his own expenses going out and coming home to make the reports for their benefit, for which he was promised such good payment.[2]
[Sidenote: African Mines.]
He said West Africa has been called the "White Man's Grave." Bombay and Zanzibar both have had the same reputation, and to sleep ashore was considered certain death; but English officials now live ashore in both, and though no European is fever-proof in Africa, Englishmen who take precautions are pretty healthy. As for labour, if the natives won't undertake it they can get any amount of Indian coolies and Chinese. Richard said, "What Africa wants is an honest man at the head, and machinery;" and almost the last thing that he ever said to me upon business matters was, "Whatever interests I may have in the West Coast of Africa, or in Midian, I mean to stick to, and if you survive me, do you stick to them."
From the Press.
"WEST AFRICAN MINES.
"When Sir Richard Burton was invited to go to the Gold Coast in search of the precious metal to which that region owes its name, he is reported to have said, 'Geography is good, but gold is better.' The result of his expedition, in which Commander Cameron took part, was to establish the fact that the Gold Coast still deserves its name, and many attempts have been made of late years to exploit the district. The Governor of the colony has recently sent a very careful report on the gold-mining industry to Lord Knutsford, based to a great extent upon personal observations. The conclusions he arrives at are that the country is rich in gold, and that earnest and well-considered attempts are being made to work the mines, the chief difficulty being the want of labourers, who would have to be imported, probably from China.
"Every two or three years Captain Burton appears like a meteor in London, and in that City of four millions he invariably succeeds in creating a stir. However hurried his visitations, his presence is keenly felt. He wakes up the learned Societies, startles the Geographers, is the hero of banquets, and drops a new book in his wake. As we all know, his early exploits have become a part of the history of our times, and in our annals of discovery or daring there is nothing to beat his work in Africa--tracking the secret sources of Old Nile, or his famous pilgrimage to Mecca. As time goes on, the grass does not grow beneath his feet. A man cannot set the Thames on fire every day, but he has lived to do many wonders. Cast away as he is to the east of Venice, and chained to his post at Trieste--doomed by perverse fate to an isolation that must be almost as irksome as the rock of St. Helena to Napoleon[3]--when he ought to be in some splendid position worthy of his powers, Captain Burton makes the most of leisure and leave of absence. If we do not hear of him and there is no sign, we may be sure he is not losing time. Either he is deep in some hard literary enterprise, such as his recent translation of the epic of Portugal, 'The Lusiads,' or he is off on some fresh quest interesting to science or to the multitude. He has just now returned from his old haunts, West Africa, and he comes this time in his familiar character of Gold-finder."
"MINING ON THE GOLD COAST.
"To the Editor of the Mining World and Engineering Record.
"Sir,--Some months have passed since my last communication. I have had little to say, and was unwilling to intrude upon your valuable space. Now, however, the state of things has changed, and I am compelled once more to apply to you for hospitality.
"It is a pleasure to see the Gold Coast taking its proper place in your columns. The Mining World of November 10th contains three separate notices, highly encouraging to those who, like myself, thoroughly believe in the vast mineral wealth of our ill-fated colony, in the facility of 'getting' the metal, and in the manageability of the climate, which is certainly not worse than was that of Bombay at the beginning of the present century. I remark with satisfaction that the 'debauched, incapable' class, at first sent out, faute de mieux, has been gradually improved off, and that able men are taking its place. Lastly, I am delighted to observe that at least one of the new-comers has proposed to adopt the style of work especially adapted for the Gold Coast, and has determined to preface the good old 'shaft and tunnel' system by pouching the superficial deposits.
"A case in point. One of my correspondents kindly forwarded to me a copy of Mr. Lowman's last report to the directors of the African Gold Coast Syndicate, Limited. This manager, sent out to develop the huge and rich 'Ingotro Concession,' reached Axim only on August 16th. On reaching his destination he was at once informed by Chief Appo that the bottom of the Nánwá Valley, an old lagoon, abounds in gold, 'if we could but only get water out.' After puddling and washing, 'with extra good results,' sundry samples of the clay, he cut on the east bank of the rivulet a drain 350 feet long by 3 feet wide and 2½ feet deep, with a fall of 1 in 80. I may remind you that the stream in question, as shown by Captain Cameron's map, 'snakes' all down its valley, and that ditches from one loop to another would lay bare a great length of bed. Its width varies from 15 to 30 feet; the depth from 18 inches to 6 feet, and it runs all the year round. Mr. Lowman began another drain 400 feet long, to cross-cut the lagoon, which now infects the lower bed of the Nánwá, and which would easily empty into the Ancobra. He proposed to hydraulic with 350 feet of troughs or sluice-boxes, which were all ready for laying, and one Molyneux box (loose hopper, patent riffles, and slide tables), 'the first ever made or used on the Gold Coast.' A sketch of the 'flats' and of the machinery was attached to the report, and I can say nothing except in their praise.
"The lagoon clay to be puddled and 'Molyneux'd' is described as a still, yellow argile, resting upon a hard bottom of quartz pebbles. The cuttings opened up drifts of black sand, considered to be 'highly auriferous' (see the 'Gold Book'), and these were reserved for washing at convenience. The results of panning and cradling on the Nánwá flats, and on the whole line as far as Kitza, yielded samples varying from 4 dwts. to 10 ozs. per cubic yard of stuff. What would California and Australia say to those figures? Mr. Lowman adds, and I believe him, 'There is no property between Axim and Tacquah so well adapted for hydraulicking and alluvial mining in all its branches as the Ingotro Concession. There is plenty of water and a good fall for tailings by simply cutting channels from river bend to bend, and letting them run into one of the deep valleys or carrying them direct to the Ancobra river. Another great advantage is that the Ingotro mines can be worked at one-half the expense of any quartz mine on the coast. Water here will do the work of steam with half the number of hands. The whole of the Nánwá Valley is auriferous, good payable ground, which would take sixty to seventy years to work out, without touching the quartz.' Now we come to what will greatly benefit the climate, the only weak point noted at Ingotro by Cameron and myself. 'An absolute necessary piece of work will be to clear the river banks and to remove the trees which have fallen across the bed. We must also do away with (N.B.--I hope after panning) the large silted-up banks of sand and gravel which have accumulated in the river bends, causing the stream to overflow and to swamp the low lands, after each little freshet. Some of the banks, four to five feet high and fifteen across, are perfect natural dams. The work should not occupy more than three or four months.'
"The first thing which struck me on the Gold Coast was a conviction that its 'nullah beds' will supply the greatest quantity of metal for the least possible expenditure. The late M. Bounat, a Frenchman, who taught Englishmen the value of their colony on the Guinea Gulf, began (as I related in the 'Gold Book,' ii. 360) with the intention of dredging the Ancobra river for dust and nuggets. And he was right. Every little rivulet bed in the land must be ransacked before the hills are washed down by hydraulicking; and the sooner the 'steam navvy' appears upon the scene the better.
"Mr. Lowman evidently took good counsel, and, not being a consulting engineer, was not above taking a lesson from 'Chief Appo.' You may imagine my vexation on hearing that he had been recalled for 'want of funds.' Want of funds! Why, three months' work and a few hundred pounds would have enabled him to wash gold enough for paying all the labour he requires. Surely the directors of 'Ingotro' must see this as clearly as I do. It is a sorry time to draw back when standing upon the very verge of a grand discovery. I would state, in your pages, my certainty that such is the case; and if the Nánwá project fail, I would subside into a 'mere traveller,' as a booby acquaintance kindly described me.
"Excuse the length of this letter--the importance of the subject amply justifies it.
"I am, etc.,
"RICHARD BURTON.
"Trieste, Austria, November 26th."
"To the Editor of the Mining World and Engineering Record.
"Sir,--You should have heard from me before had not petite santé stood in the way of good intentions. Life in a little Mediterranean harbour-town makes one almost look forward to leaving the world in view of some extensive explorations beyond the world.
"My letters from the Gold Coast are cheering. Captain Cameron and Mr. Walsten are doing prime work. The former is being supplied with funds, an essential point which I cannot urge too strongly upon the two companies for whom he is now labouring. The 'present and future' of the Gold Coast mainly depends upon his success.
"Many thanks to Mr. Louis F. Gowan for his 'pile of experience' about Chinese coolies. This is what we want--familiarity with the subject, not more dogmatism. And the question is whether Chinamen in Africa would be the 'pig-tailed cut-throats' described by Mr. Gowan. I did not find them so in Bombay, San Francisco, and Peru.
"On the other hand, I am in nowise edified by the dogmatism displayed at the annual meeting of the Guinea Gold Coast Mining Company. A chairman is hardly expected to be an expert, but he must not address his shareholders as if he were a high authority. I read: 'Now, gentlemen, hydraulic sluicing are very easy words to pronounce, but it is a deuced hard operation to perform.' After some exceedingly useless statements about hydraulicking in Australia, he continues: 'The directors took the best advice they could, namely, that of your consulting engineer, and he was opposed to it. He said, "It is quite true that if your country is impregnated with gold, and if you have got great results everywhere by assay, it is advisable, but you have not got any here (!), and therefore it would be very unwise expenditure."' The chairman concludes, 'We were bound then to take the opinion of an expert against the opinion of Captain Burton on that point, because otherwise you would have real reason for blaming us.'
"This is really too bad for the unfortunate shareholders, who have only £15,000 left wherewith to carry on the work. Their property is cut by two streamlets, and these have never even been tested for gold. I have still to learn what experience of mining is possessed by the consulting engineer; but that he has a complete ignorance of Africa, I well know. Every writer on the Gold Coast from Bosman to Swanzy tells him that the land is impregnated with gold. He says it is not. As regards his management, it is enough to wreck any company. He recommended a person who reported in his cups that he could find no gold. I am waiting to see how his second protégé turns out; present reports are the reverse of favourable, and if number two fail like number one, I shall offer you a suggestion of my own concerning management on the Gold Coast.
"Against these miserable theories let us see what is the language of actual experience. To begin with Mr. Edward Smith's report on the Kitzia Concession:--'When going up the creek from the native village, I saw fourteen native women washing alluvial soil in the bed of the creek; and, on inquiring as to the result of their washing, Mr. Grant, the interpreter, told me they were making six shillings each per day. The stuff they were washing was from the surface of the side of the hill hard by. The creek could be turned, and a water-race brought alongside of the hill, so as to command the surface and to ground-sluice this portion of the property with good paying results.' Such is the hydraulicking recommended by me; but, apparently, where native women succeed, consulting engineers expect only failure. I must say with Abernethy, 'Read my book!' And that is not all. Captain Cameron writes to me from Axim, 'I shall get very good washing by the engine (i.e. without expensive leats or water-races), and think about ten or twelve shillings to the ton. I have over thirty feet fall for the sluices, which will give me three hundred and sixty feet (if necessary) of boxes.' I reported to you what my friend declared in a former letter, that he could wash down a whole hillside.
"In conclusion, I hope that the shareholders, after comparing the statements of fact and theory, will insist upon their engineers abandoning the old humdrum, beaten track; and will compel them, whether they like it or not, to send home gold washed from the surface.
"I am, etc.,
"R. F. BURTON.
"Trieste, Austria, April 20th, 1883."
From Mining Journal, February 5th, 1887.
"WEST AFRICAN GOLD MINES.
"To the Editor of the Mining Journal.
"Sir,--I have been surprised that these West African properties have not been brought to the front during the present excitement in gold-mining affairs, for that the gold is there is beyond all question. I do not forget that several of the companies which started a few years ago came to grief, but the cause of this was well known to be mismanagement and misfortune--forces which would ruin the best scheme in the world. But that these are going to prevent success in West Africa for ever I fail to believe. Let us look for a moment at what has really been going on quietly during the past twelve months there, and I think we shall see cause for much hopefulness in the near future. The Wassau Mining Company's monthly report is now before me. The crushing for twenty-two days in November gave 232 ozs., which netted the sum of £894 19_s._ in London, after deducting freight and expenses. This is at the rate of £1220 per month of thirty days. Their monthly expenses, I believe, are now somewhere about £500. This shows a profit at the rate of over £8000 a year, or 8 per cent. on the capital, and much more than this is a mere question of machinery. The manager reports on December 1: 'If anything, the mine looks better than ever.' The French Company have reorganized their affairs, and a large and able staff left England on January 1st. Their property, at a depth of 40 feet, gives an average yield of 17½ dwts. per ton in a south-west direction, and in a north-east direction it gives 21 dwts. At 63 feet it gives 2 ozs. 15 dwts., and in Bonnat's shaft, at 83 feet, it yields 5 ozs. 13 dwts. per ton. With figures like these one may fairly ask, Where are the East Indian mines? Where, even, are the Queensland properties? The Swanzy Estates Company, a private enterprise, carefully and economically managed, have been working for upwards of two years, on a property which, though not so rich as the others, is none the less likely to pay handsomely, as the quantity of mineral in sight is enormous, and it can be worked at a mere nominal cost, in consequence of its position. They are receiving regular returns, and the owners are more than satisfied. Cinnamon Bippo, another private property, equally well and economically worked, has at least one lode a mile in length, the average assay from which, over its entire distance, gives 2¼ ozs. to the ton, and by actual crushing of about 300 tons it has yielded 1 oz. 8 dwts. per ton, at an estimated profit of seventy shillings per ton. With improved machinery and appliances, the owners are satisfied that they will get about 2 ozs. per ton, and the quantity of ore is absolutely unlimited. I now turn to your issue of Saturday last, and draw attention to the report on Essaman. Mr. Harvey says, respecting the Prestea reef, 'I have discovered that this is only a portion of an auriferous belt over 200 ft. thick. The cross-cut has been driven through the belt to cut the reef, so there is proof undeniable of what I state, and, moreover, the whole is permeated with auriferous veins of quartz. Who knows but that some day or other this hill may be opened and worked as a quarry? Believe me, we know little of the wealth of Africa.' Mr. Harvey reports the main reef to be 10 feet thick at the point where driving will be commenced, and the average samples taken right through confirm his previous estimate of about 2 ozs. per ton. Mr. Harvey is right; we know little of the wealth of Africa, but it will not be much longer concealed.
"PSEUDONYM.
"January 31st, 1887."
I quote this prematurely, because it finishes the subject:
"AN EXPLANATION.
"Mr. W. J. Johns has called our attention to a very important letter respecting the Guinea Coast Company, Limited, which has been received from Sir Richard F. Burton. This letter would have been read by Mr. Johns to the shareholders of that company who assembled at last week's meeting, but no opportunity presented itself for him to do so. Many misstatements were made at that gathering respecting Mr. Johns and other gentlemen connected with the company, which in a really deliberative assembly, anxious only for the facts, might have been set aside. The letter of Sir Richard Burton (an old correspondent of the Mining World) tells its own tale. It is as follows:--
"'Hôtel Windsor, Cannes, January 25th, 1887.
"'I am greatly scandalized at seeing the papers crammed with the falsest statements about the property of the Guinea Coast Company.
"'Two great points require emphatic contradiction. The first is, that the place is a swamp; the second, that it contains no gold.
"'As regards both these statements I have only to bring in as evidence my own book, "To the Gold Coast for Gold," and I am ready to maintain every word therein printed.
"'The place, so far from being a swamp, struck me as peculiarly healthy, and the condition of the natives proved that such was the case.
"'As regards the gold, I noted in my book that Captain Cameron and I were unable to descend into the native shafts on account of their being full of water. But the number and extent of these diggings told their own tale, and I need hardly repeat that auriferous quartz reefs are only nibbed by the country people.
"'It would be impossible for me to be in England as early as the 24th of next month, but I have written to my friend and fellow-traveller, Commander Cameron, whose opinion of the mines and mine were identical, to print in some leading papers our distinct and emphatic denial of the two falsehoods above noticed, which have been unblushingly foisted upon the public.
"'(Signed) RICHARD F. BURTON.'"
[1] Richard wrote "The Castellieri; or, Prehistoric Ruins of the Istrian Peninsula," and "More Castellieri--the Seaboard of Istria."
[2] This was deemed chivalrous and foolish by his own lawyer.--I. B.
[3] A good simile. The British Government seemed quite as afraid of one as of the other--friend or foe, she must cage her eagles.--I. B.
IX. ANOTHER SHORT LEAVE TO LONDON
1882.
[Sidenote: London and back.]
I notice the pleasantest and most remarkable little events of this visit to London.
We made a pilgrimage to Hughenden to visit the grave of Lord Beaconsfield, and to put a wreath. We went to the Lyceum on the 10th of June, to see Romeo and Juliet, and had the pleasure of making Miss Ellen Terry's acquaintance; also to several great parties, and had a charming lunch at Putney with Swinburne and Mr. Watts. We had a very pleasant dinner at Lord and Lady Bath's. On Sunday afternoons we generally went to Sir Frederick Leighton's, or the Dowager Lady Howard of Glossop's, or Lady Holland's. We went down to visit Captain Cameron and his family at Sevenoaks.
On the 20th Miss Florence Monckton-Milnes was married to Major Henniker, of the Guards, and the wedding was exceedingly pretty at St. George's.
On the 23rd we dined with Lord Houghton, to meet H.R.H. Prince Leopold and the Duc d'Aumale; also Lord Stourton and Mowbray gave a great ball to all the Old Catholics (the cousinhood). It was a beautiful ball, and the Pope's picture was surrounded with garlands of flowers and lights, and I remember creating a stir by taking Richard there, who, I supposed, was of course included in the invitations. This month Richard lectured at the Geographical Society. Amongst clever people we met Mr. Leslie Ward, the other caricaturist of Vanity Fair, and a rising poet, Mr. St. Clair-Baddeley, who attracted us much. There was a meeting at St. James's Hall for protection for animals, Princess Beatrice giving the prizes, and quite at the end of the afternoon, after her Royal Highness had gone, I was asked to make a speech, which I did.
The members of the Royal Naval Club (founded 1765) gave a dinner at Willis's Rooms, St. James's, in Richard's honour.
The bombardment of Alexandria was on the 11th and 12th of July, 1882, and he was very much excited and interested about this, and he wrote a long history of what ought to be done for Egypt. Lady Fitzgerald (Lord Houghton's eldest daughter) arrived from Egypt about this time, and was the centre of attraction, both official and private, as she was able to tell us all about it. I left my Indian Christmas book with Mr. Bogue on the 7th of July, and never saw it after. We went to Sir Frederick Leighton's Academy party, to Mrs. Childers's, and Lady Wilson's ball.
Richard went to Paris on the 15th of July, 1882, and I followed him on the 22nd, taking my niece Blanche Pigott with me, and joined Richard and Captain Cameron. We saw a great deal of the traveller De Brazza and his brother, and on the 26th we bid good-bye to Cameron, and we three left for Turin, where our niece, who was for the first time in Italy, enjoyed the scene of the Piazza and Castle by moonlight, and a drive up to the Superga. The next day we arrived in Venice. There is always something amusing to people who have seen everything themselves, in taking a fresh young girl about, as long as she is fresh. She was just out of her convent, and Richard and I, having no children, thought it rather fun having a daughter. We arrived on the last day of July.
[Sidenote: The Great Trieste Exhibition.]
Next day, on the 1st of August, there was the opening of a Grand International Exhibition at Trieste. The City was illuminated at night almost as brilliantly as Venice had been for the Congress, and Trieste illuminated makes a grand effect with its rising mountain background. The Archduke Charles Louis was there to open it, and the Emperor and Empress, Prince Rudolf, and Princess Stephanie came later on. This had been a hobby of our (then) Governor's (Baron de Pretis) for a very long time, and for months and months endless workmen had been erecting magnificent buildings at the edge of the sea--I should say for a mile in length--all along the fashionable drive called St. Andrea. This great day was devoted to officialdom, and receptions, and bands, and at night Baron Morpurgo had one of his boats out, and supper on board, for his friends to see the illuminations. However, at night, there was an émeute in the town, begun by the Italianissimi.
[Sidenote: Émeute at Trieste.]
Nothing was talked of but the émeute. Some Italians had thrown a bomb as an Austrian regiment was passing, but it did not go off till the wrong moment, so only a policeman's hand was crushed, and our poor friend Dr. Dorn, of the Triester Zeitung, had his leg shattered, was carried home in a pitiable state, and months after I saw the large pieces of bone that had come out of his leg. There were four men concerned in the throwing of the bombs, the chief of which was one Oberdank, a deserter from the 22nd Regiment of Infantry; they were taken at Ronchi. This had the effect of driving everybody away from the Exhibition. The people who had come from foreign parts to exhibit, swore they would not stay, that they did not feel safe, and they wanted to pack up their things. The Exhibition was always empty, which, of course, was the object of the Italians. Blanche and I went down one morning, and we saw everything most beautifully, for there were not twenty people in it.
Then the Baron Morpurgo told us that every night the bands were playing, and the ices and refreshments always waiting, but that nobody ever came; and they went round and collected a few friends who would have the courage to go in the evening. Richard and I and Blanche willingly started off in their boat at night, to go and hear the band, to eat ices, and enjoy the illuminations; but as soon as we really began to enjoy ourselves, a telegram was handed to the Morpurgos that the town was in émeute; so they all jumped up, even the old Baron, who was very brave and active, and said, "That must be our people, and we will go down and have the gates of the old town (Ghetto) shut, and let them calm down; they shall not get into the town, and that will stop the mischief; and you," he said to us, "don't attempt to go back through the town, but go round in the boat and land just under your own windows, and get in that way," which we did. I was again sent off, early August, for my second summer to Maríenbad--three are the usual course (and Richard went to Monfalcone for his gout baths)--where Blanche and I enjoyed ourselves very much in a quiet way. We walked, drove, read, studied German, made excursions, saw again Madame de Novikoff, and went to the little German plays, which were very amusing. There came Mr. and Mrs. Campbell-Bannerman, Mr. Robert Bourke (Lord Connemara), Mrs. and Miss Baldock, and Captain Bury. The band was the same as last year and quite exquisite. We had a very nice collection of people, and formed a pleasant little table at feeding time. I was not sorry when it was over, on the 9th September, to start again for Vienna, and on the 11th to go down to Trieste, for it never agreed with me.
I could not resist writing the following during my cure:--
"CAPTAIN BURTON.
"To the Editor of Vanity Fair.
"Dear Vanity,--It was very kind and nice of you to have noticed us in your paper, but, if I may make an observation, I should like to have had the rose without the thorn. The article is likely to make the public think that Captain Burton is living on the fat of the land at public expense, and doing nothing to earn it. I do not want any one to put the 'evil eye' upon the poor hard-earned little £600 a year--well earned by forty years' hard toil in the public service. It is true that Government has sometimes, but not often, spared him for a few months at a time to do larger works, which have been for more general public benefit and wider extended good; but all the journeys quoted in Vanity have been undertaken between his various posts, when he has been out of employment, or during the usually allowed leave that other men spend in Pall Mall. On all the occasions when he has had 'leave' as above, he has gone voluntarily on half-pay those few months. If any one grudges us our pittance, and will inquire in Africa, Brazil, Damascus, or Trieste, they will find that at no time, of those or any other months, has a single detail of Consular work been omitted, or neglected, or performed by incompetent or ordinary subordinates, whilst every penny of public money was nervously accounted for. They will learn that we have ever given double of what we have received; that every one of our four Consulates has been a credit to the Government; that the English of our district have always been proud of their Consul and Consulate; that foreigners are always on most friendly terms with them, and the authorities intimately so. If this be so, will not what you call an 'Amateur Consul' do quite as well as the other sort, whatever that may be? You are, however, my dear Vanity, mistaken on another point. The higher the post and the more important the duties, the greater is the ambition to discharge them nobly. How much more keenly would one feel as an Eastern diplomat, for instance, than settling a dispute between the cook and the mate of a merchant vessel, or signing passports? Your 'Series' writer must have dipped his pen in vinegar and gall when he wrote about the 'much-prized posts.'
"I am, my dear Vanity, yours obediently,
"ISABEL BURTON.
"Hôtel Klinger, Maríenbad, Bohemia,
"September 1st, 1882."
The Dowager Lady Galway and Count and Countess della Sala, also General Francis, arrived at Trieste for the Exhibition, which was a very great pleasure to us. The Emperor and Empress and the Prince and Princess now announced their intention of doing good to the Exhibition by coming to visit it; there was a grand reception prepared, bands of music, the houses decorated, the ships dressed, flags and triumphal arches, salutes of artillery, and shouts of "Eviva!" girls in white, and flowers to strew, and at night illuminations. The first evening there was a grand theatre night with the ballet "Excelsior," and the applause when the Imperial party entered was deafening, and lasted fully a quarter of an hour. Next day was the Exhibition. The Baron Morpurgo had prepared a splendid fête on board the Berenice. The City was illuminated, so was the ship, and all the cream of Trieste was present. Every moment the Emperor and Empress were expected, and we all fell into our places in lines, through which they were to pass; several times they were announced, and several times did we retire and sit down again.
At last the Imperial boat actually arrived, and went several times round the Berenice and steamed away again. The disappointment and mortification of the truly loyal givers of the fête may easily be imagined; but it was perhaps as well, if the stories current next day had only a shadow of truth in them. It was commonly talked about afterwards that, unknown to the givers of the fête, the vessel had been observed to be much lower in the water than she ought to be, through somebody having taken out some plug that ought to have been in it, which caused a very gradual sinking. It was suspected that amongst the workmen one had been bought, just as in Nihilist cases, and that the moment the Imperial party had set foot in the ship, that they, and of course all of us, were to be blown into the air by a dynamite clock, and the Chief of Police had begged--perhaps had had some intimation that there was something uncanny somewhere--the Imperial family not to sup on board. True or untrue, these were the stories on the morrow. Anyway, none of the authorities dared go to bed, or hardly breathe, as long as the Imperial family remained in the neighbourhood. It appeared there were bombs across the railway, bombs in the Exhibition, bombs in the boats, and bombs in the sausages; at least, that was the state of feeling in Trieste during those three days, and I should think the Imperial family must have been immensely glad when they saw the last of the town, and got out of the Irredentista country. The next day was the Arsenal inspection, a launch, and a boat serenade at night to Miramar. On the 20th they went, arrived in safety, and everybody breathed again.
On the 18th of September, Richard began his great book on the Sword. It is a very large work, entitled the "Book of the Sword"--the first part of three by R. F. Burton, maître d'armes, which appeared in 1884. The first part brought the sword, the prehistoric weapon, up to the Middle Ages. The second would have been the mediæval sword, and the third would have brought all the modern schools up to date, with illustrations.
At this time Richard took it into his head to interfere with my department--the maid-servants--and he sent away my cook and got one of his own. He said to me (quite with a knowing nod of the head), "The ne plus ultra of Trieste;" so the first morning, when cooking our twelve o'clock meal, she asked for a bottle of wine. I should have refused it to my own cook, but I had to give it her, and when she drank that, she had another. She then hit the kitchenmaid over the head with the saucepan, and, being a very powerful woman, she threw the housemaid into the scaffa (sink). Hearing screams, I ran into the kitchen, and then she went for me, but instead of throwing me out of the window, she threw her arms round my neck and said I was an angel. "All the same," I said, "I think you must go, and I should like to settle up with you at once." I went and asked Richard humbly if the "ne plus ultra" was to be kept; and he said, "Certainly not--the brute!" and he came and turned her out there and then, and sent her wages after her. So I said very quietly and seriously, "Now, Jemmy, I have got to cook the breakfast myself; won't you go out and find me another cook?" "No," said he, laughing; "I think I have had quite enough of that."
[Sidenote: We lose an Old Vice-Consul.]
In October we had a great loss in our dear old friend and Vice-Consul, Mr. Brock, which Richard and I both felt very much. He had that mania which all old Englishmen serving abroad get, that they must go and die, and "leave their bones in dear old England," which they remember as it was thirty, forty, or fifty years ago; it is a madness they always repent when it is too late, as they are never rich enough to do what they invariably want, which is to put themselves back, and reinstate themselves in the climate, in the life, which suited them and the friends who had surrounded them. I know my own husband would have enjoyed enormously coming over here and settling down, being independent in private life, but he would not have been able to stand it more than a year without travels. I only can, because I am so near him, and so near death, it is not worth while to change.
Mr. Brock and his family left on the 8th of October, and his place was taken by Mr. P. P. Cautley. He and his wife have both been dead for some time, leaving many daughters; but during the whole of his remaining years he wrote constantly, "Give me news of Trieste. I only care for my friends of Trieste; I am a stranger in my own land. One has no business to return; one is an intrusion. One's place has long ago been filled up; one's relations have forgotten one; one is no longer a member of the family."
[Sidenote: Lord Wolseley.]
On the 24th arrived Lord Wolseley in the Iris, Admiral Seymour. We received him and saw him to the station, collected the English, had a little procession of bouquets and a few British cheers to see him off, and then we got our friends of the Iris to breakfast with us in the Hungarian part of the Exhibition.
[Sidenote: Richard is sent to find Palmer.]
On the 27th of October, I got a regular blow through a telegram ordering Richard off to look after Palmer, who was missing at Ghazzeh.
The telegram ran as follows:--
"October 27th, 1882, 4.40 p.m.
"H.M.'s Government wish to avail themselves of your knowledge of Bedouins and the Sinai country, to assist in search for Professor Palmer. There is a chance of his being still alive, though bodies of his companions, Charrington and Gill, have been found. Proceed at once to Ghazzeh; place yourself in communication with Consul Moore, who has gone from Jerusalem to institute inquiry."
Richard answered--
"Ready to start by first steamer. Will draw £100. Want gunboat from Alexandria to Ghazzeh or Sinai. Letter follows."
As all the world knows, Palmer, Charrington, and Gill went into the desert to buy camels for the English army and to bribe the Bedawi. Palmer had other secret service besides; that was, to cut the telegraph wire between Kántara and El Arish, and it was through the telegraph wire not being cut that foul play was suspected. Palmer was such a good Arabist, and was in such friendly relations with all the people, that there seemed not the slightest danger. He had brotherhood with all the Bedawi, like Richard, but they carried £3000 (some say £20,000) with them; the Bedawi surrounded them, and they were, the newspapers said, given a choice of being shot or jumping over a precipice. It is said Charrington and Gill elected to be shot, and Palmer, covering his eyes, jumped over the precipice. The men (with whom both Richard and Palmer had brotherhood) who did this, belonged to the Huwaytat and Dubur, Terabin and Hasábli. There was Salem el Sheikh ibn Salámeh and twenty-three other men implicated in it, besides the Shaykh. To Richard, who knew the Bedawi, it was a puzzle; certainly they were slain, but he felt there was always something we shall never know: it was not Bedawi ways.
Richard started by the first steamer, and proceeded according to orders. I remember the last thing I said to him was, "Mind, if they are really dead, don't be put like a ferret into a hole to bring out the dead bodies" (for I remembered how economical England is, and that, whatever other men have had, Richard had never been given either money or men for any exploit); "that won't be worth while." He said, "If they are dead, no; but if there is a chance of saving dear old Palmer, I will go anywhere and do anything." On the road he met Gordon. Meantime Sir Charles Warren was scouring the country, well supported with money, and with two hundred picked men, and by the time Richard got there, he may be said to have nearly completed the task.
He describes Ghazzeh as a miserable, God-forgotten hole.
The trial of Arábi was going on, and Egypt was in great excitement in consequence. Richard was only absent six weeks and a half, returning in December. He wrote an account of all he had seen there, and the story of Palmer, and the state of Egypt, and he sent it to a magazine at once, which sent it back. He sent it round to many places, and I cannot remember now whether he ever got it printed, but certainly too late to have the fresh interest it ought to have had.[1]
It is curious to remember now, how frequently he used to send the most important articles, of vital use to the World, to the Press, and get them sent back with compliments and thanks, to say they would not suit such a paper or such a magazine, and how he frequently went from one publisher to another with his most invaluable books. It was one of the things that used to make us both boil with rage, and now there has been a storm throughout the whole Press Universe for twenty-two months because I burnt a book which was the least valuable, nay, the only book he ever wrote that was not valuable to the world. Such are the waves and whims of public opinion.
It was the last journey he ever took that might be called an Expedition, and even that was not what it was meant to be, since he found another man (Sir Charles Warren) in the field, who did not want to be much interfered with. I was awfully glad to get him back again so soon, I need not say.
After having prepared Richard for his journey to Egypt and seeing him off, I went up to Opçina with Blanche, drove over to Duino to see the Princesses Hohenlöhe, and on to Gorizia (German Görz), where we went into a Convent, I wishing to make what we Catholics call a "spiritual retreat." It was November weather; our rooms were very cold, and naturally poorly furnished, as becomes convent cells. There was a church attached to the house, and Padre Bankich, a Dalmatian Jesuit, was our director. My niece would give a very amusing, though sad account of this expedition, but I do not think it has anything to do with the story. When we came out of retreat we made a delightful picnic-pilgrimage to the Monte Santo before alluded to. It is a most charming expedition, and the view repays the climb. Before leaving Gorizia I attended to our branch Society for Protection of Cruelty to Animals, and had two little rooms built for the lassoed dogs. We then returned to Opçina. There was a splendid comet at this time. On return to Opçina we gave a dinner-party to our friends at Trieste, and we (women) dressed like mandriere (the peasants' costume on fête-days).
[Sidenote: Trieste Life.]
On the 6th of December we had an earthquake in the night and a tremulousness all day, and earthquakes all the month. We were walking on the Karso above; the sky was clear, and all of a sudden my niece said to me, "Oh, look up, there is a star walking into the moon!" "Glorious!" I answered. "We are looking at the Transit of Venus, which crowds of scientists have gone to the end of the world to see." We then went down to meet Richard, who returned at seven o'clock in the morning of the 10th, and all went happily up to Opçina. This day we had dreadful storms; the lightning fell in the town three times, and the telegraphs could not work.
Oberdank, the bomb-thrower, was hanged on the 19th. He said if he was pardoned he would kill the Emperor. He was more like a Nihilist than a disciple of Orsini.
On the 31st of December we went to the last happy St. Silvester we ever had, at Madame Gutmansthal's. We assembled at nine, and broke up at 3.30. Richard was a gold-digger rowdy; I was Hagar, a gypsy fortune-teller, and favourite of the Shah of Persia, exceedingly well acted by Monsieur Thomas, the chief superintendent of the railway; my niece Blanche was Miss Jex Blake; the Princess Wrede was a Neapolitan peasant, and Admiral Buchtá a Neapolitan fisherman. The two Neapolitans danced the tarantella most beautifully. We all had different characters. I told fortunes, and they sang, danced, and recited most perfectly. One lady (Madame Thomas) impersonated Sara Bernhardt, and took her off to the life. Our hostess was a marquise of the ancienne régime. We were thoroughly well amused. After this year, misfortunes began to come upon us all, and we never had another like it.
1883.
Early in the year Richard had a slight attack of gout, and a visit from Professor Leitner, King's College, London. He worked now at his Sword book, and, as well as I can remember, his book on the Jews (not published). He makes a note of Gustave Doré's death on the 22nd of January. Schapira writes a report that Palmer is still alive, but this was a false report.
On the 28th he notices that Colonel Warren is made a K.C.M.G., and that poor Mr. Zech, whom we visited last year, died on the 29th.
Colonel Rathborne wrote in 1883:--
"21, Leamington Road Villas, Westbourne Park, W.,
"December 4th, 1883.
"MY DEAR BURTON,
"Thanks for your kindly note, which came to hand this morning. Would that in reply I could give as good an account of my time as you give. What a constitution of brass--no, of iron--yours must be! I am so glad that you are writing your own biography.[2] What a tale of stirring adventure by sea and land you will have to narrate! I can quite fancy, however, that if you had the choice, you would add a little active work now and then to the otium of endless scribbling. For the life of me, I cannot divine why your services have not been called into requisition during the late Egyptian imbroglios. As far as I know, we have not had a man in that country, save Rogers, conversant with the Arabic, and hardly one who can be accused of anything like a knowledge of Eastern peoples. I do not quite make out whether you are serious or not in the programme which you have drawn out for settling the Egyptian difficulty. In one point, at least, and that the principal point, viz. definite annexation, it coincides with what I wrote to our Jupiter Tonans."
He was very gouty all this month, but not laid up. He was able to attend the school feast and fête at Opçina, and was able to go to a masquerade ball at Baroness Morpurgo's. He was "Cœur de Lion;" I was "Berengaria," his wife; and Blanche was the goose-girl, out of the Christmas number of the Graphic. There was a very witty comédie performed by amateurs.
I now wrote a book called "The Sixth Sense," and was vain enough to think it very clever; but I was afraid it would do harm, and I took the courage to burn it.
We gave our usual Christmas-parties in January. He was also able to take plenty of drives with me, but could not walk much. We passed our lives between Trieste and Opçina, carrying our literature up and down. One of his great amusements was a small donkey which used to run into the terrace-garden, which overlooked the sea, where we used to breakfast, and the donkey and the setter used to have games of romps like two kittens playing, the donkey racing round the place, biting and kicking, and the setter dodging him. They seemed to know exactly what they were to do, and they came every day at the same hour to play.
Richard now took an immense dislike to our house in Trieste, where we had been over ten years. The fact is, I had increased it in my ambition to twenty-seven rooms, and just as I had made it perfection, he wanted to leave it. Certainly Providence directed, for shortly after that, the drainage got so very bad there as to be incurable, and after he got really ill, and his heart weak, it would have been impossible for him to mount the hundred and twenty steps, four stories high, to go in and out. We ransacked the whole of Trieste, but there was only one house that suited us in any way, and there was not the least likelihood of our being able to get it, as it was occupied; but, curiously to say, six months later we did get it, and got housed in it the following July.
On the 24th of February we had a great shock in the death of poor Reich, our fencing-master. He went out well dressed, with a cigar in his mouth, very early, took a walk in the Via Riborgo, mounted some steps, put a pistol to his head, and blew his brains out. Some people ran, hearing the pistol; he was quite dead, but his cigar was still alight. Suicide is the commonest thing in the world in Trieste; nobody takes any account of it. The fact is that he had been getting into bad health. An Italian fencing-master had set up in the town, and got all his best Italian pupils away. I had not fenced at all the winter 1882-3, and Richard, of course, had been away so much and had had many twinges of gout, and therefore it was a matter of great reproach to us that we had not gone and paid him visits, and cheered him up, and looked after him--so often a little friendship prevents a man from going to this extremity. Richard felt it for a long time.
Reich was a Bohemian and an old trooper, and Richard said he was the best broadswordsman he had ever seen. He has frequently told me to stand steady, and he has made a moulinet at me; you could hear the sword swish in the air, and he has touched my face like a fly in the doing of it. He did it frequently to show what he could do, but he used to say that he would not do it to any of his men pupils, for fear they should flinch either one way or the other, which would of course have cut their faces open; but he knew I should stand steady. I liked that.
We then had a trip down the Dalmatian coast in an Austrian-Lloyd's, to Sebenico, Zara, and Spalato. On this day five of Palmer's murderers were hanged in the presence of thirty-five Bedawi chiefs. Richard could never understand why they only hanged five instead of twenty-four, the number of those concerned, and why the Governor of El Arish was not hanged too. We went on to Castelnuovo, and to Cattaro, and then back. It was only for a few days, but it did Richard a world of good. We then had a visit from Major Borrowes, and Richard went for a trip to San Daniele, to Wippach, to Heidenschaft, and Plani, and came back. We spent our birthdays, 19th and 20th of March, in Opçina, and received a telegram with twelve friends' names attached to it.
We now had a visit from Mr. Oswald, from the Foreign Office, and the Mudies arrived--we showed them the lions of the place, and saw them on board en route to Corfu; also came Dr. Lewins, of the Army and Navy Club and Jermyn Street, a savant from Bombay, the same who is bringing out Miss Näden's works.
On the 30th of January we gave a masked ball to a hundred and fifty-eight people, which was a great success. It began at half-past nine, and lasted till six. In a room close to the door were two gentlemen of the party, who were appointed to "receive." Everybody who arrived had to go into that room and unmask, in order to be sure that we did not get any "riff-raff" in; they then masked again, and passed in before any one else was admitted. The unmasking began at supper, when the great surprise was to see who you got next to you. One big Viennese lieutenant, six feet high, and big in proportion, came dressed as a woman, and his airs and graces were lovely.
On the 19th of March Richard began to write on the Congo, and on this day one of his friends died (Major Wemyss).
The remains of Palmer and his two companions, discovered by Sir Charles Warren in the desert at Tih, were carefully collected and placed in three coffins, painted black, with a white cross upon each; they were received by the dockyard officials, March 30, and were removed to London for interment at St. Paul's Cathedral. This is in his journal of the 31st of March.
Colonel and Mrs. Montgomery were now appointed American Consul-General. Very nice people, but they could not stand Trieste more than ten days; left it, and settled in Switzerland.
Richard was very bad all April; but it was honest gout in the feet, and he was quite healthy.
In his journal he much mourns the death of Abd-el-Kadir in Damascus, on the 24th of April, at the age of seventy-six.
[Sidenote: Count Mattei's Cure.]
On the 1st of May he sent me to Bologna to be under the famous Count Mattei for my complaint; the journey occupied eleven hours. I took my niece Blanche. We found that he had gone to Riola, two hours' rail from Bologna, so we went on there to a pension Suisse, called Hôtel della Rosa. The train runs along the Reno river. The Hôtel Rosa holds about twenty patients, and was kept by Monsieur and Madame Schmidt; she was his right-hand agent, was initiated in all his business, and superintended all his patients. Now she works on her own account in London and other capitals. It is a lovely mountain place, this castle perched on a high crag about half an hour's scramble above the pension. Count Mattei has restored the castle, I think, of Savignano. There was nothing left but a little tower on the raw rock, and he has constructed the most solid, handsome, fantastic, eccentric castle possible to conceive, of stone and marble, regardless of expense, for he is the Monte-Cristo of the country.
[Sidenote: Count Mattei.]
Having dropped my bag and secured a room at the pension, I climbed up there. First I had to conciliate a very doubtful-looking mastiff; then appeared a tall, robust, well-made, soldier-like looking form in English costume of blue serge, brigand felt hat, with a long pipe, who looked about fifty, and not at all like a doctor. He received me very kindly, and took me up flights of stairs, through courts, into a wainscoted oak room, with fruits and sweets on the table, with barred iron gates and drawbridges and chains in different parts of the room, that looked as if he could pull one up and pop one down into a hole. He talked French and Italian, but I soon perceived that he liked Italian best, and stuck to it; and I also noticed that, by his mouth and eyes, instead of fifty, he must be about seventy-five. A sumptuous dinner-table was laid out in an adjoining room, with fruit and flowers. I told him I could not be content, having come so far to see him, to have only a passing quarter of an hour. He listened to my long complaints about my health most patiently, asked me every question, but he did not ask to examine me, nor look at my tongue, nor feel my pulse, as other doctors do, but said that I did not look like a person with the complaint mentioned, but as if circulation and nerves were out of order. He prescribed four internal and four external remedies, and baths. I wrote down all his suggestions, and rehearsed it, that he might correct any mistakes; and then asked him of his remedies for gout.
After an hour I was dismissed and went down to the pension, where everything was clean; the air was beautiful, the supper delicious, though simple. They were going to build a larger pension. I never heard nightingales sing more beautifully. Mattei had a nephew and niece living with him, the governess, and six servants. His life passes in building and improving this château, and his medicinal studies. He is awfully good to the poor, and gives them advice, medicine gratis, and money. After dinner I had a long talk with Mrs. Schmidt, who carries out his directions, with great knowledge and tact. She enlightened me a great deal about my health and his remedies, and gave me a hint not to mention fees, or he would never speak to me again; and so, of course, I was careful not to look at my hotel or medicine bill, except the total.
The next morning I got up at five, and, with a strong horse and little cart, Blanche and I went up an awful breakneck road to a crag as high again as Mattei's castle, where was a solitary little country chapel. We asked to have Mass and Communion, as it was the first Friday in the month. A priest like an old family picture came out and said Mass and gave us Communion, and we scrambled down again by half-past nine for coffee at the pension. I then set off to have a second consultation with Mattei. This time the dog sat at my feet. And then he called his governess to show me over the castle. (Doré with a bad nightmare would be nothing to it.) It was grand, bold, splendid, and reckless; but the beds were marble--æsthetic biers--with classic garlands of flowers in marble vases on marble tables; the furniture a marble bench. Think of it in winter. There were drawbridges with bolts everywhere--the bedroom doors drawn up at night, showing black bottomless pits in the rock, into which a would-be assassin would fall. The look-out was splendid, wild and eerie. When I saw the mad allegories on the wall in fresco, I said, "Is it right to take medicine from such a lunatic? And yet he has cured hundreds and thousands, so I suppose I may."
Then I found that I was not to wait here, because all their beds were full at the pension, but I was to buy a month's medicines, to go to some quiet mountain place and rest, and perform my cure, and correspond with him. I was to eat and drink well, and do everything I always did; so my bourne will be Krapina-Teplitz in the Carniola, where Richard would also go for his gout-baths; a cheap, wild, quiet, mountain retreat. I found, however, just before going away from Mrs. Schmidt, that whereas he had told me to put one hundred globules of one medicine into my bath, that I must only put fifty, as he was very fond of beginning at the highest and letting you down, instead of beginning at the lowest, and bringing you up to what you can stand. I also found out that loads of people were frequently in agonies of pain, and had to remain so till they telegraphed for Madame Schmidt, who came with the antidote; and I did not like that prospect. I believe she has done away with all these risks now by her new improvements in treatment; but she was not a free agent then as she is now, and I should think must have a very great success.
These scraps of information will interest many people. I then came back to Venice, where I found dear Lady Marian Alford, which made me stop three days, and then I went on to Trieste.
After I got back Richard and I were dining, and I began my cure, "six globules dry on the tongue with the first spoonful of soup." Almost as soon as I had swallowed it, I began to feel very odd, as if I had a sort of private earthquake going on in me, and got frightened. Richard said, "Why, it can't be those miserable little globules. I would swallow the whole bottle." "Don't do that," I said, "but take what I have taken--six dry on the tongue with a spoonful of soup." In a few minutes he was deadly pale, and began to stagger about as I did. He said, "No more of that. These are things that ought to be done under the eye of the Count himself, or Mrs. Schmidt, and so neither you nor I will do that cure." I do not want to choke anybody off from doing the cure, because I think it would be a great success under Mrs. Schmidt's personal directions.
The Karso air was now charming, so that we went up there for awhile, and went over again to Duino and Monfalcone. But first we went during this month to see the whole of the Niebelungen, first the Rheingold, the Walküre, Siegfried, the Götterdämerung, beautifully performed at Trieste.
[Sidenote: We get the House we wanted.]
On the 23rd of May, Richard went off to Krapina-Teplitz alone, and would not take me, as we had a chance of getting the house we wanted, and, in point of fact, I made the contract almost immediately, and gave notice to quit the old one. There is a curious law in Trieste that you must give notice, if you wish to quit a house, on the 24th of May, and on the 24th of August you must leave; so any stranger coming into Trieste on the last day mentioned, would see nothing but processions of carts and waggons covered with furniture and boxes, and it looks exactly as if a town was being deserted for a bombardment, or the moving of an army. The people, of course, who remain in their houses do not do this; it is the ones who change. I was resolved, for convenience' sake, to come to an agreement with my outgoing people to change at least a month before the time, to avoid the general confusion.
Just as Richard went off, an Arundell nephew of mine arrived in bad health. He was doing what a great many people do--embark at Liverpool on a Cunard, and do the round with the ship. You pay £40, you have two months' cruise, seeing the whole of the Mediterranean out and back, Trieste being the furthest port. The ship remained there a week.
Krapina-Teplitz did Richard no good--the waters were too strong--and he came back on the 11th of June. Mr. Aubertin arrived on a visit at the same time, and they had a great deal to discuss, both being students and translators of Camoens. The Squadron was reported the same afternoon, saluted at four p.m., and we went on board an hour after. It was two years since their last visit. It was very much a repetition of that of 1881; there were eleven or twelve ships, and they stayed thirteen days.
First came off the Austrian Admiral's ball--a magnificent affair in the illuminated garden, with singers from Vienna; then an equally fine ball on board the Monarch, my brother Jack Arundell's old ship. Our ball on the same plan as last year, but--once bit, twice shy--at the Jäger.
It is a palatial sort of residence, on the summit of a glorious wood, commanding a view of sea, town, mountains, and woods, and when illuminated with coloured lamps, Bengal lights, and electric light, was like the last scene of a pantomime. It contains a ball-room that would easily hold a thousand people, refreshment-room, large supper-rooms, a gallery for orchestra, and several cloak-rooms. There is a terrace all round it, and gardens. So we were not dependent on the weather, nor the police, nor the peasants, and the grounds were illuminated just the same for people to walk in, fireworks, etc. Our cordon of police this year behaved very well, and were under an Inspector. We all thoroughly enjoyed it, and the cotillon was a splendid fantasia, as it generally is in Austria. The next day, was my last fête for the animals, and at night the opera. The Captains of the ships gave a dinner to Richard and me at Opçina.
Then came the Emperor's dinner at Miramar, a dance on board the Inflexible. We had a splendid ball on board the Teméraire (Captain, now Admiral, Nicholson, who was an immense favourite with everybody), and on the 23rd they all left, to our great regret. Mr. Aubertin and Richard went to Zara, to Salona, and Spalato, and came back on the 4th of July, and then we went up to stay at the Jäger instead of Opçina, when, having deposited them there, I went back to change house.
For several days, long processions of carts were going up to the new house, and Blanche and I and the servants worked for a month, but on the 8th of July we were able to sleep in our new place, and it was fit for Richard to come into on the 16th of July, 1883. Our new residence was one of those old Palazzone which the Italians used to build in the good old time; but it so happens it was built by an English merchant, as in old days there were English merchant-princes here, but they have long since died out. It had a good entrance, so that you could drive your carriage into the hall; and a marble staircase took you into the interior, then a very mean staircase of stone took you up to the rooms; the large ones were magnificent in size, and there were twenty of all sorts. The air, the light, was delicious, and the views, had they been in England, would have had express trains to see them. One showed you the City and Adriatic at your feet; one looked out on the open sea, this being a wooded promontory; one on an arm of the sea, a little gulf that looked like a lake surrounded by mountains, dotted with churches, spires, and little villages; and the other looked into gardens and orchards, dotted with villas. A peasant's house close to ours (about which there had been some litigation) bore a squib painted on the lintel by a wag of that time--"Carta, canta, villan dorme" ("Sing, paper; the peasant sleeps"). We also had a very large garden, and campagna (orchard) below it, wherein one could take a very tidy walk, and it overlooked the gulf in which the Austrian fleet always anchors. This was a far better home for Richard (ailing), for getting up and down stairs, for sitting in the garden, and for air, being in the hot summers eight degrees cooler than the City. He unfortunately, however, would have no bedroom, except the biggest room in the house--so large that he could divide it into four parts, sleeping in one, dressing in another, writing in another, and breakfasting in another; but it looked direct to the north, it received the full force of the Bora, it never saw the sun, and though in winter it was thoroughly well warmed, everything got damp there, arms rusted, and so forth, and it was not until we had been there for four years that I was able to persuade him to change his abode to the best room in the house, the second largest on the other side of the house, which looked to the south and the west. I always feel that his malady would not have made such rapid progress if he would have listened to that arrangement at first.
[Sidenote: Scorpions.]
We swam and bathed all the summer; but Richard and I found for the first time that it did not agree with us, and that our long swimming days were over. I was playing with a little puppy in early August which bit me in play, and drew blood, but in a couple of days I woke with headache and very sick, and shooting pains all up the arm, and we thought I had got hydrophobia. The arm was swelled, scarlet, very painful, and I felt light-headed. I sent for a doctor, who examined the bite, and found I had been bitten by a scorpion, of which our new house was full, just in the same place that the tooth of the dog had broken the skin. He rubbed in laudanum. I had several doses of bromide of potassium, and got all right. I was stung three times after that, which produced the same effect; but we soon exterminated the scorpions.
We used to read and write a great deal in the garden, and very often used to spend the greater part of the day there.
[Sidenote: "Gup".]
He notices Sir William Williams of Kars died on the 26th of July, aged eighty-three, and the great earthquake at Casamicciola, in the island of Ischia, took place on the 28th. Poor Haji Wali died on the 3rd of August, at the age of eighty-four. He was Richard's companion in the days of Midian.
On the 12th of August arrived our new Consular Chaplain (the Rev. Mr. Thorndike), a charming, gentlemanly, and devout man, who had been in the army.
Richard's friend, Mr. George Paget, now arrived--he had bought a house at Scutari.
On the Emperor's birthday, 18th of August, there were two rows in the town between Austrians and Italians.
On Friday, the 24th, the Comte de Chambord (Henri V.) died. No need to comment upon such a misfortune.
Further on in August there was an Italian regatta, and we had a delightful dinner on the P. and O. Lombardy, the Lascar crew rowing us to San Bartolo to supper and back. We then had a visit from Mr. Lavino, correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, whom we had met so often in Vienna, and Mr. Oswald from the Foreign Office.
We went over to Monfalcone to get rid of Richard's flying gout, and Miss H. E. Bishop again came to stay with us, and we had a charming time at Dr. Gregorutti's villa and museum, and afterwards at Aquileja close by. Miss Bishop and I were delighted; but we had to hang back a little, because there was an old gentleman staying at Aquileja who did not know Richard, and he was teaching him very elementary science and ancient history in the museum, as if he were a little boy of five; and Richard was such an awfully kind man, and had such a respect for age, that he listened with as much gravity and respect as if he really were five; but he did not dare to turn round and look at us. We then had a visit from Mrs. Moore, the Consul's wife from Jerusalem. We went in to Trieste to receive Sir E. Malet; and then we made a little pilgrimage to Henri V.'s tomb at Gorizia, and the monks gave me a bit of wood off the coffin of Charles V. Richard got much better, we returned home, and Lord Campbell arrived.
At this time poor "Zæo" was performing in the theatre, and taking her nightly leaps of seventy-five feet. One night she missed and fell. Miss Bishop and I used to visit her daily and try to do what we could for her.
To our great regret, our niece, Blanche Pigott, had to leave us on the 2nd of October, 1883, having been with us for about eighteen months; but she was required at home, and so we lost our whilom daughter. I was very glad at having Miss Bishop with me; not only a devoted friend, but so knowing about sickness. After seeing our niece off, Richard walked home, and when Miss Bishop and I had finished various commissions we arrived home, and found him with his first serious attack of gout.
[1] It is in the Appendices (H).
[2] The biography alluded to, never made any further way than what I now make public.--I. B.
X. MISCELLANEOUS TRAITS OF CHARACTER AND OPINIONS
I am afraid all this "gup," as Richard would call it, will be considered rather light and frivolous about places so well known, but I want to give every word my husband has said about his life, and where I think he has forgotten anything, I like to put it in afterwards. I am afraid of its reading in a jerky style, for a friend, who one day sat in a corner when we were collaborating on one of his big tables, wrote the following specimen of us as we were beginning our work:--
"BURTONS--HUSBAND AND WIFE.
"He. Bless (sic) you, I say hold your tongue! Who wants your opinion?
"She (in a smaller voice). Oh, it is all very well, but you know you are like an iron machine, and I do all the wit and sparkle.[1]
"He. Oh, I dare say--the sparkle of a superannuated glow-worm. (Then both roared with laughter, and writing is suspended for several minutes.)
"She. Now then, go on, old iron-works, and have the first say."
(This is really the way most of our works, when collaborating, have been written.)
But I have a greater object than this. I want to prove to the world, that, though he was far from the sphere suited to his immense talent and services, which he had richly earned from the Governments that threw him away, his life was as happy as it could be made under the circumstances. It was not the being chained to a hard barren rock, as is generally represented. If the Governments had shown their appreciation of his services, had placed him where he ought to have been placed, I believe I may say he would not have had a sorrow in the world. It is true that the climate was bad--all our climates were--but once gout had laid hold of him, it pursued him in every climate, good and bad, and he suffered much. Indeed, it was one of our pet jokes that we were so inured to bad climates that we were generally ill in good ones.
I do not forgive the Governments for this, and less the Conservative, for which he worked so hard; but they were merciful about "leave." He did not owe to them a penny of the money that enabled him to do what he liked, go where he would, have what he liked, and have the best of loving care, both wifely and medical, all his last years. He had to give half his pay to his Vice-Consul when absent, and so it suited all round, but it galled him to have to ask for leave, and if they could make no better use of him, they should at least have let him go on full pay in 1886, when he had served them forty-four years, and felt his breaking-up coming on. The only comfort I find in the blow dealt him, about not getting Marocco, is, that I fear shortly after he would have become unequal for the post, and I know that quite latterly he was not able for more than he did.
He only made four attempts to better his official life after his career was broken by recall from Damascus, and they were at the latter end of his life. One was to be made a K.C.B., in 1878; the second in 1880, to be appointed Commissioner for the Slave-trade in the Red Sea--that was ten years before his death; one to succeed Sir John Drummond-Hay in Marocco, 1885--when that was refused him, in his heart he threw up the Service, though necessity kept him on; and in 1886 his last appeal was to be allowed to retire on his full pension.
There seems to have been all along, during my husband's life, an impression that he was always craving for Government honours, and complaining of neglect. This is absolutely untrue. He was too proud, too manly, too philosophic. He was profoundly silent on the subject. It was I who did it, I who asked, I who made interest, and left no stone unturned to get him advanced to his proper deserts, not from a mean vanity, nor selfish ambition, but because I saw all these long years, with deep pain, what all the world knows and acknowledges now, his true merits and great work; the true hero, abandoned and forgotten, so surely as Gordon was, silently eating his heart out by a foreign fireside, with a craving for England and his fellow-men as strong as Byron's. I alone am to blame, if blame there is; and in those days the Press backed me. What harm would it have done the Service, or the Foreign Office, to have given him his last four crippled years, with his pension? This reproach has been thrown in our teeth by successful people who ought to have had better taste.
[Sidenote: Miscellaneous Traits of Character and Opinions.]
As I said before, a man presents different characters to his wife, to his family, to her family, to his lover, to his men-friends, to his boon-companions, to the public. Now I have often, in the early days of my married life, watched with great interest and astonishment things that in after life I became quite used to. My husband, whose character naturally quite expanded with me in the privacy of our domestic life, became quite another man the moment anybody else entered the room. He was very natural with my immediate family, my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and one or two of my uncles, so that they would describe him very much in the same terms that I do. With his own family he was, again, quite a different man, so that they saw him in another light. With the few friends--and you could count them on the fingers of one hand--with whom he chose to be really intimate, he expanded to a certain amount; to all those he really liked he was a first-rate and staunch friend. With his boon-companions he was the centre of attraction. He would sit in the middle of them, and by his gaiety, brilliant conversation, and sound knowledge, fascinate the whole room, but to the world in general he seemed to wear a mask. He would throw out his quills like a porcupine, and somebody remarked they seemed to become harder every year.
When we were staying with my father, of whom he was particularly fond, he would always sit by him at meals. My father kept very open house, and intimates used to flock in at meal-times. Sometimes, when he would be in a full flow of spirits and gaiety, some outsider would walk in. He would stop suddenly, and his face become like a mask, and my father at first used to ask me, "What is the matter? Is Dick offended? Doesn't he like So-and-so?" and I said, "Oh no; that is his usual habit when a stranger comes in, and he will be like that until he knows him; and if he does not like him he will be always like that to him, and if he is nice he will thaw." He seemed to have a horror of any one seeing the inside of him, and if he was caught saying or doing anything good, he would actually blush, and hide it as if he had been caught committing a crime.
In married life we quite agreed about most things, and one was that complete liberty took off all the galling chain, popularly attributed by men to the monotony, dreary respectability, and conventionality of the usual British home circle, which frightens so many men from entering into matrimony, and which forms the antidote to the cosiness, companionship, and security of home, to two people who understand each other; consequently, whenever he showed a tendency to wander, and to go without me, though I was overjoyed when I was told I might go, I never restricted him. I provided every imaginable comfort for him; I transacted all his business at home, so that he might feel that he had left his second self, that nothing would go amiss when he was away. When he returned, he got a warm and joyous welcome, and was asked no questions. He told me what he liked, at his own sweet will, and I knew that he always returned to me with pleasure. He smoked where he liked, he brought whoever he liked into the house, his friends were always welcome, and he knew he need never be ashamed or afraid to ask anybody in to lunch or dinner; in short, his home was his own, and it was comfortable. On my part, I never wanted to go away from him for an hour; but when he sent me, as he often did, on various business for him, I went. But I am glad to think, now that he has gone, that after my business was terminated, no amount of pleasure or engagements, or a need to rest, ever held me back one hour when I might have been with him. I was always on board, or in the train, two hours after the work, whatever it was, was done, but I am equally sure that if I had said to him, "Jemmy, I am hipped, or I am bored, or I want a change," he would have told me to pack up my things and to go off for a week or a fortnight to Paris or London, or anywhere else I liked.
Richard was a most moral and refined man at home in his domestic life. He was not only the best husband that ever lived, but the pleasantest man to live with, and the easiest. He was too large-minded for all the usual small worries and Grundified conventions that form the cab-shafts of domestic life in civilization. He was a man with whom it was possible to combine, to keep up all the little refinements of the honeymoon, which tends to preserve affection and respect, and a halo of romance, which we kept up for thirty years, which is to civilized European life, just what putting one's self on a lower rank than one's husband in Moslem life is in the East--it preserves respect to both man and woman; whilst anything immoral, or cruel, or dishonest called forth his anger and severity.
He was a man who, if he had not practised great self-control, could have had a very violent temper; but he had it so completely under him, that I have very seldom seen him in a rage, except, as I say, at anything cruel or unjust, ungentlemanly or immoral. With regard to domestic temper, it is a consolation to me to say that we never had a quarrel in our lives, nor even cross words, although occasionally women-friends worked hard to that effect. I always hold it as a rule that it is the most ungenerous thing a woman can be guilty of to "nag" a man, because, if he is a gentleman, he is at an utter disadvantage--he can't strike her. I have often seen women nagging at their husbands till I have wondered why they did not knock them down and jump upon them. When we married, I made a promise to myself that I would never do this, and if I ever saw him a little put out about anything, and felt myself getting irritable, I used to go out of the room on some excuse till it had passed, and then come back, and by that time we would begin to chaff about it, and it was all gone. I remember once slamming the door when I went out, and I heard him roaring with laughter.
He never had any mean jealousy, as a little man would have had. If I got any praise he was glad, and when he knew that I had striven my heart out in somebody's service, or for some good, and that I got slighted, as I often did, or a still worse return, he used to be furious, and I always used to have to pretend that I liked it to keep him quiet. In some few cases, let us say in the service of the poor, or in the protection of animals, I was more frequently seen than he was, and some ignorant person would say, "Look, my dear, that is the kind lady's husband;" and he used to roar with laughing, and say, "What a capital joke for me to be known only as 'Lady B.'s husband'!" Then we used to laugh, and I used to pretend to be delighted with my importance.
I am glad to say there was only one will in the house, and that was his. He was master and mistress both, but, like all great men, he gave carte blanche for all little things; but if he once put his foot down, and had he chosen to say black was white, white I knew it had to be. I like that. I was only too lucky to have met my master; I hate a house where the woman is at the helm. Then, like all great men, he was open to reason, and if, after having agreed to his views, I said later on, "I am going to do what you wish, but, before it is too late, what would you think of such a plan?" he would reflect a moment, and if my idea was really good, he would at once say: "Why, of course, I never thought of it; do what you say." But if his way was best, he would say, "No, I have decided."
His kindness of heart, and consideration for other people's feelings, nobody will ever know. In public life, and with his dependents, he was severe, but very just. He was always touched by any show of confidence and trust, and I must say he met it everywhere. He was adored by servants, by children, by animals, and by all people under him--soldiers, sailors, and tribes. When any British subjects were put into prison, and he ascertained that it was unjust or harsh (for instance, as the old man of ninety imprisoned a whole winter at Damascus, deep snow on the ground, in a narrow cell with scarce bread and water enough to keep him alive, for owing a Jew sixteen shillings which he could not pay, and these things are numerous), he used to go down once a week to the prisons, and let them out on his own responsibility, and let their accusers fight him instead of them. Hence, often complaints to the Home Government against him from the rich and powerful. Once a British sailor in Trieste was put in prison for some drunken lark; he had good-naturedly treated a native soldier to a drink, and when Jack had had enough, the native stole his watch. Jack, naturally, immediately knocked him down and took it from him, so he was locked up. The next day Richard got a very dirty-looking note, on which was written outside, "The Council." The seal was Jack's dirty thumb. Inside was--
"BURTIN,
"i ham him trobel, kum and let me haout.
"TIM TROUNCER."
Richard was delighted, and immediately went off and got the sailor out, and got the authorities to put the native soldier in his place. I simply give this as an illustration of the manner in which he was trusted and loved.
His mode of study was as follows:--
In early life he studied everything till he had passed in it, whether it was medicine, law, theology, or any other branch. In after life he kept his knowledge on a steady platform, studying up all things together to a certain point at so much a day, "raising the platform" (as he called it) equally. He never passed a day without reading up something in one of his twenty-nine languages; hence he spoke them all without difficulty, never mixing them. He then read a good deal, and took notes, and cut any useful and interesting paragraphs from about ten English and four local papers. He used to examine into the meaning and the etymology of words as he went on, with all their bearings and different spellings; he never read hurriedly, passing anything over. He wrote for a certain time in the day at several different tables--a table to each work. He kept himself up in all the passing events of the day, wrote his journal, copied anything that struck him, and at night he always "cooled his head" with a novel. If he were sick he would go to bed for several days--went on the starvation system, banished all business from his mind, and had piles of novels on chairs by his bed. One day he would get up quite well and go to work again. The most remarkable thing about him was, that every man who spoke to him found, that his one specialty was Richard's specialty. It seemed as if there was nothing that he did not know; and as for hidden things, he seemed to guess them by intuition as if he were a magician.
People will wonder if I tell them of a quality quite unsuspected on the exterior. The older he grew, the greater dislike he had for women who went wrong. He was always civil to them, especially in his own house, but there was a coldness in his manner to them, in contrast to people who were innocent, and he seemed to detect them by instinct. He used to tell me that he inherited this from his father, who in his old age was exactly the same, and if any lady known to have affaires gallantes was coming, that he used to turn round to his mother and say, "Mind, Martha! I won't have that adulteress put by me." He was also very indignant if any lady was insulted. He especially disliked a man who boasted of favours received, or let one know in any way about it--he always said such a one was no Englishman; and when he heard that any woman had lost her reputation through being simply kind to anybody, he took her part. He said, "Those are not even the men who 'kiss and tell,' but the men who 'tell and have not kissed.' A man when he really has any affair with a woman, if he is a man, is deadly silent about it." In his journals he has mapped and classified his men into three sorts as regarding their conduct with women:--
"1. The English gentleman who kisses and does not tell.
"2. The snob who kisses and tells, or if he does not actually tell, he insinuates with a smile and a gesture.
"3. Is the lying coward who tells and does not kiss, has never been allowed the chance of kissing, who has a snub to avenge, or who blackmails for money; who forge their own love-letters, and read them not only to their friends, but at cafés and clubs.
"The two last classes were more or less unknown in England till the introduction of so much foreign blood and foreign contact. It never would have occurred to the pure-blooded Englishman. Unfortunately, when men debase themselves by asking ladies for money (there is always something generous in a woman to a man--not to her own sex), they pity them, and are kind to them, and give it to them, instead of doing what they ought to do--ringing the bell and having the man turned out of the house. I have seen more innocent women lose a spotless reputation by those acts of kindness, than others by an illicit love with an English gentleman. When I see a man trying to prove that a woman drinks, or that she is out of her mind, or hysterical, or a liar, if he tells it to me once I may forget it, but if he tells it to me twice I know that that man has got something serious to hide, and that that woman knows his secret. If the man is effeminate, or deformed, or vain, morbid, or craving for notice and sympathy, be sure it is his own state he describes, and not the woman he runs down, who has snubbed him and knows what he wants to hide."
Of critics and reviewers he wrote as follows:--
"They no longer review books; when they are incompetent they review the author, and if the author's politics and religion do not happen to agree with the office of that paper, it admits scurrilous and personal paragraphs on the authors themselves, bringing up a sort of dossier of the author, which would be considered even disgraceful in a trial in a criminal court. Thirty years ago this would never have been allowed. This may amuse the writer, it may excite the reader, but I protest against it. Nothing can be less profitable to an author or a reader than a long tirade of peevish, petulant, personal comment, and unanswerable sneer. This is only used by people who can shelter themselves under an anonymous signature, or a Critique manqué, and is quite the mark of a pretender in literature and critical art, and which seldom disfigures the style of a true or able critic."
Much as he disliked unjust or coarse criticism, he delighted in playful bits of chaff like the following from the writer of the feuilleton in the Queen, the lady's newspaper and Court chronicle. He had simply written to the Morning Post a little chaff, telling truly what he had seen at a private Davenport séance.
"Oh, R. F. B.! Oh, R. F. B.! How can you such a ninny be? Why peril a good name and fame By playing into tricksters' game? Why, when all other dodges fail, Apply your aid to prop a tale Not half so true as 'Gammer Gurton,' With such a name as R. F. Burton?"
"Gaiety," in speaking of Echo, said--
"The Echo is just a bit wild, Its par is indeed a hard hitter; In fact, it is not drawn mild, It is a matter of Burton and bitter."
Anent the "Arabian Nights," a young girl says--
"What did he say to you, dear aunt? That's what I want to know. What did he say to you, dear aunt? That man at Waterloo!
"An Arabian old man, a Nights old man, As Burton, as Burton can be; Will you ask my papa to tell my mamma The exact words and tell them to me?"
There was another capital chaff on his "Lusiads," but I cannot find it.
With regard to flowers, he would go out and bring one little wild flower and put it in a glass of water on his table--sometimes a single leaf. If anybody gave him a bouquet, or brought hothouse or garden flowers and put them under his nose, he would turn away with disgust; and people will no doubt laugh when I tell them that it was a peculiar form of asceticism which ran like a thread (one amongst many) through his life. He learnt singing, but he found his own voice so disagreeable in song he would not go on with it, whilst his speaking voice never had its equal--so soft and deep and attractive, that every one would stop to listen as if it were a sweet-toned bell.
In music he had the finest ear, so that a false note was an agony to him; and he could fully appreciate all Eastern music and gypsy music that would sound tuneless to an English ear, and only loved the minor key. He would go to an opera to hear a new prima donna, but he could not abide amateur music, and at evenings at home, if anybody proposed a little music, and a girl got up and nervously warbled a ballad about banks and butterflies, he used to put his hand to his stomach and walk out of the room. He did not allow me to cultivate much music, but if I sang melancholy music in a minor key, in a soft low voice, he would throw open the door even while he was at work.
He was intensely simple in his tastes. I used to busy myself greatly, Martha-like, about making his room extremely comfortable; but the moment I put anything pretty in it, it used to be put in the passage. He liked large plain deal tables, about six feet long and three or four feet broad, with no table-cloth. He would tie a red bandanna on the leg for a penwiper. He liked hard wooden writing-chairs, and to have a great many of these tables--one for each separate work; a small iron bedstead, with iron wove mattress, no sheets, but plenty of English white soft warm blankets. He would have no night-light; but would never have blinds nor shutters drawn, that he might see daylight as soon as possible, and the last of the twilight. His bookshelves were all of plain deal, and each category upon which he was working, was kept separate. He would not have his books and papers touched, and preferred dust and cobwebs to their being moved. His three private rooms contained only books, swords, pistols, and guns, scientific instruments, a few medicines, and plenty of clothes. He loved his old clothes. He would order rows of greatcoats and ulsters, and then go out in a little thin coat to keep himself hardy.
He had a great love for boots, and sometimes had as many as a hundred pairs in the house. I used to implore to be allowed to give his old hats away to the cabmen, and he only laughed immensely at my getting so ashamed of them; but he always had loads of new clothes, and wore the old ones for preference. There was one rather amusing story about a fencing-shoe. He lost one, and he went and asked his bootmaker if he would make him another. He said, "No; he would make him a pair." He took this shoe all over the world, and every bootmaker he saw he asked him to make the odd shoe; but nobody ever would. At last we found out that there is a superstition amongst bootmakers that if they make one boot they die. He tried it for eighteen years and never succeeded, and I have the odd shoe now in remembrance.
He never would keep two of anything. If he had two things of a sort he gave one away, and if he became attached to any particular thing he would give it away--another asceticism--nor would he indulge in any perfume except good eau de Cologne.
With regard to food, he was very fond of what some people would call common things; but no man understood better how to order a dinner, or what to order, and how to enjoy it, especially in Paris. He used to say that French cooking and English materials and a good cellar ought to keep any man alive for a hundred years; but when he could not get these luxuries he preferred, not the demi-semi sort of table with sham entrées, but whatever food of the country the natives ate. For instance, in West Africa on the coast, everything was turtle, which abounds. In Brazil it was fejão and farinha, which fejoada was brown beans, covered with a very savoury sauce, and coarse flour (the two mixed up together are delicious); and also a kind of hot-pot, which was kept continually going. In Damascus and all Eastern places it would be kous-kous, of which he never tired, and kabábs; and in Trieste, risotto (a savoury rice dish with lumps of meat thrown about in it), polenta (yellow meal made something like a pudding with little birds in it), ravioli (Genoese paste), and so on.
But, in fact, in each place that we went to, he used native dishes, native wine, and native smoke, cigars or otherwise, because, as he argued, they were adapted to the climate. So when we came to a pretentious hotel, and he asked for common things--let us say the little black olives--the proprietor would say, "Oh dear, no, Sir; we don't keep such common things as that;" and he used to say, "Then send out sharp and get them." He loved bácalá (dried codfish) and sauerkraut, but they have both such a horrid smell that I bargained to have them on Saturday, the day after my reception day (Friday). One thing he could not bear, and that was honey. As some people know that there is a cat in a room, he also could not sit in the room with honey, and knew even if it was kept in the most secret drawer or cupboard. Sometimes after a dinner or lunch I have said to him, "What made you look so uncomfortable?" And he would say, "There was honey in the room, and I thought they would think I was mad if I asked to have it removed; but I felt quite faint."
His great treat of all was a sucking-pig, three weeks old, roasted well with the crackle, stuffing, and apple-sauce; and this was always ordered on our wedding-day and on his birthday.
With regard to what he drank, from the time of Richard's attacks of gout, he stuck steadily to three ounces a day of whisky-and-water during the twenty-four hours. His favourite wine was port--he used to call it the "prince of wines;" but he was not allowed it during the last three years and a half. Champagne he cared but little for. I was so sorry that he could not add, being no longer living, his testimony to Dr. Broadbent, when the discussion was on in the papers about drink in 1891; but I can do it for him now, and confirm it too. In all bad climates--West Africa, India, and elsewhere--when an epidemic such as cholera or yellow fever comes on, the first men to die are the water-drinkers, and when the first virulence has polished them off, it clears off the drunkards, and the only persons left living are the moderate drinkers. This is a positive fact, and anybody who gainsays it, has had no practical experience in very bad climates.
Our days used to be passed as follows:--
Of course, I am not speaking now of the last three and a half years that he was sick and I broken down. In his days of health and strength he suffered from insomnia, and he could not get more than two or three hours' sleep. For the first twenty-two years of my married life, I made our early tea at any time from three to half-past five, according to the seasons (and if I happened to go to a ball I did not find it worth while to go to bed); we had tea, bread and butter, and fruit. Now, if it was a home day, we would set to work first on our journals, then on the correspondence, and then to our literature. I did the greater part of his correspondence by dictation or directions, and then copied for him or wrote with him and for him. At eleven or twelve, according to the seasons, we had a regular déjeuner (lunch), answering to the continental fashion. He would then go to the Consulate or we went for a long walk, or I would do visits or shopping, or look after the Societies of which I was President--it might be for the poor or the animals. If it were summer, we would take an hour's swim; if it were winter, an hour at the fencing school. In our declining days, in the summer time, we had an hour's siesta before beginning new work. At four o'clock a sit-down tea of bread and butter and fruit and jam, at which most of our intimates and our Staff would flock in; and then we would return to our literature till evening dinner, either in garden or house. After dinner we smoked and read, went to bed about ten, and read ourselves to sleep.
Sometimes we were invited out, or invited friends, and this was varied by long excursions, riding, driving, walking, or boating. We generally knew every stick and stone for fifty miles round the place we lived in, and, of course, larger travels or camp life varied again from this. Camp life for me would begin two hours before dawn, when I would see the horses watered, fed, groomed, and saddled, and somebody else the striking of the tents, the packing and loading of the baggage animals. At dawn we started, and we rode until the sun was impossibly hot. We then called a halt, got shade if we could, loosened the girths, watered our beasts and ourselves if possible, fed them and ourselves if we could, and in all cases rested. After about a couple of hours we went on again till sunset. We then bivouacked for the night. If we were amongst any tribes, his diwan was spread, chibouks and lemonade were prepared, and he sat in state and received chiefs or notables. I used to walk off with the horses, and went through the whole detail again of changing saddle and bridle for clothing and halter, cooling, watering, feeding, clothing, picketing, and then back to the tent to join the party in a humble and unostentatious manner as would become a young man, if I were posing as such--say a son or a dependant.
Once the visits were over we had supper, and to bed, and to-morrow da capo.
During our last three and a half years we were both broken down, though I am still alive to tell the tale, and we had to forget what we used to do, and train down to what we could do; but I look back with comfort and pride on the reflection that during our thirty years of married life we never lost a minute, and that it was all occupied in trying to "soar," and not to "drop." The word always in his mouth was "work, work, work," and his motto always, "Excelsior!"
He had another peculiarity on which he rather prided himself. In his latter years about most things he was excessively open--in fact, I used to be rather surprised and sometimes worried at the way in which he talked quite openly of his plans before utter strangers, and corresponded freely about literature with people he had never seen, and I often think that he came to a great deal of harm that way, that untrue people were apt to trade upon it; and, on the other hand, on the things he really felt most, he prided himself on his secrecy, and was very fond of hiding things. I used to tell him he was a regular magpie, because in the end he hid them so well that he used to have to come and call me to try and find them.
He used to trust me with the whole of the money, and I rendered him a monthly account, and it amused him immensely to pretend to people that I never allowed him any money, but sent him out with half a crown. Sometimes, when he made a small literary profit, he would hide it away, and it used invariably to get stolen. Once he put away £18 after this fashion, and our cook in our absence let some boy-friend of hers come in to play with the weapons; the boy poked his nose into all the drawers and found it, and stole it, and after that he did not hide any more.
He never knew how much he had, if he had debts or anything. I managed all that, and used to show him once a month a total of what was spent and what there was to go on with. He liked money for what it would bring, but he was very generous; he never gave it a thought, and he spent it as fast as he got it. He gave freely. He was born to be rich, and he liked to be thought rich. His own motto which he composed for himself was, "HONOUR, NOT HONOURS;" and his chaff motto for young ladies' albums, and which he would never explain to them, was as follows:--
"Sháwir hunna wa Khálif hunna." "Consult them (fem.) and (do contrary) to them."
It is very curious the ignorance with which he was occasionally met. An educated man from Vienna asked him one day if he had ever been to Africa, and an educated Englishwoman, after living nearly eighteen years with him in Trieste, asked him the same question, and was not aware that he had ever written a book. I think that gives people some idea of his modesty.
He had a great objection personally to cremation, although he thought it a clean and healthy thing; but he said with his usual joke at a serious thing, "I do not want to burn before I have got to;" and secondly, "When a fellow has been quartered for seven years or more close to a Hindú smáshán, or burning-ground, it reminds him so painfully of the unpleasant smell of roast Hindú" (which pervaded his quarters when he was a struggling ensign or lieutenant). He used to carry a stick, which it was a pain to lift, to exercise the muscles of his arms; his Damascus pipe held a quarter of a pound of tobacco; his elephant-guns, with which he used to trot about Africa, of twenty-four pounds, which carried a four-ounce ball, I can only just lift; and, on the other hand, and later on in life, he would buy such diminutive things that they were almost more fit for a doll's house than for a man.
His handwriting, as everybody knows, was so small as to be almost invisible, and he used jokingly to say that the printers struck work when one of his manuscripts went in. They used to make hideous mistakes, and he used to abuse them in what he jokingly called "langwidge" all down the margins, and one day a firm sent up a foreman to say that the men declined to go on if they were abused in that manner. I was sent to interview the man, and we both laughed so much we could hardly speak, but he said he would go back and try to pacify them. Richard used always to say that a wee writing, as if done with a pin, betokened a big, strong man; a bold, dashing hand, as if written with the poker, was always a tiny, golden-haired, baby-faced woman.
Sometimes, when people annoyed Richard in little ways, I would say, "Never mind; why do you take notice of such little things?" and he invariably answered, "I am like an elephant's trunk; I can pick up a needle and root up a tree."
In his latter days, though his eyes were as soft and as brilliant and youthful as they could be, he only required spectacles just at the very end to read his own writing or small print, and the oculist found that he had two quite different eyes, which had been complained of in Madame Gutmansthal's picture, showing what a true artist she was. The right required No. 50 convex, and the left eye 14 convex. He turned to me and said, "I always told you that I was a dual man, and I believe that that particular mania when I am delirious is perfectly correct."
DESCRIPTION OF RICHARD IN EGYPT.
Cutting from the Argonaut.
[Sidenote: Descriptions from Other Sources.]
Edwin de Leon, for many years Consul-General of the United States in Egypt, thus writes of the late Sir Richard Burton:--
"Richard Burton was self-reliant, self-sustained, seeking no support from heaven or earth, substituting self-will for faith and strenuous effort for Divine assistance; endowed by nature with a frame of iron and muscles of steel, he was an athlete who might have figured in the arena in Greek or Roman times. Audacious in speech and act, and fond of shocking the prejudices of those with whom he talked, he was the expounder of the most outrageous paradoxes possible to conceive. He was eminently a social animal; loved the pleasures of the table, and would talk with a friend all night in preference to going to bed, and in the Chaucerian style. Yet, with women, I never knew him even hint an indelicacy; for the charm of his conversation was to them very great, he had so much to tell. In his earlier days he was a strikingly handsome man, and even since his face had been scarred and furrowed by wounds and trials, there yet lingered on that expressive countenance the 'faded splendour wan' which had survived his youth. Among his personal habits was that of carrying in his hand an iron walking-stick, as heavy as a gun, to keep his muscles properly exercised, and a blow from his fist was like a kick from a horse. Mind and muscle with him were equally strong propellers, and the animal nature as vigorous as the intellectual. He had the faculty of making staunch friends and bitter enemies, and many of each. Burton had a curious characteristic which he shared with Lord Byron--that of loving to paint himself much blacker than he really was, and to affect vices, much as most men affect virtues, and with the same insincerity. In one of his shipwreck stories, after describing how they all suffered from the pangs of hunger, and the wolfish glances they began to cast on each other from time to time as the days wore on and no relief came, dropping his voice to a mysterious whisper, almost under his breath he added, 'The cabin-boy was young and fat, and looked very tender, and on him, more than on any other, such looks were cast, until----' Here he paused, looked around at the strained and startled faces of his auditors, in which horror was depicted, and then abruptly concluded, as though dismissing a disagreeable memory, 'But these are not stories to be told at a cheerful dinner-party, in a Christian country, and I had best say no more. Let us turn to some more cheerful subject.' Of course he was pressed to continue and complete his story, but stubbornly refused; leaving his hearers in a most unsatisfactory state of mind as to the dénouement of the unfinished narrative."
DESCRIPTION OF RICHARD IN HIS STUDY AT TRIESTE.
Cutting from Life.
"Though standing nearly six feet high, he did not look a tall man, his broad shoulders, deep chest, and splendidly developed limbs deceiving the eye as to his real height. His hands and feet were small. His hair was of the deepest black, and was always worn close-cropped. In the East he went with his head clean shaven, covered with a fez and a white cap underneath it. As a talker he was unrivalled. His voice was soft and musical, contrasting strangely with the commanding tones which one would fancy necessary for him whose life so often depended on the power of his tongue over uncivilized men. His laugh was like the rattle of a pebble thrown across a frozen pond. While the best of ordinary men never aspire to know more than something of everything, and everything of something, he might almost without exaggeration be said to know everything of everything. He was an especial favourite of young men, who would literally sit at his feet as he talked. To all he was the kindest and truest of friends, and the brightest and most uncomplaining of companions in spite of his many disappointments.
"His literary work was always a labour of love with him, and those in the next room would often hear a hearty laugh burst from him as he lighted on the quaint conceit of some Oriental chronicler."
He was a man dearly loved by all Eastern races, by children and servants, and animals; he never made a mistake about character, and often when I have been quite delighted with people he has warned me against them, and forbidden me to have anything to do with them. I have never known him wrong in his estimate.
He had a wonderful prescience of things and events, even of those things of which he knew the least. I might quote a little common instance of so trite a thing as the "Argentines." I had some money in Argentines--not much, only a few hundreds--and one day without any rhyme or reason he ordered me to take them out. I thought to myself that if a first-rate lawyer and a first-rate broker put them in, that it must be right, and that Richard, being anything but a business man, could not possibly know anything about it, so I did not write the letter. Six months later he gave me a call; I went into his room. "Did you ever write that letter that I desired you to write, taking your money out of the Argentines?" "No, Jemmy," I said; "you know you know nothing about business, and it is a good percentage." He said very sternly, "Go and bring your pen and paper directly, and sit down here, and write it before me, and I will post it myself." He dictated to me a most imperative letter to my lawyer, desiring him to withdraw the money the moment he received the letter, without stopping to write back any questions. It was done, and my lawyer wrote me back a very aggrieved letter at my want of confidence in the judgment of his broker, and bitterly complained that I had lost £14. I gave it to Richard, who was delighted. A fortnight later the smash came. To show how kind-hearted he is, he called me and said laughingly, "I forbid you to write and taunt your lawyer; I know it is an awful temptation." He was so extremely punctiliously conscientious in his conduct to other people, so full of kindnesses and consideration for the feelings and peculiarities of other people.
I know that he is appreciated already, but not yet understood. His nobility of nature and chivalry belonged to the Knights of the Middle Ages. His science, erudition, and broad views belong to sixty years hence; his misfortune was not belonging to his Time, and hence the many failures during his life.
[1] This was a little bit of "chaff," because he was so afraid of saying too much about himself, that he often made it heavy with knowledge and science, and suppressed what was interesting as to his own share in the matter quoted.--I. B.