20 October: Boreham on Richard Burton

Last of the Errant Knights
A born actor, and endowed from infancy with a genius for picking up a language almost as soon as he heard it spoken, Sir Richard Burton, the anniversary of whose death this is, performed, on a worldwide proscenium, the most sensational personal drama of modern times. His pathfinding among the African swamps and jungles entitles him to a place among the Homeric figures in the epic of exploration; whilst his pilgrimage to Mecca, disguised as a Pathan doctor, stands as the most superb and best-sustained specimen of state-craft ever attempted by mortal man.

He began badly. Dismissed from Oxford as hopeless, his golden moment came when, on attaining his majority, he was offered a commission in the service of the East India Company. His father, who had destined him for the Church, loathed the idea; but Richard was in the seventh heaven. It seemed to him that the gates of Paradise had miraculously opened; but disillusionment was not long in coming. After seven years of brilliant and devoted service, he left India a broken man, sick and tired of everything. His proud spirit rebelled against the abject servility demanded by his superiors; his nerves were frayed by the constant necessity of doing things that would have been better left undone; and he was galled by the culpable blindness of those in authority to the clamant requirements of the hour.

Each One In Their Time Plays Many Parts
A master of masquerade, he adopted the most impenetrable disguises, insinuating himself into circles that no other white man could have approached. Hazarding his life at every turn, he obtained information concerning the underground currents of native life that should have been of inestimable value to the Indian Government. He was sometimes a peasant, sometimes a fakir, sometimes a pilgrim, sometimes a priest, and sometimes a beggar at the corner of the crowded market place. He would wear any mask, play any part, and take any risk if, by so doing, he could obtain the secrets that his country needed. He discovered the very things that should have shaped the policy of those whom he was most eager to serve; yet to his unspeakable chagrin, he saw the precious details that he had jeopardised his life to obtain, stamped, docketed, pigeon-holed, and—forgotten! It nauseated and maddened him; his health collapsed; and he was placed on a homebound ship with very little hope of reaching England alive.

His pilgrimage to Mecca represents one of the most astounding enterprises ever undertaken by an Englishman. In preparation for it, he studied and schemed for months, practising all those tricks of simulation and preference on which the success of the daring venture would depend. It seems incredible that, by such sharp and suspicious eyes as those by which he was continuously surrounded, his clever imposition was never discovered. Day after day, and night after night, he had to move among the crowded caravans, guarding not only every syllable that fell from his lips, but every movement of his hands, every posture of his body, every expression of his countenance. One mistake of commission or omission would have been fatal. He had to observe all the peculiar mannerisms and complicated etiquette of the East; he had to behave at every turn as his strangely assorted companions behaved; and he had to order his conduct in accordance with the countless technicalities involved in the minutiae of Moslem ritual. The annual migration to Mecca was a perilous business, even to the Orientals. In those days one third of the pilgrims died on the journey; the routes taken by the pilgrims were literally strewn with human bones. Disease was rife and quarrels were frequent. In those desert discussions, life was cheap. A word quickly led to a blow, and, before anybody knew what is was all about blood was freely flowing. The flash of a knife swiftly followed the flash of an eye. If, therefore, the undertaking was extremely hazardous even to the initiated, what was likely to be the fate of a masquerading Englishman? But Burton carried it through, and, in the process, gathered information that, had it been heeded, might have saved the Empire from the horrors of the Indian Mutiny; but again his report was carefully pigeon-holed; and that was all!

A Citizen Of Five Continents
Burton's African adventures, though momentous and historic, were also clouded by misfortune, misunderstanding, and general unhappiness. He was asked by the British Government to lead an expedition to discover the source of the Nile. He chose as his companion an able, young officer, Lt. J. H. Speke, and, though they failed to satisfy the scientists that they had actually reached the long dreamed of fountains of Herodotus, they were able to report that, after enduring the most excruciating privations, they had sighted some of those immense inland seas—Tanganyika, Nyanza, and the rest—from among which the head waters of the Nile must proceed. There were times in the course of their travels in which Speke was totally blind and Burton semi-conscious as a result of the hardships and sufferings to which climate and fever subjected them.

In later years Burton travelled widely in both hemispheres, invariably accompanied by his wife, whose oddities and idiosyncrasies contribute materially to the irresistible, fascination of his story. His gifts as a diplomatist and linguist were employed by the British Government on many foreign missions; and, at the age of 64, he was knighted. Dying five years later, Justin McCarthy sang of him as, "the last and noblest of the errant knights," and a beautiful replica of an Arab tent, in which camel bells jingle, was carved in marble and erected as a monument above his honoured tomb.

F W Boreham

Image: Richard Burton