--Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton
Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton’s personal devil was
curiosity. Go back to the original Greek definition of genius. The toga-wearin’
philosophers of classical civilization characterized genius as an individual
thing, each man, or each brilliant man, each gifted man, had his own, and this
gift of the gods or the fates was referred to as a “daemon.” There is a story of one of the
great poets (I forget which one, and it may vary depending on the version of
the story) encountering his own daemon, whereupon he discovers that it was the daemon, not
the man himself, who had crafted the poet’s greatest works. That’s the kind of
devil that dogged Burton,
a genius of curiosity. He was possessed of an overwhelming hunger to, as they
said in Star Trek, “boldly go where no man had gone before,” to know what no
man had ever known, or to regain knowledge that had been lost to time. This
devil drove the man, and it is for the betterment of the world that it did so.
Sir Richard Burton is likely the most important man to
history that you’ve never heard of. I’d never heard of him, not until my late
teens, when I chanced to watch a movie called Mountains of the Moon, which recounts one of (but only one of)
Burton’s great adventures. I was instantly smitten. Richard Burton would become
my greatest hero, my role model. I stop short of saying an object of
worship—we don’t want no idolatry, here—but certainly an object of hero
worship. Why, you ask, do I love the guy so much? To answer that question,
it is necessary to educate those of you ignorant of this great man’s biography.
(Note: I don’t blame any of you who haven’t heard of Burton before now. I
blame the holes, like a sieve, in our modern-day educational process. It’s not
your fault if your high school History teacher or college Western
Civ professor neglected to make mention of him. It may not even be
their fault. But it’s somebody’s fault. Maybe it’s John Speke’s fault. But more
on that in a moment.)
You may have never heard of Burton. But it’s a guarantee you’ve heard of
his work. Ever hear of The Arabian
Knights? (Or, to be more precise, The
Thousand Nights and a Night, which is the original title.) This anthology
is where we get the stories of Aladdin, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and
Sinbad, among numerous others. Sure you’ve heard of it. It was Burton who discovered the Nights, translated it and introduced it
to western society. How about the Kama Sutra? Yeah, everybody’s heard of that one. Same
deal. It was Burton
who brought it to us.
(By the way, if you ever buy a copy of either of these
texts, whether for your own reading pleasure or because some teacher required
you to—or, in the case of the Kama Sutra,
just to satisfy your puerile curiosity or to look at the dirty pictures—make
sure you get the original translations by Burton, not one of the later,
inferior ones. There have been some since, but none are equal to Burton’s. Burton’s skills as a
linguist are unmatched. They were in his day and remain so in the years since.
The man spoke 29 languages fluently. TWENTY-FREAKIN’-NINE!!!)
Ever use the word “safari?” It was Burton who invented that word.
Ever use the word “safari?” It was Burton who invented that word.
It was also Burton
who discovered the source of the Nile
River. Since the days of
the ancients, the great civilizations of Egypt, Greece, and Rome had wondered at the origin of this most
vital of rivers. Legend said they had their birth somewhere in the deep
interior of Africa, in the fabled “Mountains
of the Moon.” Many men had gone off in search of them. If any man ever
discovered the secret, that man had never returned. Burton discovered Lake
Tanganyika (and by extension, Lake Victoria, which is the true headwaters of
the Nile), but while he lay convalescing in Africa from a fever, his expedition
partner and one-time friend, John Hanning Speke, rushed back to England and
claimed all the glory for himself—the bastard. Today, if you were to look up in
a book (or google it) to see who discovered the headwaters of the Nile, that source will say it was Speke. More charitable
ones will say that Speke swiped the credit. Those latter will at least mention Burton, if not give him
the credit he deserves. But had it not been for Sir Richard, that discovery
would not have happened, period.
Let’s see, what else? Oh, yeah. Burton probably inspired the character of
Count Dracula. The physical appearance, that is. (Dracula, like Burton, was, as I’m sure
you all know, a real person.) Burton
and Bram Stoker were friends, and Stoker was known to have written about how
impressed he was with Burton’s
dark good looks and piercing eyes, his almost menacing face, and his curiously pointed canine teeth. Some
literary historians maintain that Stoker based his iconic character on his
friend, the actor Henry Irving. But if you look at Irving, then look at pictures of Burton, then read
Stoker’s description of the vampire Count, you tell me which one resembles it more closely.
Soldier; ethnographer; cartographer; linguist; poet;
swordsman; writer; translator; secret agent for the British Crown; military
tactician; master of disguise; philosopher; philanderer (later turned devoted
husband); mystic; archaeologist; “amateur barbarian” (he called himself);
“blackguard” (enemies called him); explorer; knight—Burton was all of these.
Take Indiana Jones, if he lived in our world, J.R.R. Tolkien and Lawrence of
Arabia. Throw in a dash of Sir Galahad. Put them all in a giant blender and
puree. The result would be—actually, the result, literally speaking, would be a
big mess. But metaphorically speaking, the result would be Richard Burton.
Burton
was as much a man of action as a man of intellect. (And what an intellect he must
have possessed. He could learn a new language in a matter of weeks; days,
sometimes. He wrote dozens of books—several at the same time!) In a skirmish
with natives on one of his earlier expeditions to the Dark
Continent, one of the attacking tribesmen threw a spear that
completely transfixed Burton’s
face, going in one cheek and coming out the other. Burton pulled the spear loose and kept
fighting. (The encounter also left him with a matching set of really cool,
manly scars.) Burton
could have stepped right out of a larger-than-life Victorian novel, but he
refused to be confined by, and delighted in scandalizing, rigid Victorian
society (much to the occasional embarrassment of his loved ones). Expelled from
Oxford as a young man for bad behavior (organizing a gambling ring and then
telling the authorities there to go someplace hotter than Australia when he got
caught), he spent much of his life as an alcoholic, drinking at times a pint of
whiskey a day. On occasion he abused opiates. Yet these flaws only serve to
further endear him to me. All great heroes must have their weaknesses to be
truly heroic. And Burton
gave new meaning to the term “functional alcoholic,” considering his
ridiculously high level of accomplishments. The chemicals, alcohol, opium and
tobacco, may have shortened his life, but he still lived to almost 70 years of age,
which was quite elderly for the times. And he kept right on working, writing
and translating, until his last breath.
Burton
also possessed skills for disguising himself that would rival those of Lon
Chaney, Hollywood’s
legendary “Man of a Thousand Faces.” How good was he? He assumed the identity
of an Arab traveler and undertook the Hajj,
or ceremonial pilgrimage, to the two forbidden cities, al-Medina and Mecca,
where he examined the legendary Black Stone, the object most sacred to Muslims
worldwide, an offense that meant death to any outsider—and he didn’t get caught.
Burton was no
vandal, though; it was his all-consuming thirst for knowledge that led him
there. Of course he wrote a book about his exploits. Two, in fact. Burton again went
undercover to become a Dervish (You’ve all heard of the Swirling Dervishes,
right? Wild mystics known to spin around and around, dancing with razor-sharp
scimitars in hand.) because he thought he might gain a little “gnosis”—secret
knowledge—from them. All spiritual belief systems had pieces of the puzzle, Burton theorized, some
bit of knowledge worth the knowing. Burton
would visit the Mormons in Utah
and attempt to infiltrate their number for the same reasons. He didn’t go to Utah undercover, though,
and Burton’s
reputation kept the Latter Day Saints from accepting him into their
congregation. (Brigham Young was said to be quite fond of Burton, however.) And, naturally, Burton wrote a book about
his trip to the southwest, too.
Sir Richard lived the kind of life I have only dreamed
about. Saw the kinds of places I dream of seeing. He may never have achieved pervasive
fame or great wealth, but he was successful, and he earned respect. No, make
that commanded respect. Even from
those who hated him. Explorer of ruins and of jungles, a man as proficient with
a rapier as with a quill, a prodigious mind in the body of a swashbuckler
straight out of escapist fiction. That’s Richard Burton. One of a kind? Without
question. For all that, though, history is filled with the exploits of great
men. Why Burton,
then? Why did I latch onto him and not others? Why is he so special to me? Who
knows. The devil drives.
In closing, it irritates the hell out of me that, unless we
are speaking of a scholar, one with an interest in specified History, or
someone lucky enough to have seen the obscure Mountains movie, if anyone today has heard the name Richard Burton,
it is of the actor they think. The guy, one of the score, who married Elizabeth
Taylor. Whenever I mention Burton
in conversation, with one or two exceptions when I’m speaking with one of my
friends who shares my passion for History, I have to specify: “The explorer, not
the actor.” That bugs the pee out of me. Don’t get me wrong, now. Burton the latter was
indeed a fine actor. Top notch. But he isn’t worthy to polish the boots of the
Captain.
Everything I do, then, is in some scaled down way an attempt
to emulate Captain Sir Richard. I write fiction instead of academic works,
fantasy instead of autobiography, prose instead of poetry; I can’t speak even a
second language (although I do know a
few words in Latin and Elvish). But every time I put pen to paper or fingers to
keyboard, I think of his enormous output of letters. When I stuff my brain with
every fact I can get hold of, it is because of his example. As for those grand
adventures he lived through, I try to make the most of my little ones, in that
same spirit of courageous audacity he displayed. And some day, some day, I will have my big one.
To conclude, Sir Richard is THE MAN. I’ve only scratched the
surface with the feats I’ve recounted here, the things he did. I encourage each
of you to read more. There are several excellent biographies out there. (The
best is by Edward Rice, in my opinion.) And check out Mountains of the Moon. Patrick Bergin (so slimy and evil as Julia
Roberts’ abusive husband in Sleeping with
the Enemy) is excellent in his portrayal of Burton, and the movie is gorgeously filmed.
It just might make you a mark for Sir Richard the way it did me. I hope so. He
deserves the recognition.
Guess I’ve done my part, then. I’ll sign off now and get
back to work. After all, if I want to be like Sir Richard, I have a lot of
catching up to do. A whole lot.
Drive on, devil. Drive on.
