Part 13 (1/2)
For Ra's.h.i.+d Pasha, the Wali or Governor-General of Syria, both Burton and his wife conceived from the first a p.r.o.nounced antipathy. He was fat and indolent, with pin-point eyes, wore furs, walked on his toes, purred and looked like ”a well-fed cat.” It did not, however, occur to them just then that he was to be their evil genius.
”Call him Ra's.h.i.+d, with the accent on the first syllable,” Burton was always careful to say when speaking of this fiendish monster, ”and do not confound him with (Haroun al) Ras.h.i.+'d, accent on the second syllable--'the orthodox,' the 'treader in the right path.'” [219]
58. Jane Digby el Mezrab.
At an early date Burton formed a friends.h.i.+p with the Algerine hero and exile Abd el Kadir, a dark, kingly-looking man who always appeared in snow white and carried superbly-jewelled arms; while Mrs. Burton, who had a genius for a.s.sociating herself with undesirable persons, took to her bosom the notorious and polyandrous Jane Digby el Mezrab. [220] This lady had been the wife first of Lord Ellenborough, who divorced her, secondly of Prince Schwartzenberg, and afterwards of about six other gentlemen. Finally, having used up Europe, she made her way to Syria, where she married a ”dirty little black” [221] Bedawin shaykh. Mrs.
Burton, with her innocent, impulsive, flamboyant mind, not only grappled Jane Digby with hoops of steel, but stigmatised all the charges against her as wilful and malicious. Burton, however, mistrusted the lady from the first. Says Mrs. Burton of her new friend, ”She was a most beautiful woman, though sixty-one, tall, commanding, and queen-like. She was grande dame jusqu' au bout des doights, as much as if she had just left the salons of London and Paris, refined in manner, nor did she ever utter a word you could wish unsaid. She spoke nine languages perfectly, and could read and write in them. She lived half the year in Damascus and half with her husband in his Bedawin tents, she like any other Bedawin woman, but honoured and respected as the queen of her tribe, wearing one blue garment, her beautiful hair in two long plaits down to the ground, milking the camels, serving her husband, preparing his food, sitting on the floor and was.h.i.+ng his feet, giving him his coffee; and while he ate she stood and waited on him: and glorying in it. She looked splendid in Oriental dress. She was my most intimate friend, and she dictated to me the whole of her biography.” [222] Both ladies were inveterate smokers, and they, Burton, and Abd el Kadir spent many evenings on the terrace of the house with their narghilehs. Burton and his wife never forgot these delightsome causeries. Swiftly, indeed, flew the happy hours when they
”Nighted and dayed in Damascus town.” [223]
59. To Tadmor.
Burton had scarcely got settled in Damascus before he expressed his intention of visiting the historic Tadmor in the desert. It was an eight days' journey, and the position of the two wells on the way was kept a secret by Jane Digby's tribe, who levied blackmail on all visitors to the famous ruins. The charge was the monstrous one of 250; but Burton--at all times a sworn foe to cupidity--resolved to go without paying. Says Mrs. Burton, ”Jane Digby was in a very anxious state when she heard this announcement, as she knew it was a death blow to a great source of revenue to the tribe... She did all she could to dissuade us, she wept over our loss, and she told us that we should never come back.”
Finally the subtle lady dried her crocodile eyes and offered her ”dear friends” the escort of one of her Bedawin, that they might steer clear of the raiders and be conducted more quickly to water, ”if it existed.”
Burton motioned to his wife to accept the escort, and Jane left the house with ill-concealed satisfaction. The Bedawi [224] in due time arrived, but not before he had been secretly instructed by Jane to lead the Burtons into ambush whence they could be pounced upon by the tribe and kept prisoners till ransomed. That, however, was no more than Burton had antic.i.p.ated; consequently as soon as the expedition was well on the road he deprived the Bedawi of his mare and accoutrements, and retained both as hostages until Damascus should be reached again. Appropriately enough this occurred on April the First. [225] Success rewarded his acuteness, for naturally the wells were found, and the travellers having watered their camels finished the journey with comfort. Says Mrs.
Burton, ”I shall never forget the imposing sight of Tadmor. There is nothing so deceiving as distance in the desert.... A distant ruin stands out of the sea of sand, the atmosphere is so clear that you think you will reach it in half an hour; you ride all day and you never seem to get any nearer to it.” Arrived at Tadmor they found it to consist of a few orchards, the imposing ruins, and a number of wretched huts ”plastered like wasps' nests within them.” Of the chief ruin, the Temple of the Sun, one hundred columns were still standing and Burton, who set his men to make excavations, found some statues, including one of Zen.o.bia. The party reached Damascus again after an absence of about a month. The Bedawi's mare was returned; and Jane Digby had the pleasure of re-union with her dear Mrs. Burton, whom she kissed effusively.
Both Burton and his wife mingled freely with the people of Damascus, and Burton, who was constantly storing up knowledge against his great edition of The Arabian Nights, often frequented the Arabic library.
[226] Their favourite walk was to the top of an adjacent eminence, whence they could look down on Damascus, which lay in the light of the setting sun, ”like a pearl.” Then there were excursions to distant villages of traditionary interest, including Jobar, where Elijah is reputed to have hidden, and to have anointed Hazael. [227] ”The Bird,”
indeed, as ever, was continually on the wing, nor was Mrs. Burton less active. She visited, for example, several of the harems in the city, including that of Abd el Kadir. ”He had five wives,” she says, ”one of them was very pretty. I asked them how they could bear to live together and pet each other's children. I told them that in England, if a woman thought her husband had another wife or mistress, she would be ready to kill her. They all laughed heartily at me, and seemed to think it a great joke.” [228] She also took part in various social and religious functions, and was present more than once at a circ.u.mcision--at which, she tells us, the victim, as Westerns must regard him, was always seated on richest tapestry resembling a bride throne, while his cries were drowned by the crash of cymbals. Burton's note-books, indeed, owed no mean debt to her zealous co-operation.
60. Palmer and Drake. 11th July 1870.
The Burtons spent their summer in a diminutive Christian village called B'ludan, on the Anti-Lebanon, at the head of the Vale of Zebedani, Burton having chosen it as his sanitarium. A beautiful stream with waterfalls bubbled through their gardens, which commanded magnificent views of the Lebanon country. As at Santos, Mrs. Burton continued her role of Lady Bountiful, and she spent many hours making up powders and pills. Although in reality n.o.body was one jot the better or the worse for taking them, the rumour circulated that they were invariably fatal.
Consequently her reputation as a doctor spread far and wide. One evening a peasant woman who was dying sent a piteous request for aid, and Mrs. Burton, who hurried to the spot, satisfied the poor soul by the administration of some useless but harmless dose. Next morning the woman's son appeared. He thanked Mrs. Burton warmly for her attentions, said it was his duty to report that his mother was dead, and begged for a little more of the efficacious white powder, as he had a bedridden grandmother of whom he was also anxious to be relieved.
One piping hot morning [229] when walking in his garden Burton noticed a gipsy tent outside, and on approaching it found two sun-burnt Englishmen, a powerful, amiable-looking giant, and a smaller man with a long beard and silky hair. The giant turned out to be Charles Tyrwhitt Drake and the medium-sized man Edward Henry Palmer, both of whom were engaged in survey work. Drake, aged 24, was the draughtsman and naturalist; Palmer, [230] just upon 30, but already one of the first linguists of the day, the archaeologist. Palmer, like Burton, had leanings towards occultism; crystal gazing, philosopher's stone hunting.
After making a mess with chemicals, he would gaze intently at it, and say excitedly: ”I wonder what will happen”--an expression that was always expected of him on such and all other exciting occasions. A quadruple friends.h.i.+p ensued, and the Burtons, Drake and Palmer made several archaeological expeditions together. To Palmer's poetical eyes all the Lebanon region was enchanted ground. Here the lovely Shulamite of the lovelier Scripture lyric fed her flocks by the shepherd's tents.
Hither came Solomon, first disguised as a shepherd, to win her love, and afterwards in his royal litter perfumed with myrrh and frankincense to take her to his Cedar House. This, too, was the country of Adonis.
In Lebanon the wild boar slew him, and yonder, flowing towards ”holy Byblus,” were ”the sacred waters where the women of the ancient mysteries came to mingle their tears.” [231] Of this primitive and picturesque but wanton wors.h.i.+p they were reminded frequently both by relic and place name. To Palmer, viewing them in the light of the past, the Cedars of Lebanon were a poem, but to Burton--a curious mixture of the romantic and the prosaic--with his invariable habit of underrating famous objects, they were ”a wretched collection of scraggy Christmas trees.” ”I thought,” said Burton, ”when I came here that Syria and Palestine would be so worn out that my occupation as an explorer was clean gone.” He found, however, that such was not the case--all previous travellers having kept to the beaten tracks; Jaydur, for example, the cla.s.sical Ituraea, was represented on the maps by ”a virgin white patch.” Burton found it teeming with interest. There was hardly a mile without a ruin--broken pillars, inscribed slabs, monoliths, tombs. A little later he travelled as far northward as Hamah [232] in order to copy the uncouth characters on the famous stones, and Drake discovered an altar adorned with figures of Astarte and Baal. [233] Everywhere throughout Palestine he had to deplore the absence of trees. ”Oh that Brigham Young were here!” he used to say, ”to plant a million. The sky would then no longer be bra.s.s, or the face of the country a quarry.”
Thanks to his researches, Burton has made his name historical in the Holy Land, for his book Unexplored Syria--written though it be in a distressingly slipshod style--throws, from almost every page, interesting light on the Bible. ”Study of the Holy Land,” he said, ”has the force of a fifth Gospel, not only because it completes and harmonises, but also because it makes intelligible the other four. Oh, when shall we have a reasonable version of Hebrew Holy Writ which will retain the original names of words either untranslatable or to be translated only by guess work!” [234] One of their adventures--with a shaykh named Salameh--reads like a tale out of The Arabian Nights.
Having led them by devious paths into an uninhabited wild, Salameh announced that, unless they made it worth his wile to do otherwise, he intended to leave them there to perish, and it took twenty-five pounds to satisfy the rogue's cupidity. Palmer, however, was of opinion that an offence of this kind ought by no means to be pa.s.sed over, so on reaching Jerusalem he complained to the Turkish governor and asked that the man might receive punishment. ”I know the man,” said the Pasha, ”he is a scoundrel, and you shall see an example of the strength and equity of the Sultan's rule;” and of course, Palmer, in his perpetual phrase, wondered what would happen. After their return to Damascus the three friends had occasion to call on Ras.h.i.+d Pasha. ”Do you think,” said the Wali, with his twitching moustache and curious, sleek, unctuous smile, ”do you think you would know your friend again?” He then clapped his hands and a soldier brought in a sack containing four human heads, one of which had belonged to the unfortunate Salameh. ”Are you satisfied?”
enquired the Wali. [235]
61. Khamoor.
Having been separated from ”that little beast of a Brazilian”--the cat-torturing Chico--Mrs. Burton felt that she must have another confidential servant companion. Male dwarfs being so unsatisfactory she now decided to try a full-sized human being, and of the other s.e.x. At Miss Ellen Wilson's Protestant Mission in Anti-Lebanon she saw just her ideal--a lissom, good-looking Syrian maid, named Khamoor, or ”The Moon.”
Chico the Second (or shall we say Chica [236] the First.) had black plaits of hair confined by a coloured handkerchief, large, dark, reflulgent eyes, pouting lips, white teeth, of which she was very proud, ”a temperament which was all suns.h.i.+ne and lightning in ten minutes,” and a habit of discharging, quite unexpectedly, a ”volley of fearful oaths.”