Richard Francis Burton
How many men have been applauded as explorers but also condemned as pornographers? Quiet probably, only one has had this peculiar distinction.
Richard Francis Burton was born in 1821 and he and his brother were totally out of control. At ten, he stole his father's rifle and shot out stained-glass church windows. As they grew they became even wilder, visiting taverns, gambling dens, fencing studios, brothels across Europe.
Burton attended Oxford University, where he earned the nickname ‘Ruffian Dick’ for his long moustaches and tendency to challenge other students to duels – true to form, expelled for attending horse races instead of lectures. At 21 he signed up for the East India Company’s army corps and was posted to Sindh, where he lived with the Muslims and learned Eastern languages and dialects, including Iranian, Hindustani, and Arabic.
Burton couldn’t stay out of trouble. One secretive task had him investigating spies in male brothels – where he found many customers were British officers, a fact he included in his report, which was hushed up. Ill with cholera and under the cloud of his report, he returned home, at the age of 29. Once he’d recovered he set out on his next adventure - entering Mecca disguised as a Muslim hajj. Discovery would have resulted in his immediate execution by beheading. Not content with this, Burton then set out to enter the forbidden Muslim city of Harar, knowing that all non-Muslims who had entered this Somali city before him had been executed – he was the first white man to enter and leave alive.
In 1854, Burton went again to Somaliland in eastern Africa with Speke to find the source of the Nile, but they were attacked by Somali tribesmen. Speke was seriously injured and Burton's jaw was pierced by a spear. When the Crimean War broke out he travelled to the Crimea to train Turkish volunteers.
The war over, Burton discovered Lake Tanganyika in 1858 and decided it was the source of the Nile. His old compatriot, Speke, claimed Lake Victoria was the source of the Nile instead and returned to England to become famous as the discoverer of the Nile, but the dispute over the source led to a bitter feud between them, ending when Speke accidentally shot himself on a hunting trip.
In 1861, Burton secretly married the aristocrat Isabel Arundell – a strange choice for this libertine man – who was the daughter of an aristocratic and Catholic family.
Burton joined the British Foreign and travelled to the African continent writing five books describing tribal rituals, cannibalism, and bizarre sexual customs – bizarre to Victorian society, anyway. This made the Home Office concerned about his ‘stability’. Once back in Damascus Burton was reasonably content, but soon became restless and his wife created unrest her religious proselytising that - coupled with Arab intrigue - led to his dismissal.
In 1872 Burton was assigned to Trieste as consul. He wrote extensively during his years there, including translating the erotica of the East in an unexpurgated form that stunned and outraged Victorian society – which still made his books into bestsellers! In his travels in Asia, Africa, and South America, he had learned 25 languages, with sub-dialects the total number to languages he spoke came to 40.
Burton received some measure of acclaim in his later years; Queen Victoria made him the Knight Commander of St. Michael and St. George for his service to England. But when he died in1890 he was considered unfit (morally) to be buried in Westminster Abbey alongside Livingstone.
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