Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, by Edward Rice
Miller, Mark
vited into a very exotic sect shows some safe [for him]," as well as feeling a nerve. sincere Muslim call—he was by this The events that made up British co- time a Sufi master—Burton arranged...
...But, as it happened, Speke actually found the source—Lake Victoria He was allowed long stints away from though he didn't have the geographical the garrison in order to gather intelli- evidence to prove it...
...For example, people he saw around him, and learned how could he take notes when the languages...
...Miserable as it was, he put his time BROUGHT THE ARABIAN NIGHTS TO THE WEST there to good use...
...Even so, he managed to pro-or merchant riding a camel, he duce some of his most notable trans-could measure distances by counting its lations during this period, including the strides, mapping distances in uncharted Arabian Nights and the Kama Sutra...
...Speke got the glory gence, and, in doing so, drifted farther and, more importantly, the funding from his fellow officers and more into from the Royal Geographic Society for the company of natives...
...Burton left a prodigious amount of work to draw from —over forty books in all, including translations, commentaries, swordsmanship manuals, and accounts of his adventures in Asia, Africa, and South America...
...Rice makes much of this theme, and of the "brown wives" kept by many of the British officers, and the protocols of such liaisons...
...not only from Shiraz, a center of Islamic mysticism, but also a member of an obscure heretical Shi'ite sect, the Ismal F earing throughout the journey that ilis ("Assassins") whose leader was his his identity would be revealed, older brother, the first Agha Khan...
...Hosayn was with summarily...
...He also took advantage of the "horizontal dictionary" rule, the truth that prostitutes could be the most congenial instructors of local custom...
...Published to coincide with the hundredth anniversary of Burton's death, this book marshals an impressive amount of research...
...ticed by ancient Sufis doesn't account esigned to his son's rejection of Realizing, however, that (a) the worship for the revived popularity of this mid- the fat life of the clergy—and the of the snake conferred no esoteric nineteenth-century soldier, scholar, ex- fact that Burton was "rusticated" from knowledge, save for treating bites, and plorer, linguist, author, translator, the university— his father bought him (b) that cobras are not house pets and mystic, and "amateur barbarian...
...as much a persona non grata in AraDue to the nature of his assignment, bia then as now...
...Burton was scrupulous about his reliBurton seems to have entered the Is- gious observance...
...During Ramadan, he col-played cards and drank beer to pass the lected the supplies he would need for time, Burton practiced swordsmanship, the journey, and devised solutions to wrote anthropological studies on the various tactical problems...
...He learned the yogic technique of breath and circulatory control, and the Tantric practices of 6 T n the literature of all countries life at the University to be little more meditation, chanting, and ritual sex...
...How could it not...
...It was "Leaping aeons of caste, metempsychonumber of works treating especially of at Oxford, however, that Burton ac- sis, and reincarnation," Burton con-love...
...The agent in the guise of a reli- After his death, his wife Isabel bowdgious mendicant carried modified reli- lerized his diaries and unpublished gious instruments—staffs or rosaries manuscripts, certainly a great loss to —which could be used as makeshift anthropologists of the day, and likely surveying tools in the hands of a skilled for pornographers as well...
...sincere Muslim call—he was by this The events that made up British co- time a Sufi master—Burton arranged lonial history passed by those who, like leave from his military duties and set Burton, were eager for the fray but out for Mecca, spending time as a merfound themselves stuck in an Indian chant in Alexandria and Cairo to polbackwater...
...passed himself as a trader, merchant, Burton's later life was spent in beggar, dervish, or faqir, but, as Rice smallish diplomatic missions and in asserts, "this was no act for Burton...
...lands...
...He easily subsequent expeditions...
...expeditions to Africa in search of gold, diamonds, anything...
...35.00 for what he constantly referred to as "Gnosis," he became "as acquainted as Mark Miller an outsider can be with the practice of Hinduism...
...According to natives chose him to see: he let down a cur- . Rice, Burton was without a doubt the taro between himself and Civilization, and [as] a tattered, dirty-looking dervish would leader, able as he was to communicate wander on foot, lodge in mosques, where with the porters in their own tongue, he was venerated as a saintly man, mix with and to take accurate geographical read-the strangest company . . . ings...
...In an age man...
...As a wanderer Trieste...
...Upon returning to England, Burton amongst the wild tribes of the hills and found himself embroiled in a dispute plains to collect information...
...40 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1990 otic reaches—but it was his calling...
...Burton was posted ultimately to Baroda, a tiny cantonment from which soldiers were often sent to watch over the East India Company's opium crop...
...Edward Rice also shows us what a Wanting to "prove, by trial that what real biographer is capable of, by not might be perilous to other travelers was standing in his way...
...Yet while his comrades ish his alias...
...He threw himself vigorously into the local languages, working first at Hindustani with the help of an old Persian munshi, or linguist...
...His sub- duced into English, incidentally—and stantial Islamic learning—and his search for the source of the Nile, durPersian—allowed him to pass, as his ing which, among other hardships, he niece would later write, suffered a javelin through the jaw...
...But an in- wearers as being of the highest casteterest in the mechanics of sex as prac- an unheard-of honor for a foreigner...
...Burton's father shunted his wife and three children restlessly around Europe, and he and his brother Edward developed a taste for fighting and whoring and the other joys of rootless young men...
...He launched several more one...
...He British public which takes enlightened ous Sufi brotherhoods, and the Kab- was entitled to wear the janeo, the interest in studying the manners and balistic writings of Abraham Abulafia...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1990 39...
...He did with his companion for the trip, John not go as British officer or Commissioner, Speke, over who should receive the because he would see nothing but what the glory for the expedition...
...With his health failing, he was put out to pasture at R esourceful he was...
...Driven by the search Edward Rice/Charles Scribner's Sons/483 pp...
...Whatever one makes of his search for the source of the Nile, comes Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, by Edward Rice, biographer of Thomas Merton and Margaret Mead...
...There seemed to be little here but blazCAPTAIN SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON: ing sun, parched earth, and the smoke THE SECRET AGENT WHO MADE THE PILGRIMAGE of cow-dung fires wafting on the dry TO MECCA, DISCOVERED THE KAMA SUTRA, AND air...
...He made rapid academic progress, though he considered Mark Miller is an editorial assistant at The American Spectator...
...He was relieved when whole-heartedly, though he had an Afghan accepted him as his couna military motive as well: to persuade tryman, but worried that he would be the Agha Khan to return to Persia to taken by some to be an Iranian Shi'ite take up arms against the ruling Shah...
...If searching for the fortune that always he said he was a Muslim, then he was eluded him...
...Accustomed to the excitements of the continental life and the sinful diversions available there, Burton bucked against Oxford...
...He got another Persian mun- Bedouin he would be traveling with shi, Mirza Muhammad Hosayn this considered writing the work of spies time, to help him pick up where he left and sorcerers, both of which were dealt off with Parsi in Bombay...
...So begins Richard Burton's quired a passion for mysticism and the vinced the Nagar elders to initiate him translation of the Kama Sutra, a book occult—studying among other things into the sect of "snake priests" that dedicated to "that small portion of the the early Christian Gnostics, mysteri- focused on worship of the cobra...
...Bombay was Burton's Burton left the sect as quickly as he had Moon, a feature film on Burton's first encounter with the filth, stench, entered it...
...for £500) a commission in the East In- should not be handled by the rational, Hot on the heels of Mountains of the dia Company...
...1 there will be found a certain than living "among the grocers...
...Brahminical thread which signified its customs of the olden east...
...Burton had ample time to gather infor- Burton is perhaps best known for his mation from the royal court and to ex- African safari—a word Burton introplore remote regions of India...
...All of this—the disguises, the such as ours, when ego inflation leads languages, the religious initiations— every weekend athlete who can write a would make the reputation of any man legal brief to style himself a Renaisas a top-notch explorer, but for Burton sance man, this Burton biography it was merely a training ground for his demonstrates what a real man is made pilgrimage to Mecca...
Vol. 23 • September 1990 • No. 9
