The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton, volume 2 (of 2): By His Wife, Isabel BurtonBurton, Isabel, Lady
History
The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton, volume 2 (of 2): By His Wife, Isabel Burton
Burton, Isabel, Lady
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir, 1821-1890; Explorers -- Great Britain -- Biography; Scholars -- Great Britain -- Biography
His handwriting, as everybody knows, was so small as to be almost
invisible, and he used jokingly to say that the printers struck work
when one of his manuscripts went in. _They_ used to make hideous
mistakes, and _he_ used to abuse them in what he jokingly called
"langwidge" all down the margins, and one day a firm sent up a foreman
to say that the men declined to go on if they were abused in that
manner. I was sent to interview the man, and we both laughed so much
we could hardly speak, but he said he would go back and try to pacify
them. Richard used always to say that a wee writing, as if done with a
pin, betokened a big, strong man; a bold, dashing hand, as if written
with the poker, was always a tiny, golden-haired, baby-faced woman.
Sometimes, when people annoyed Richard in little ways, I would say,
"Never mind; why do you take notice of such little things?" and he
invariably answered, "I am like an elephant's trunk; I can pick up a
needle and root up a tree."
In his latter days, though his eyes were as soft and as brilliant and
youthful as they could be, he only required spectacles just at the very
end to read his own writing or small print, and the oculist found that
he had two quite different eyes, which had been complained of in Madame
Gutmansthal's picture, showing what a true artist she was. The right
required No. 50 convex, and the left eye 14 convex. He turned to me and
said, "I always told you that I was a dual man, and I believe that that
particular mania when I am delirious is perfectly correct."
DESCRIPTION OF RICHARD IN EGYPT.
Cutting from the _Argonaut_.
[Sidenote: _Descriptions from Other Sources_.]
Edwin de Leon, for many years Consul-General of the United States in
Egypt, thus writes of the late Sir Richard Burton:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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