Part 2 (1/2)

Here, as everywhere, there wasdiscovered a new vice--that of opiu, while their father made the house unendurable by the preparation of sulphuretted hydrogen and other highly-scented conised, however, that these che Colonel Burton e everybody a little breathing ti of 1840, Colonel Burton, Mr Du Pre and the lads set out for Schinznach, in Switzerland, to drink the waters; and then the faht have a university education Their father, although not quite certain as to their future, thought they were most adapted for holy orders Their deportment was perfect, the ladies admired them, and their worst ene ”unorthodox in their views” Indeed, Mrs Burton already pictured the bishops stayed with ”Grandiana,” and Aunt Sarah's daughters, Sarah and Elisa, was su heavy on their hands, with ga

Chapter II October 1840-April 1842, Oxford

6 Trinity College, October 1840

Edas then placed under a clergyal, whose nanation, the brothers turned into ”a peculiar fore, Oxford Neither, as we have seen, had been suitably prepared for a University career Richard, who could speak fluently French, Italian, and modern Greek, did not know the Apostles' Creed, and as even yman, had never heard of the Thirty-nine Articles He was struck with the architecture of the colleges, and much surprised at the meanness of the houses that surrounded them He heretically calls the Isis 'a mere moat,' the Cherwell 'a ditch' The brilliant dare-devil froish undergraduates and the dull, snuffling, s, fussy dons The torpor of academic dulness, indeed, was as irksome to Burton at Oxford as it had been to FitzGerald and Tennyson at Cale and Dr

William Alexander Greenhill [45], he in October 1840, entered Trinity, where he has installed in ”a couple of frowsy dog-holes” overlooking the garden of old Dr Jenkins, the Master of Balliol

”My reception at College,” says Burton, ”was not pleasant I had grown a splendid moustache, which was the envy of all the boys abroad, and which all the advice of Drs Ogle and Greenhill failed to make me remove I declined to be shaved until fore For I had already forland, when her history, with soton and Nelson, was at its ed to fight a duel; and when he was reminded that Oxford ”men” like to visit freshmen's rooms and play practical jokes, he stirred his fire, heated his poker red hot, and waited i for which one was obliged to pay,” says Burton, ”was of the ularly wasted, and those who read for honours were obliged to choose and pay a private coach”

Another grievance was the constant bell ringing, there being so many churches and so many services both on week days and Sundays Later, however, he discovered that it is possible to study, even at Oxford, if you plug your ears with cotton-wool soaked in glycerine He spent his firstthe college rooks, and breaking the rules generally Many of his pranks were at the expense of Dr Jenkins, for whose sturdy co after, in his Vikraerund-grinders of Oxford, he paid hihly of the dons and undergraduates, he was forced to admit that in one respect the University out-distanced all other seats of learning It produced a breed of bull-terriers of renowned pedigree which for their ”beautiful build” were a joy to think about and a deliriunacious brutes he soon becaot drunk hiians drunk he mentions quite casually, just as he mentions his other preparations for holy orders If he walked out with his bull-terrier, it was generally to Bagley Wood, where a pretty, dizened gipsy girl named Selina told fortunes; and henceforward he took a keen interest in Selina's race

He spentsaloons of an Italian naelo and a Scotchman named Maclaren; and it was at Maclaren's he first met Alfred Bates Richards, who becaraduate of Exeter, was a th, he defeated all antagonists at boxing, but Burton mastered him with the foil and the broad-sword Richards, who, like Burton, beca after, ”I ah Burton was brilliant, rather wild, and very popular, none of us foresaw his future greatness”

Another Oxford friend of Burton's was Tohes, author of Toht boys not to be ashaood,” [48] and he always revered the memory of his tutor, the Rev Thomas Short [49] Burton naturally made eneinary person, Mrs

Grundy This lady, wholy stout and square-looking body with capacious skirts, and a look of austere piety, had, he tells us, ”just begun to reign” when he was at Oxford, although forty years had elapsed since she first , ”What will Mrs Grundy say?” Mrs Grundy had a great deal to say against Richard Burton, and, life through, he took a peculiar delight in affronting her The good soul disapproved of Burton's ”foreign ways” and his ”expressed dislike to school and college life,” she disapproved of much that he did in his prihts she set up, and not without justification, a scream that is heard even to this day and in the redom

If Richard was e

After the polish and politeness of Italy, where they had been ”such tremendous dandies and ladies' men,” the ”boorishness and shoppiness,”

of Oxford and Ca an early opportunity, Richard ran over to Cae to visit his brother ”What is the matter, Edward,” enquired Richard ”Why so downcast?” ”Oh, dick,”

epiciers [51]”

7 Expelled, April 1842

The dull life at Oxford was varied by the occasional visit of a hter by walking round in a pretended hters of the dons

The only preacher Burton would listen to was Newman, then Vicar of St

Mary's; of Pusey's interues he could not bear even to think Although unable to bend hi vast auist, and particularly in Oriental languages Hence he began to teach hiot a little assistance froos When he asked the Regius Professor of Arabic to teach him, he was rebuffed with the information that it was the duty of a professor to teach a class, not an individual He spent the vacation with his Grandmother Baker in Great cumberland Place, and he and his brother amused the Returned to Oxford he applied sedulously to the acquisition of foreign languages He says, ”I got a sirammar and vocabulary, marked out the forms and words which I kneere absolutely necessary, and learnt them by heart I never worked more than a quarter of an hour at a time, for after that the brain lost its freshness After learning some three hundred words, easily done in a week, I stuh some easy book-work and underlined every word that I wished to recollect Having finished rammar minutiae, and I then chose some other book whose subject e was now broken, and progress was rapid If I came across a new sound, like the Arabic Ghayn, I trainedit so many thousand times a day When I read, I invariably read out loud, so that the ear hted with the most difficult characters, Chinese and Cuneiforly upon the eye than the eternal Roman letters” [52] Such reuist of his day are orth re Latin words the ”Roh to see this pronunciation adopted in all our schools The long vacation of 1841 was spent at Wiesbaden with his father and hts of Richard and his brother were ga; and when tired of Wiesbaden they wandered about the country, visiting a and Mannheim Once more Richard importuned his father to let him leave Oxford and enter the army, but Colonel Burton, who still considered his son peculiarly fitted for the church, was not to be land, however, Burton resolved to take the matter into his own hands He laid his plans, and presently--in April 1842--an opportunity offered

The Oxford races of that year were being looked forward to with exceptional interest because of the anticipated presence of a noted steeplechaser nae authorities forbade the undergraduates to attend them