Part 14 (1/2)
Within a month of Burton's departure he was recalled by the Porte and disgraced. Not only so but every measure which Burton had recommended during his consuls.h.i.+p was ordered to be carried out, and ”The reform was so thorough and complete, that Her Majesty's Amba.s.sador at Constantinople was directed officially to compliment the Porte upon its newly initiated line of progress.” But n.o.body thanked, or even though of Burton. On the occasion of his departure Burton received shoals of letters from prominent men of ”every creed, race and tongue,”
manifesting sorrow and wis.h.i.+ng him G.o.d-speed. Delightful, indeed, was the prologue of that from Abd El Kadir: ”Allah,” it ran, ”favour the days of your far-famed learning, and prosper the excellence of your writing. O wader of the seas of knowledge, O cistern of learning of our globe, exalted above his age, whose exaltation is above the mountains of increase and our rising place, opener by his books of night and day, traveller by s.h.i.+p and foot and horse, one whom none can equal in travel.” The letter itself was couched in a few simple, heartfelt words, and terminated with ”It is our personal friends.h.i.+p to you which dictates this letter.” ”You have departed,” wrote a Druze shaykh, ”leaving us the sweet perfume of charity and n.o.ble conduct in befriending the poor and supporting the weak and oppressed, and your name is large on account of what G.o.d has put into your nature.”
Some of the authorities at home gave out that one of the reasons for Burton's recall was that his life was in danger from the bullets of his enemies, but Burton commented drily: ”I have been shot at, at different times, by at least forty men who fortunately could not shoot straight.
Once more would not have mattered much.”
Chapter XV. 16th August 1871-4th June 1872, ”The Blackness of Darkness”
64. With Sir H. Stisted at Norwood. August 1871.
Arrived in England Burton went straight to his sister's at Norwood. His dejection was abysmal. Says Miss Stisted, ”Strong, brave man though he was, the shock of his sudden recall told upon him cruelly. Not even during his last years, when his health had all but given way, was he so depressed. Sleep being impossible, he used to sit up, sometimes alone, sometimes with Sir H. Stisted, until the small hours of the morning, smoking incessantly. Tragedy was dashed with comedy; one night a terrible uproar arose. The dining-room windows had been left open, the candles alight, and the pug asleep under the table forgotten. A policeman, seeing the windows unclosed, knocked incessantly at the street door, the pug awoke and barked himself hoa.r.s.e, and everyone clattered out of his or her bedroom to ascertain the cause of the disturbance. My uncle had quite forgotten that in quiet English households servants retire to rest before 3 a.m.” [246] Subsequently Lady Stisted and her daughters resided at Folkestone, and thenceforth they were ”the Folky Folk.” Burton also took an early opportunity to visit his brother, and tried to lead him into conversation; but nothing could break that Telamonian silence.
65. Reduced to 15.
Mrs. Burton, who had returned to Damascus ”to pay and pack,” now arrived in England, bringing with her very imprudently her Syrian maid Khamoor.
The 16,000 left by Burton's father, the 300 Mrs. Burton took out with her, and the Damascus 1,200 a year, all had been spent. Indeed, Mrs.
Burton possessed no more than the few pounds she carried about her person. In these circ.u.mstances prudence would have suggested leaving such a cipher as Khamoor in Syria, but that seems not to have occurred to her. It is probable, however, that the spendthrift was not she but her husband, for when she came to be a widow she not only proved herself an astute business woman, but acc.u.mulated wealth. On reaching London she found Burton ”in one room in a very small hotel.” His pride had not allowed him to make any defence of himself; and it was at this juncture that Mrs. Burton showed her grit. She went to work with all her soul, and for three months she bombarded with letters both the Foreign Office and outside men of influence. She was not discreet, but her pertinacity is beyond praise. Upon trying to learn the real reason of his recall, she was told only a portion of the truth. Commenting on one of the charges, namely that Burton ”was influenced by his Catholic wife against the Jews,” she said, ”I am proud to say that I have never in my life tried to influence my husband to do anything wrong, and I am prouder still to say that if I had tried I should not have succeeded.”
For ten months the Burtons had to endure ”great poverty and official neglect,” during which they were reduced to their last 15. Having been invited by Mrs. Burton's uncle, Lord Gerard, to Garswood, [247] they went thither by train. Says Mrs. Burton, ”We were alone in a railway compartment, when one of the fifteen sovereigns rolled out of my pursed, and slid between the boards of the carriage and the door, reducing us to 14. I sat on the floor and cried, and he sat by me with is arm round my waist trying to comfort me.” [248] The poet, as Keats tells us, ”pours out a balm upon the world,” and in this, his darkest hour, Burton found relief, as he had so often found it, in the pages of his beloved Camoens. Gradually his spirits revived, and he began to revolve new schemes. Indeed, he was never the man to sit long in gloom or to wait listlessly for the movement of fortune's wheel. He preferred to seize it and turn it to his purpose.
66. An Orgie at Lady Alford's. 2nd November 1871.
If the Burtons lacked money, on the other hand they had wealthy relations with whom they were able to stay just as long as they pleased; and, despite their th.o.r.n.y cares, they threw themselves heartily into the vortex of society. Among their friends was Lady Marion Alford, a woman of taste, talent and culture. The first authority of the day on art needlework, she used to expound her ideas on the looms of the world from those of Circe to those of Mrs. Wheeler of New York. At one of Lady Alford's parties in her house at Princes Gate, October 1871, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh being present, Burton appeared dressed as a Syrian shaykh, and Mrs. Burton as a Moslem lady of Damascus. Burton was supposed not to understand English, and Mrs. Burton gave out that she had brought him over to introduce him to English society. She thus described the occurrence in an unpublished letter to Miss Stisted. [249]
”Our orgie was great fun. The Bird and I wore Arab dresses. I went in the dress of an Arab lady of Damascus, but as myself, accompanied by Khamoor in her village dress and introducing Hadji Abdullah, a Moslem shaykh of Damascus. We then spoke only Arabic to each other, and the Bird broken French to the company present. We were twenty-eight at supper. The Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh were there. We let them into the joke, and they much enjoyed it, but all the rest were quite taken in half the evening. Even Lord Lyons and many of our old friends. The house was perfect and the fountain part [250] quite like Damascus. After supper we made Turkish coffee and narghilihis, and Khamoor handed them to the Princes on her knees, the tray on her head in Eastern fas.h.i.+on. They were delighted and spoke to her very kindly. They talked for long to Richard, and afterwards to me, and asked when we were going back to Syria before Lord Granville's brother.” This letter, like most of Mrs. Burton's letters to Miss Stisted, is signed ”Z,” short for ”Zoo.”
In February (1872) Mrs. Burton's mother, who had for years been paralysed, grew rapidly worse. Says Mrs. Burton, writing to Miss Stisted (29th February), ”My time is divided between her and Richard's concerns.
She did rally a little and I took advantage of it to go one to one dinner and to the Thanksgiving Day [251] which we saw to perfection, and enjoyed enormously; and last night to a very large gathering at Lady Margaret Beaumont's... Everybody was there and it gave me an opportunity of saying 'How d'ye do?' to the world after my return from Syria... I am working tooth and nail at the Bird's [252] case, and have got our amba.s.sador (Elliott) to see me at twelve next Sat.u.r.day.” At this time everyone was talking about Livingstone, the story of the meeting of him and Stanley being still fresh in men's minds. It was thought that another expedition ought to be sent out with Burton to lead, and a grand luncheon was got up for the express purpose of bring Burton and a certain great personage together. When the soup was being served, the great personage, turning to Burton, said: ”You are the man to go out to Livingstone. Come, consent, and I will contribute 500 to the expedition.”
Mrs. Burton, who sat next to her husband, looked up with beaming eyes, and her heart beat with joy. The object of the luncheon had been achieved, and Fortune was again bestowing her smiles; but as ill luck would have it, Burton happened just then to be in one of his contrary moods. He went on spooning up his soup, and, without troubling to turn his head, said, ”I'll save your Royal Highness that expense.”
Poor Mrs. Burton almost fainted. The Livingstone expedition was subsequently undertaken by Cameron.
67. The Tichborne Trial.