People would have stared at him anywhere.
'Hullo, Burton!' I exclaimed, touching his linen coat, 'Do
you find it so hot - DEJA?'
Said he: 'I don't want to be mistaken for other people.'
'There's not much fear of that, even without your clothes,' I
replied.
Such an impromptu answer as his would, from any other, have
implied vanity. Yet no man could have been less vain, or
more free from affectation. It probably concealed regret at
finding himself conspicuous.
After dinner at the Birds' one evening we fell to talking of
garrotters. About this time the police reports were full of
cases of garrotting. The victim was seized from behind, one
man gagged or burked him, while another picked his pocket.
'What should you do, Burton?' the Doctor asked, 'if they
tried to garrotte you?'
'I'm quite ready for 'em,' was the answer; and turning up his
sleeve he partially pulled out a dagger, and shoved it back
again.
We tried to make him tell us what became of the Arab boy who
accompanied him to Mecca, and whose suspicions threatened
Burton's betrayal, and, of consequence, his life. I don't
think anyone was present except us two, both of whom he well
knew to be quite shock-proof, but he held his tongue.
'You would have been perfectly justified in saving your own
life at any cost. You would hardly have broken the sixth
commandment by doing so in this case,' I suggested.
'No,' said he gravely, 'and as I had broken all the ten
before, it wouldn't have so much mattered.'
The Doctor roared. It should, however, be stated that Burton
took no less delight in his host's boyish simplicity, than
the other in what he deemed his guest's superb candour.
'Come, tell us,' said Bird, 'how many men have you killed?'
'How many have you, Doctor?' was the answer.
Richard Burton was probably the most extraordinary linguist
of his day. Lady Burton mentions, I think, in his Life, the
number of languages and dialects her husband knew. That
Mahometans should seek instruction from him in the Koran,
speaks of itself for his astonishing mastery of the greatest
linguistic difficulties. With Indian languages and their
variations, he was as completely at home as Miss Youghal's
Sais; and, one may suppose, could have played the ROLE of a
fakir as perfectly as he did that of a Mecca pilgrim. I
asked him what his method was in learning a fresh language.
He said he wrote down as many new words as he could learn and
remember each day; and learnt the construction of the
language colloquially, before he looked at a grammar.
Lady Burton was hardly less abnormal in her way than Sir
Richard. She had shared his wanderings, and was intimate, as
no one else was, with the eccentricities of his thoughts and
deeds. Whatever these might happen to be, she worshipped her
husband notwithstanding. For her he was the standard of
excellence; all other men were departures from it. And the
singularity is, her religious faith was never for an instant
shaken - she remained as strict a Roman Catholic as when he
married her from a convent. Her enthusiasm and
cosmopolitanism, her NAIVETE and the sweetness of her
disposition made her the best of company. She had lived so
much the life of a Bedouin, that her dress and her habits had
an Eastern glow. When staying with the Birds, she was
attended by an Arab girl, one of whose duties it was to
prepare her mistress' chibouk, which was regularly brought in
with the coffee. On one occasion, when several other ladies
were dining there, some of them yielded to Lady Burton's
persuasion to satisfy their curiosity. The Arab girl soon
provided the means; and it was not long before there were
four or five faces as white as Mrs. Alfred Wigan's, under
similar circumstances, in the 'Nabob.'
Alfred Wigan's father was an unforgettable man. To describe
him in a word, he was Falstag REDIVIVUS. In bulk and
stature, in age, in wit and humour, and morality, he was
Falstaff. He knew it and gloried in it. He would complain
with zest of 'larding the lean earth' as he walked along. He
was as partial to whisky as his prototype to sack. He would
exhaust a Johnsonian vocabulary in describing his ailments;
and would appeal pathetically to Miss Bird, as though at his
last gasp, for 'just a tea-spoonful' of the grateful
stimulant. She served him with a liberal hand, till he cried
'Stop!' But if she then stayed, he would softly insinuate 'I
didn't mean it, my dear.' Yet he was no Costigan. His brain
was stronger than casks of whisky. And his powers of
digestion were in keeping. Indeed, to borrow the well-known
words applied to a great man whom we all love, 'He tore his
dinner like a famished wolf, with the veins swelling in his
forehead, and the perspiration running down his cheeks.' The
trend of his thoughts, though he was eminently a man of
intellect, followed the dictates of his senses. Walk with
him in the fields and, from the full stores of a prodigious
memory, he would pour forth pages of the choicest poetry.
But if you paused to watch the lambs play, or disturbed a
young calf in your path, he would almost involuntarily
exclaim: 'How deliciously you smell of mint, my pet!' or
'Bless your innocent face! What sweetbreads you will
provide!'
James Wigan had kept a school once. The late Serjeant
Ballantine, who was one of his pupils, mentions him in his
autobiography. He was a good scholar, and when I first knew
him, used to teach elocution.
