Although he seemed to embrace something of the philosophy of spiritualism, I cannot sense that Burton was a man of the spirit. On the contrary, I find him to be practical, down-to-earth and keenly analytical - far more of a scientific than an artistic turn of mind. He was also very much of a sportsman in any game of physical combat: boxing, wrestling, the single-stick and of course fencing. Isabel did distort our view Burton by over-romanticizing him (surely we can forgive her this), she minimized the strongly voluptuous side of his character and emphasized his nobility of nature (which in many cases I don't question either). In understanding Burton today, though, larger than life as he certainly was, it's important not to fall prey to this romanticized picture.

Burton knew how to live well and spent money as fast as he earned it. As a result the couple spent most of their life together under difficult financial circumstances. They were forced to reckon with the realities of making a living with little to offer (I have mentioned elsewhere that Burton was far from ideal as a diplomat), and to come close to begging for financial aid (I am sure Isabel did most of this, but Richard was also the beneficiary and therefore, de facto, a supplicant). Burton's postings to romantic-sounding places were in reality accepted of necessity, and doubtless with reluctance, except in the case of the Damascus Consulate.

Their path through life was therefore strongly driven by financial considerations and very little by romantic ones. Isabel held a position of quite minor nobility and, as so often happens with such people, she was singularly snobbish - whereas those who achieve rank and recognition often care little for its display. The name-dropping of titled gentry in her Biography becomes particularly irksome. Still, she worked tirelessly among her aristocratic acquaintances and friends to extract concessions and ultimately, a knighthood for Richard, rather grudgingly bestowed.

Burton was forever trying to work business deals in such diverse areas as gold-prospecting, patent medicine sales ("Captain Burton's Bitters"), geological consulting and, of course, his writing. In his books you can see a transformation of style imposed by the need to achieve popular success (as did, for example, his contemporary Samuel Baker), with sensational titles like "Two Trips to Gorilla-land and the Cataracts of the Congo" accompanied by, for Burton, a more racy prose. This must have gone against the grain for a man who preferred scholarly presentations such as in "The Book of the Sword", abounding in untranslated quotations in multiple languages (and scripts) and ponderous footnotes. Neither he nor his publishers can have made much money from his original works, which were regarded as scholarly yet unreadable by many. As everybody knows, it ultimately came to pass that Burton achieved financial security through his numerous 'literal translations', wherein he found an inexhaustible market.

Burton was the beneficiary of a truly incredible encyclopedic memory and this was put to its most spectacular advantage through his linguistic talent which, apart from the ease with which he learned words and grammar, seems also to have included an uncanny ability to "speak as a native speaks", with little discernible accent. Of the languages that he learned to speak well (27 is the most often quoted number), virtually all appear to have been acquired before he reached the age of 45. Icelandic is an exception.

Another great practical talent that Burton possessed was that for observation - note the detail of his written sketch of Brigham Young in "City of the Saints" and his exhaustive notes on almost everything geographic, economic, geologic, ethnologic, botanic and of course anthropologic in virtually every place he visited. The accuracy of his geographical measurements was something in which he took great pride (and he derided Speake for his laxity and tendency to supposition in this). Consider his dead-reckoning of the latitude and longitude of "Unknown Harar" (now Harer, in Ethiopia): Burton figured 9 deg 20' N, 42 deg 7'E (vs. 9 deg 20' N, 42 deg 10'E in reality) - bang-on with his sextant, off by less than 6 Km. on his longitude! His estimate of the altitude at 5,500 feet also looks pretty close.

Was Burton a very creative soul? This I think is an excellent question. Apart from factual narrative, we often find much that is original in Burton's way of looking at the world. We have snatches of beautiful writing and longer stretches that are hard to read and, frankly, ring pretentious. We must remember that Burton struggled eternally for acceptance and one has the impression at times that he is trying a bit too hard. I am not in a position to offer an opinion on his poetic prowess but I personally find his romantic prose fascinating, the use of language sure-footed and strong, and I find the anachronistic English quite infectious (wot ye not?)! Beyond this, and beyond his unique way of viewing his world and that of others, I feel that Richard Burton was far more of a brilliant analyst than he was a great creator of new things. Incidentally, notice how, in society, people are often ascribed to have "genius" for feats of pure memory alone.

Please understand that I have written this piece as a contribution to the Discussion Group. This means that anything I have said is of course open to debate and certainly to question - it is one person's "take" on Burton and I have done it because I find that I see him from a slightly different angle to some others who, unlike me, are scholars in the field. I am just, after all, an opinionated amateur. What I relish most is debate and lively interesting discussion - and we could use more of that here!

First Footsteps in east Africa. R.F. Burton, Longman, Brown, Green

I just finshed reading rice's biography. I had put it down for several months after reading about half of it. Maybe someone can clear up a few things I may have forgotten about the first half of the book/Burton's life in general.

First off,why did he have so much financial difficulty? The last letter posted here spoke of excessive spending, but Rice over and over again writes on how most of his jobs paid a very poor wage. What is suprising to me about this, is that he seemed to have many friends all over Europe who were extremely wealthy, and in some cases major nobiltiy, i think an Archduke might have been mentioned, the Duke of Wellington, etc. Wouldnt these friends be more supportive of such a dashing gallant as Burton? Did Burton ever consider any university positions? Rice really seems to stress the point that Burton not only spent alot, but he made almost nothing in most of his jobs.He spoke of the Burton's being down to their last few pounds, it just doesnt make sense to me.

Also I never quite understood why he seemed to be so hated, having to beg for a minor knighthood after being the first white man to mecca and all of his other accomplishments?Was it his catholic wife, was he a loner in the military, a preference for Speke, his erotic exploits, respect for certain natives?I never seemed to be able to grasp why the low military rank, why the popularity and the contempt?

What was his role in the Great Game? Was he just a simple surveyor? His talents would seem to have merited him becoming a major intelligence operative with respective rank.

Considering the dangers of east africa, why werent he and speke killed, robbed, and abandoned, when they were so sick. Both at times being blind,and prostrated with fever.

And lastly, is there a general opinion among scholars as to whether or not spekes death was an accident or suicide? What did people think at the time. It seems perfectly obvious to me that it was a suicide being so proximate to the next days debate.

Burton showed very poor judgment in his social affairs. He was blunt-spoken and did not suffer fools gladly - he was cynical and no doubt very sarcastic - yet he was undoubtedly a great raconteur and very witty - even though the targets of his wit were likely often ill-chosen. He had powerful enemies who no doubt counteracted the benefits his influential friends might have bestowed.

Burton was nevertheless a welcome guest at many of the great houses of Europe, particularly in those with an avant-garde and literary inclination, I expect he was viewed by his hosts as a bit of a showpiece and a novelty, but it might not have occurred to them that here was also a person urgently needing financial support.

Again, the perennial question would have been what kind of employment could a man like Burton expect to find? Diplomacy was clearly a terrible choice%3B "Explorer" was not an occupation for any but the physically fittest and, anyway, Burton had finally been discarded in that capacity by the Royal Geographic Society in favour, perhaps, of less problematic candidates. Let's face it, Burton was a headache for everybody who ever employed him! Additionally, because he had no formal education, it seems unlikely Burton could have obtained a university post which, I believe, would have been his very best option AND would likely have given him the only opportunity to realize his full potential.

So whomever favoured him, championed him, or might have taken him as a prot%E9g%E9, the ultimate impossibility of Burton's nature would have been an insurmountable obstacle. He likely did about as well as he ever could have expected to do from the career standpoint, in my opinion.

On the other questions I also find it totally amazing that Burton and Speake survived their explorations. They were utterly dependent on their disgruntled African servants for survival and often so weakened by disease that they probably did not know what was happening for days on end. Speake, particularly, would not seem to have been a person that the Africans would have liked much - and of course he made his own expedition following the ill-fated one with Burton (and his account of this has revealed some very bizarre behaviour on his part). All we can surmise is that they both somehow managed to acquire a strong loyalty in their African lieutenant, Sidi Mubarak, who seems to have safeguarded them through thick and thin.

I personally enjoyed Rice's work, though it has been chided for its "unattributable (and hitherto unknown) quotations" - indeed a grievous accusation and a death-blow to any serious biography if not repudiated. Rice was rather sourly criticized during the 1993 symposium "In Search of Richard Burton" which was attended by some notable Burton Scholars and collectors, for not having consulted with any of them in the researching of his book, which was written in "secluded study". Nevertheless, that is a setting in which very interesting insights were possible, despite the obvious limitations imposed. I can't agree, therefore, with Casada, that the book was altogether "a striking disappointment".

I won't presume to try to answer the question of Speake's death. I suspect it will always remain an open issue.

References:

Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton. Edward Rice. Charles Scribner's

For some reason this Server cut off the references I put at the bottom. I wanted (above) to reference:

Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton by Edward Rice (1990) New York. Charles Scribner's Sons

and

In Search of Sir Richard Burton. Papers from a Huntington Library Symposium (1993) Edited by Alan H. Jutzi. Huntington Library, San Marino California.

This second reference contains the comments I have quoted, concerning Rice's work, by Jim Casada (p137). A very interesting book.

I agree with Richard's comments concerning the Rice biography. I too enjoyed it and I found the historical context quite informative. Likewise, I thought Casada rather harsh in his criticism of Rice's work. It seems to me that Casada's comments were somewhat more personal than professional-more an "ad hominem" attack embedded in valid criticism. I am probably off the mark (as usual), but it was the impression I had after reading the "Concluding Remarks" in the work edited by Jutzi. I am curious to know if there have been any critical papers of Rice's biography published.

What Cassada actually said was: "Finally there is Edward Rice's recently published life, Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, produced, surprisingly, without the consultation of anyone in this room. The book was apparently written in a secluded study, with the assistance of an interlibrary loan. There are literally hundreds of unattributed quotations, many of them unknown to me despite two and a half decades spent examining a great deal of Burton material. Then, too, Rice devotes some two hundred pages to a metaphysical exercise on Sufism, which is at best tangentially related to Burton's Indian career. Best seller status notwithstanding, the book is a striking disappointment."

In that room you had a group of cognoscenti who were affronted that Rice hadn't consulted a single one of them! The reference to an "interlibrary loan" is gratuitous, seemingly used to impart a sense of triviality to Rice's effort. Now blocs of cognoscenti are usually pretty hard to take, and their collective minds are generally closed to any other than their own prevailing theories (of course, they deny!) - Burton himself spent his life battling with such groups! Rice is an outsider to that group and is clearly taking the consequences. However, he has to defend himself against that very serious accusation of "unattributed quotations" or else he is quite deserving of the treatment he has received. I am sure he must have had to do this, but I haven't seen the outcome.

The accompanying link shows what an interesting background Rice has - he's now 84.

A snippet:

"Rice's Burton biography, hailed as "a masterpiece" by the Los Angeles Times, "first class" by The New York Times, and "the last great word on the last great explorer" by the Wall Street Journal, was written after 10 lengthy journeys to India, Pakistan, Nepal, Iran, the Arab countries and Israel. Along the way, Rice took risks, and sometimes suffered the consequences."

Secluded study?

In the late 1940's W. Fairchild wrote an interesting paper for the _Geographical Review_ concerning the types of explorer biographies found in the library of the American Geographical Society. She grouped the biographies into three types including factual, fictional, and interpretative (she additionally proposed a fourth that she called "ideal", but none of the biographies fit this type). The factual biographies are those "that are essentially little more than simple narratives of the external events in the explorer's career (p. 416)" , while the fictional ones focus more on the imaged "thoughts, feelings, and words of the [explorer] in various situations (p. 417)". The interpretative biography, which is the most useful for geographers, deals with the explorer's motivations and deeds in terms of some external context, be it historical, economic, psychological, etc.

Though Fairchild's article concerns itself with numerous biographies of numerous individuals, I see parallels among the Burton biographies I have read (those I have read in full or in part are listed below). Two of the earlier biographies, those by Isabel Burton and Georgiana Stisted (Burton's niece), contain information that we can not get from other sources such as interpersonal relationships and personal remembrances. Of course, there are those out there today who may consider such things as "unattributed". Despite the sometimes personal nature if the Burton and Stisted works, the both remain mostly descriptive (with embellishments of course). More recently we have the "big three" - Farwell, Brodie, and Rice. Brodie's book has been criticized as too psychoanalytical and to a point I agree. I found it however, to be one of the better "interpretative biographies of Burton. Rice's biography is also good but requires more careful reading than Brodie. As I stated in my last post, I found the historical context very useful even if at times it did seem somewhat tedious. It is easy to identify how Stisted, I. Burton, Brodie, and Edwardes characterize Burton. Rice, on the other hand, does not necessarily have such an optimistic and sanguine portrayal of Burton. From what I remember of Farwell's biography (which I have not read in over ten years), was somewhere between Brodie's and Rice's works. The insights into the "Victorian" Burton appear to me to be a sound critical context to explore the many sides of Burton. I have not read Lovell's biography and am curios to know her portrayal of Burton (I understand that the context for the biography is the relationship between RFB and IB).

I. Burton -The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton
T. Wright- The Life of Sir Richard Burton
G. Stisted -The True Life of Capt. Sir Richard F. Burton
F. Brodie - The Devil Drives
E. Rice - Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton
S. Dearden- Burton of Arabia
B. Farwell - Burton: A Biography of Sir Richard Francis Burton%09
A. Edwardes - Death Rides a Camel

Reference:

Fairchild, W. B. (1948) Explorers: Men and Motives. _Geographical Review_, Vol38(3):414-425.

I think any first-hand reference by a person who knew Burton must be taken seriously, if not always believed, so any observations "attributable" to Isabel or Georgiana are important information. If on the other hand they are only attributable to Edward Rice, he must make clear that he is speculating, OR show us the path by which they were deduced. He didn't always do this, so he got criticized.

There is also "Snow on the Desert" by Frank McLynn which, although a very recent work at the time of the 1993 symposium (see above), I think WAS available to that group, and yet was not reviewed by any of them. I found it a very poor biography which drew wild inferences from thin air. McLynn wasn't present, but I rather believe he is an insider, so they gave him a break (I am speculating). I very much enjoyed Mary Lovell's "A Rage to Live", which sought to retrieve Isabel's tarnished image and was a scholarly and extremely well-referenced work with a lot of hitherto unknown material. Except for its arguable bias in favour of Isabel, this may come to be viewed as the definitive biography. I wish, though, that she had researched the tantalizing question of "IT" (see my post here of 8 May 2001). Mary dedicates her book to the amazing Quentin Keynes (an honourary symposium member) so she can't be all bad!

"A Rage to Live" Mary S. Lovell. W.W. Norton 1998

Does anyone know the full title of the movie that was made about Burton and Speake? The beginning of the title was "The Moon Over..."

Thanks.
Pat Lane
Grass Valley, CA

Mountains of the moon

Greetings:

It's been years and years since I first watched Mountains of the Moon, my introduction to this facinating individual. Now, I've finally decided to find out more.

I started by reading - or trying to read - Rice's biography but must confess that I abandoned the attempt after a hundred pages. As a beginner, I found it too taken up with details. Perhaps I may return to it later.

So I kept looking and soon discovered Byron Farwell's biography. This was the book I was looking for. It seemed to capture Burton's sense of humour, his proclivity for never doing things in half measures, and was spiced with just the right measure of cultural context. I'm about half way through and quite enjoying it. One of my favourite quotes thus far is: "Catholicism is a terrible religion for a man of the world to live in, but a good one to die in." I also enjoyed reading about how he learned languages. It's also curious to see Burton painted in a different light from the movie - which I was expecting. There are many words to describe the man, simple not being one of them.

One last thought, reading about Burton's Oxford days reminded me of a pithy quote from Robert Pursig's - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: "The best students always are flunking. Every good teacher knows that."

Thanks - I welcome any further "guidance" as I continue to learn more.

TC

Has anyone here read Burton's "The Kasidah"?

I suspect that all of the gentle posters may benefit in their understanding if they would indulge in such an undertaking.

And for any who might have already done so, may I kindly recommend a more careful re-reading.

Cheers!

In some other postings on this board, I belatedly realised that I should have read the astute interpretations here,particularly by the topic intiator, Richard Leveson, otherwise I was going over ground far better dealt with here. Richard, your observations on Burton are valuable and I hope you put them to good use elsewhere. There is always scope for more biographies of a complex personality. I am often amazed to see biographies appearing within a relatively short time of people who don't even approach what Burton offers. Perhaps just the recycling fashion of whatever sells.

On the subject of Burton biographies and elitist views thereof, I both agree and disagree with remarks made here about Rice. And on McLynn's work -- it seemed to be a rush job after his two volume effort on Stanley (plus two Burton anthologies and a general work on African exploration -- he certainly made the most of his researches on these subjects -- but perhaps in too short a time). I would say that the position in the biography hierarchy of Brodie has been shaken but not stirred, but is complemented by Lovell's work. Does this suggest women make the best Burton biographers? However, I agree Farwell's work still offers a good overview -- I have read some of his other books on the Victorian period (especially military history) and he had a firm grip on his subjects.

The 1990 symposium offered some useful tidbits to add to the biographic mix. On the subject of assumed elitism as expressed by Casada, a few words. I found his bibliography useful, yet there are strange omissions as well as items included that barely rate a mention. I found his overviews about what could still be done on Burton interesting and at times insightful for future writers of Burton biographies. At the same time, it left me wondering why Casada did not take on writing a biography himself as he certainly demonstrated the knowledge of Burtoniana from which he had learned much. Casada queried why Penzer, who was quite young when he did his Burton bibliography, did not undertake a biography -- well I ask the same question of Casada (but I must acknowledge he did consult on a biography written for older children which is a useful epitome of Burton).

I know of a parallel case where an author spent many years gathering material on one person and his works yet only produced bibliographic studies when he should have produced a definitive biography. Maybe the more you know the harder it is to distill the information into prose and criticisms expressed against someone like Rice reveal the frustrations of members of the 'cognoscenti' (do we mean collectors?).

The two books dealing with aspects of the adventurous parts of Burton's life by Christopher Ondaatje are useful additions to the biographical canon. I wonder if he plans to do another book on Burton, but perhaps not -- I believe he has more recently been writing about Hemingway.

Of course, it is easy to criticise. I am basically a collector of Burtoniana in whatever spare time I can devote to it, with the objective of learning about him and his works and the period in which he flourished. I have published extensively in other areas so doing something on Burton remains a possibility. The usual problem, as Burton experienced, is time and money (or the lack of it). For this reason it may only be fair to say that for someone like Penzer or Casada, life can get in the way of plans and such ideals can become elusive.

Are we already overdue for another biography? This seems to be a period when we are getting both potboilers and scholarly, multi-volume works aspiring to miss nothing, in large numbers, as well as everything in between. And with publishing going in cycles it's just a matter of time.

On some aspects of Burton's life I'm reminded of the old saying that when legend becomes fact, print the legend.

Following your comments, Murray, I think the key ingredient to any further Burton biography has to be the appearance of a significant quantity of new material. Until then we can only try to put new and credible perspectives upon what's already known.

It's always nice to get a discussion going that turns up something new and when I wrote about "De-romanticizing" a couple of years back (not last December as the cleaned-up date says), I had read all the important Biographies and had also got an old copy of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt's diaries. I realized that so much of the vital, personal stuff we know about Burton comes from Isabel's 'Life' and saw her various burnings and expurgations as, in part, an exercise to limit what other biographers would be able to say. Only she could have written the definitive biography, but of course her extreme bias made this utterly impossible. I contrasted what Isabel said on the one extreme, with what Blunt said on the other, and tried to make sense of how this could possibly be the same person. I have done this more completely in some comments following a transcript of Blunt at the link (above).

I find that Mary Lovell's "A Rage to Live" is the most scholarly, disciplined and well-documented of all the Burton biographies, which makes a genuine and successful attempt to bring a new perspective on the personalities of both Burtons. A little panegyric to Isabel perhaps, but it's a generally well argued point of view and brings in a lot of brand new material.

By the bye, I see that Ms. Lovell is a contributor here - please believe that this has not influenced what I've said.

Recently the ENTIRE London Times from late 18th century to present was made available for keyword search to everybody online. This was for Library Week and is closed now - your local library may have an online subscription. Each and every page (news, advertisements, personals, obituaries etc.) has been scanned and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is used to search for any keywords or name. If I'd had time from looking up the doings of my own family members, I would have tried to see if there was any new Burton material of interest.