anti-hero

Sir Richard Burton, the great anti-hero and his explorations, his eccentric tastes, and his ever watchful wife. …

In later life Burton’s reputation for telling the truth, even when it was supremely tactless, nevertheless continued to be paralleled by his predilection for relating tall tales. He delighted in shocking, particularly audiences of Victorian women, who too often believed his stories of personal seduction, killing and cannibalism, interspersed as they were with details from his wilder escapades. Late in life he confessed freely that he had never killed anyone, and the closest he ever came to eating human flesh seems to have been organizing the Cannibal Club in England, a crackbrained offshoot of the Royal Geographical Society.

In the Indian army he won a reputation for being a great swordsman, drinker, brawler, and practical joker. He wrote witty, insulting verse lampooning his superior officers. He compiled a fake grammar to prove that the members of an obscure tribe in northern India with marked semitic features were in reality the lost Ten Tribes of Israel, and very nearly published it as authentic. He kept for a time a colony of monkeys, treating them like humans and studying their sounds, hoping to penetrate the mystery of their communication. He compiled, he said, a vocabulary of sixty words, but this was burned, along with all his Asian costumes, books and manuscripts, in a warehouse fire in London.

Burton had many friends in the both the aristocratic and Bohemian circles in London, but he was considered by many to be eccentric, un-English, and undefinably dangerous. Even his personal appearance contributed to this reputation. He was a tall man, with immense shoulders, powerful muscular arms, and a massive head that seemed all the bigger for the extravagant size of his drooping mustaches. Arthur Symon described him  as having “a tremendous animalism, an air of repressed ferocity, a devilish fascination.” Wilfrid Scawen Blunt called him ” a black leopard, caged but unforgiving.”

It was in Boulogne in 1853 that he met the tall, blond Isabel Arundell, a member of the Catholic aristocracy of England, a girl of considerable beauty, proud and possessing an authentic romantic spirit. They met formally, danced one together, and Isabel reverently put away to keep forever the gloves and sash she had worn that night. Though he made no effort to pursue her, she vowed with a passion worthy of the most sentimental of British novels that she would marry no one else.

Unaware of the excitement he had inspired, Burton shortly set forth on the voyage that was to bring him his first real fame. With the blessing of the Royal Geographic Society he set out for Arabia, hoping not only to penetrate the holy cities but also to explore a large desert area as yet unmapped by Europeans. In Alexandria he posed as an Indian doctor. Burton was a good amateur physician who knew all the harmless palliatives and had no compunction about prescribing them. In some ways he was in advance of the professionals, abhorring the use of leeches for bloodletting and urging filters and distillers to purify water against dysentery. In the role of doctor he was able to perfect his Arabic, to add to his familiarity with the minutiae of Moslem etiquette and ritual, and incidentally to satisfy his curiosity about harem life.

ADDENDUM:

(see link at end)…Captain Burton, As with most teenage boys, shows a great interest in KS: Sexual Techniques that may exceed his practical skills in seduction itself. But Richard Burton’s actual skills include many wives and daughters visited in the night. The fact that none of the harem wives [story 3] reported him. I feel comfortable saying that his seduction skill is heroic. But his KS: Seduction skill exceeds his physical skills, up to WORLD CLASS. Although he did not write the Kama Sutra, he chose that as his major work of translation into English. He collected folklore throughout his travels in Arabia and assembled them into the 10 volume legends of the Arabian Nights that are mostly pornographic. As he explored what amounts to about 25% of the world’s people and cultures, his learning of their cultures also focused on their sexual practices. The only possible person that might compare to his knowledge on the subje

ight be one of the most famous geisha’s or French or Italian courtesans. Also used this to justify a slight skill in Contortionist. I only gave him a Seduction 15-, because his physical skills were not on par with his knowledge. Read More:http://surbrook.devermore.net/adaptationsassorted/richard_francis_burton.html

…In April, 1800, Captain Burton set out for the United States, and, passing through the country of the Mormons, visited California. He returned to England in December, 18GO, having spent six weeks with Brigham Young, the Prophet, at Great Salt Lake City, and travelled
during his American expedition twenty- five thousand miles. In California he visited the gold-diggings, and learut practically to use pick and pan. The experiences of this journey were given forth in a work entitled ” The City of the Saints.”* Read More:http://burtoniana.org/biography/1880-A%20Sketch%20of%20the%20Career%20of%20Richard%20F%20Burton%20-%20Bate%20Richards/bate-richards-1880-burton.pdf