Читать книгу The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (Vol. 1&2) - Lady Isabel Burton - Страница 38

"Not only this Society, but the whole civilized world, has recently had to mourn the death of our distinguished fellow-member, Sir Richard Francis Burton. Of the many events of his eventful life it is needless to speak here. As soldier, explorer, linguist, and man of letters (the writer of about eighty more or less bulky volumes), he made himself separately famous. 'His most famed achievement—the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina in the character of an Afghan Muslim—was,' says one writer, 'an achievement of the first order. To consider it without a wondering admiration is impossible: so vast is the amount involved of hardihood and self-confidence, of linguistic skill and histrionic genius, of resourcefulness and vigilance and resolve.'

"But the aspect in which he may most suitably be regarded in these pages, is that of a student of the Gypsies, to whom he was affiliated by nature, if not actually by right of descent.

"Whether there may not be also a tinge of Arab, or, perhaps, of Gypsy blood in Burton's race, is a point which is perhaps open to question. For the latter suspicion an excuse may be found in the incurable restlessness which has beset him since his infancy, a restlessness which has effectually prevented him from ever settling long in any one place, and in the singular idiosyncrasy which his friends have often remarked—the peculiarity of his eyes. 'When it (the eye) looks at you,' said one who knows him well, 'it looks through you, and then, glazing over, seems to see something behind you. Richard Burton is the only man (not a Gypsy) with that peculiarity, and he shares with them the same horror of a corpse, death-bed scenes, and graveyards, though caring little for his own life.' When to this remarkable fact he added the scarcely less interesting detail that 'Burton' is one of the half-dozen distinctively Romany names, it is evident that the suspicion of Sir Richard Burton having a drop of Gypsy blood in his descent—crossed and commingled though it be with an English, Scottish, French, and Irish strain—is not altogether unreasonable.

"Unreasonable or not, it can hardly be said that this constitutes a firm basis on which to rear a theory of Gypsy lineage. Yet Burton himself acknowledged a certain Gypsy connection, though, it will be noticed, he does not say the affinity was that of blood, in the following extract from a letter to Mr. J. Pincherle, accepting that gentleman's dedication of his Romany version of the 'Song of Songs' (I Ghiléngheri Ghilia Salomuneskero). 'Dear Mr. Pincherle,' writes Sir Richard, 'I accept the honour of your dedication with the same frankness with which you accompanied its offer. And indeed, I am not wholly dissociated from this theme; there is an important family of Gypsies in foggy England, who, in very remote times, adopted our family name. I am yet on very friendly terms with several of these strange people; nay, a certain Hagar Burton, an old fortune-teller (divinatrice), took part in a period of my life which in no small degree contributed to determine its course.'

"Whether such slight indications as these really point to a Gypsy line of descent or not, there can be no question as to the interest which Sir Richard Burton took in Gypsy lore. Apart from his various well-known published accounts of the Jats and other tribes of the Indus Valley, he had a work specially entitled 'The Gypsies,' which his biography of 1887 announces as then 'in course of preparation.' The materials of this work are now, we understand, in the possession of Lady Burton, and we trust that they will some day see the light. Sir Richard was himself one of the original members of the Gypsy Lore Society, in which he always took a deep interest; and a letter which he wrote to the secretary, only five days before his death, concludes with the good wish—'All luck to the Society; I will not fail to do what little I can.'

"His death, which was very sudden, took place on October 20th last, while he still held the office of British Consul at Trieste. The high esteem in which he was held by the citizens of Trieste, not only on account of his official position and the great name which he had made for himself in the world of science, but also for those personal qualities which had won their regard, is amply testified by the sincere expressions of regret which accompanied the last honours there paid to his memory. At the time of his death Sir Richard Burton was sixty-nine years of age, having been born at Barham House, Hertfordshire, on March 19th, 1821."