The Life of Sir Richard Burton Part 27

But poor Lord Houghton was too far gone to appreciate the jest. Indeed, he was on the brink of the grave. A few days later he left for Vichy, where he died on August 11th. His remains were brought to Fryston, and Burton and Arbuthnot were present at his funeral.

In October, while he was the guest of Lord Salisbury at Hatfield, Burton solicited the consulate of Morocco, and as his application was supported by fifty men of prominence he felt almost certain of obtaining it.

Apparently, it was during this visit to England, too, that Burton committed the frightful sin of contradicting Mr. Gladstone. At some great house after dinner, Mr. Gladstone, who was the guest of the evening, took it upon himself, while every one listened in respectful silence, to enlarge on Oriental matters.

After he had finished, Burton, who had been fidgeting considerably, turned to him and said, "I can a.s.sure you, Mr. Gladstone, that everything you have said is absolutely and entirely opposite to fact."

The rest of the company were aghast, could scarcely, indeed, believe their ears; and one of them, as soon as he had recovered from the shock, was seen scribbling like mad on a menu card. Presently Burton felt the card tucked into his hand under the table. On glancing at it he read "Please do not contradict Mr. Gladstone. n.o.body ever does."

133. A Brief Glance through the Nights.

By this time Burton had finished the first volume of his translation of The Arabian Nights, which left the press 12th September 1885. The book was handsomely bound in black and gold, the colours of the Abbaside caliphs; and contained a circular "earnestly requesting that the work might not be exposed for sale in public places or permitted to fall into the hands of any save curious students of Moslem manners." The last volume was issued in July 1886. Let us turn over the pages of this remarkable work, surrender ourselves for a few moments to its charms, and then endeavour to compare it calmly and impartially with the great translation by Mr. Payne.

What a glorious panorama unfolds itself before us! Who does not know the introduction--about the king who, because his wife was unfaithful, vowed to take a new wife every evening and slay her in the morning! And all about the vizier's daughter, the beautiful Shahrazad, who, with a magnificent scheme in her head, voluntarily came forward and offered to take the frightful risk.

Did ever tale-teller compare with Shahrazad? Who does not sympathise with the Trader who killed the invisible son of the jinni? Who has not dreamt of the poor fisherman and the pot that was covered with the seal of King Solomon? The story of Duban, who cured King Yunon of leprosy and was sent home on the royal steed reads like a verse out of Esther, [439] and may remind us that there is no better way of understanding the historical portions of the Bible than by studying The Arabian Nights.

King Yunan richly deserved the death that overtook him, if only for his dirty habit of wetting his thumb when turning over the leaves of the book. [440] What a rare tale is that of the Ensorcelled Prince, alias The Young King of the Black Isles, who though he sat in a palace where fountains limbecked water "clear as pearls and diaphanous gems," and wore "silken stuff purfled with Egyptian gold," was from his midriff downwards not man but marble! Who is not shocked at the behaviour of the Three Ladies of Baghdad! In what fearful peril the caliph and the Kalendars placed themselves when, in spite of warning, they would ask questions! How delightful are the verses of the Nights, whether they have or have not any bearing upon the text! Says the third Kalendar, apropos of nothing:

"How many a weal trips on the heels of ill Causing the mourner's heart with joy to thrill."

What an imbecile of imbeciles was this same Kalendar when he found himself in the palace with the forty damsels, "All bright as moons to wait upon him!" It is true, he at first appreciated his snug quarters, for he cried, "Hereupon such gladness possessed me that I forgot the sorrows of the world one and all, and said, 'This is indeed life!'" Then the ninny must needs go and open that fatal fortieth door! The story of Nur al-Din Ali and his son Badr al-Din Hasan has the distinction of being the most rollicking and the most humorous in the Nights. What stupendous events result from a tiff! The lines repeated by Nur al-Din Ali when he angrily quitted his brother must have appealed forcibly to Burton:

Travel! and thou shalt find new friends for old ones left behind; toil! for the sweets of human life by toil and moil are found; The stay at home no honour wins nor ought attains but want; so leave thy place of birth and wander all the world around. [441]

As long as time lasts the pretty coquettish bride will keep on changing her charming dresses; and the sultan's groom (poor man! and for nothing at all) will be kept standing on his head. The moribund Nur al-Din turns Polonius and delivers himself of sententious precepts. "Security," he tells his son, "lieth in seclusion of thought and a certain retirement from the society of thy fellows.... In this world there is none thou mayst count upon... so live for thyself, nursing hope of none. Let thine own faults distract thine attention from the faults of other men.

[442] Be cautious, kind, charitable, sober, and economical." Then the good old man's life "went forth." This son, when, soon after, confronted with misfortune, gives utterance to one of the finest thoughts in the whole work:

"It is strange men should dwell in the house of abjection, when the plain of G.o.d's earth is so wide and great." [443]

But there is another verse in the same tale that is also well worth remembering--we mean the one uttered by Badr al-Din Hasan (turned tart merchant) when struck by a stone thrown by his son.

Unjust it were to bid the world be just; and blame her not: She ne'er was made for justice: Take what she gives thee, leave all griefs aside, for now to fair and Then to foul her l.u.s.t is. [444]

We need do no more than mention the world-famous stories of the unfortunate Hunchback and the pragmatical but charitable Barber. Very lovely is the tale of Nur al-Din and the Damsel Anis al Jalis [445]

better known as "Noureddin and the Beautiful Persian." How tender is the scene when they enter the Sultan's garden! "Then they fared forth at once from the city, and Allah spread over them His veil of protection, so that they reached the river bank, where they found a vessel ready for sea." Arrived at Baghdad they enter a garden which turns out to be the Sultan's. "By Allah," quoth Nur al-Din to the damsel, "right pleasant is this place." And she replied, "O my lord, sit with me awhile on this bench, and let us take our ease. So they mounted and sat them down...

and the breeze blew cool on them, and they fell asleep, and glory be to Him who never sleepeth." Little need to enquire what it is that entwines The Arabian Nights round our hearts.

When calamity over took Nur al-Din he mused on the folly of heaping up riches:

"Kisra and Caesars in a bygone day stored wealth; where is it, and ah! where are they?" [446]

But all came right in the end, for "Allah's aid is ever near at hand."

The tale of Ghanim bin Ayyub also ends happily. Then follows the interminable history of the lecherous and bellicose King Omar. Very striking is its opening episode--the meeting of Prince Sharrkan with the lovely Abrizah. "Though a lady like the moon at fullest, with ringleted hair and forehead sheeny white, and eyes wondrous wide and black and bright, and temple locks like the scorpion's tail," she was a mighty wrestler, and threw her admirer three times. The tender episode of the adventures of the two forlorn royal children in Jerusalem is unforgettable; while the inner story of Aziz and Azizah, with the touching account of Azizah's death, takes perhaps the highest place in the Nights. The tale of King Omar, however, has too much fighting, just as that of Ali bin Bakkar and Shams al Nahar, the amourist martyrs, as Burton calls them, has too much philandering. Then comes the Tale of Kamar al Zaman I--about the Prince and the Princess whose beauty set the fairy and the jinni disputing. How winning were the two wives of Kamar al Zaman in their youth; how revolting after! The interpolated tale of Ni'amah and Naomi is tender and pretty, and as the Arabs say, sweet as bees' honey. [447] All of us as we go through life occasionally blunder like Ni'amah into the wrong room--knowing not what is written for us "in the Secret Purpose." The most interesting feature of the "leprosy tale"

of Ala-al-Din is the clairvoyance exhibited by Zubaydah, who perceived that even so large a sum as ten thousand dinars would be forthcoming--a feature which links it with the concluding story of the Nights--that of Ma'aruf the cobbler; while the important part that the disguised Caliph Haroun Al-Ras.h.i.+d, Ja'afar and Masrur play in it reminds us of the story of the Three Ladies of Baghdad. On this occasion, however, there was a fourth masker, that h.o.a.ry sinner and cynical humorist the poet Abu Nowas.

One of the most curious features of the Nights is the prompt.i.tude with which everyone--porters, fishermen, ladies, caliphs--recites poetry. It is as if a cabman when you have paid him your fare were to give you a quatrain from FitzGerald's rendering of Omar Khayyam, or a cripple when soliciting your charity should quote Swinburne's Atalanta. Then in the midst of all this culture, kindliness, generosity, kingliness, honest mirth,--just as we are beginning to honour and love the great caliph, we come upon a tale [448] with the staggering commencement "When Harun al Ras.h.i.+d crucified Ja'afar;" and if we try to comfort ourselves with the reflection that we are reading only Fiction, History comes forward and tells us bluntly that it is naked truth. Pa.s.sing from this story, which casts so lurid a light over the Nights, we come to Abu Mohammed, Lazybones, the Arab d.i.c.k Whittington, whose adventures are succeeded by those of Ali Shar, a young man who, with nothing at all, purchases a beautiful slave girl--Zumurrud. When, after a time, he loses her, he loses also his senses, and runs about crying:

"The sweets of life are only for the mad."

By and by Zumurrud becomes a queen, and the lovers are re-united. She is still very beautiful, very sweet, very pious, very tender, and she flays three men alive.

We need do no more than allude to "The Man of Al Yaman and his six Slave Girls," "The Ebony Horse," and "Uns al Wujud and Rose in Hood."

The tale of the blue-stocking Tawaddud [449] is followed by a number of storyettes, some of which are among the sweetest in the Nights. "The Blacksmith who could handle Fire without Hurt," "The Moslem Champion,"

with its beautiful thoughts on prayer, and "Abu Hasn and the Leper" are all of them fragrant as musk. Then comes "The Queen of the Serpents"

with the history of Janshah, famous on account of the wonderful Split Men--the creatures already referred to in this work, who used to separate longitudinally. The Sindbad cycle is followed by the melancholy "City of Bra.s.s," and a great collection of anecdotes ill.u.s.trative of the craft and malice of woman.

In "The Story of Judar" [450] we find by the side of a character of angelic goodness characters of fiendish malevolence--Judar's brothers--a feature that links it with the stories of Abdullah bin Fazil [451] and Abu Sir and Abu Kir. [452] Very striking is the account of the Mahrabis whom Judar pushed into the lake, and who appeared with the soles of their feet above the water and none can forget the sights which the necromancy of the third Maghrabi put before the eyes of Judar. "Oh, Judar, fear not," said the Moor, "for they are semblances without life."

The long and b.l.o.o.d.y romance of Gharib and Ajib is followed by thirteen storyettes, all apparently historical, and then comes the detective work of "The Rogueries of Dalilah," and 'the Adventures of Mercury Ali." If "The Tale of Ardas.h.i.+r" is wearisome, that of "Julnar the Sea Born and her son King Badr," which like "Abdullah of the Land, and Abdullah of the Sea," [453] concerns mer-folk, amply atones for it. This, too, is the tale of the Arabian Circe, Queen Lab, who turns people into animals.

In "Sayf al Muluk," we make the acquaintance of that very singular jinni whose soul is outside his body, and meet again with Sindbad's facetious acquaintance, "The Old Man of the Sea."

"Hasan of Ba.s.sorah" is woven as it were out of the strands of the rainbow. Burton is here at his happiest as a translator, and the beautiful words that he uses comport with the tale and glitter like jewels. It was a favourite with him. He says, "The hero, with his hen-like persistency of purpose, his weeping, fainting, and versifying, is interesting enough, and proves that 'Love can find out the way.' The charming adopted sister, the model of what the feminine friend should be; the silly little wife who never knows that she is happy till she loses happiness, the violent and hard-hearted queen with all the cruelty of a good woman; and the manners and customs of Amazon-land are outlined with a life-like vivacity."

Then follow the stories of Kalifah, Ali Nur al Din and Miriam the Girdle Girl [454]; the tales grouped together under the t.i.tle of "King Jalead of Hind;" and Abu Kir and Abu Sir, memorable on account of the black ingrat.i.tude of the villain.

"Kamar al Zaman II." begins with the disagreeable incident of the Jeweller's Wife--"The Arab Lady G.o.diva of the Wrong Sort"--and the wicked plot which she contrived in concert with the depraved Kamar al Zaman. However, the storyteller enlists the reader's sympathies for the Jeweller, who in the end gains a wife quite as devoted to him as his first wife had been false. The unfaithful wife gets a reward which from an Arab point of view precisely meets the case. Somebody "pressed hard upon her windpipe and brake her neck." "So," concludes the narrator, "he who deemeth all women alike there is no remedy for the disease of his insanity." There is much sly humour in the tale, as for example when we are told that even the cats and dogs were comforted when "Lady G.o.diva"

ceased to make her rounds. "Abdullah bin Fazil" is simply "The Eldest Lady's Tale" with the s.e.xes changed.

The last tale in the Nights, and perhaps the finest of all, is that of "Ma'aruf the Cobbler." [455] Ma'aruf, who lived at Cairo, had a shrewish wife named Fatimah who beat him, and hauled him before the Kazi because he had not been able to bring her "kunafah sweetened with bees' honey."

So he fled from her, and a good-natured Marid transported him to a distant city. Here he encounters an old playfellow who lends him money and recommends him to play the wealthy merchant, by declaring that his baggage is on the road. This he does with a thoroughness that alarms his friend. He borrows money right and left and lavishes it upon beggars. He promises to pay his creditors twice over when his baggage comes. By and by the king--a very covetous man--hears of Ma'aruf's amazing generosity, and desirous himself of getting a share of the baggage, places his treasury at Ma'aruf's disposal, and weds him to his daughter Dunya.

Ma'arfu soon empties the treasury, and the Wazir, who dislikes Ma'aruf, suspects the truth. Ma'aruf, however, confesses everything to Dunya. She comes to his rescue, and her clairvoyance enables her to see his future prosperity. Having fled from the king, Ma'aruf discovers a magic "souterrain" and a talismanic seal ring, by the aid of which he attains incalculable wealth. Exclaims his friend the merchant when Ma'aruf returns as a magnifico, "Thou hast played off this trick and it hath prospered to thy hand, O Shaykh of Imposters! But thou deservest it."

Ma'aruf ultimately succeeds to the throne. Then occurs the death of the beautiful and tender Dunya--an event that is recorded with simplicity and infinite pathos. The old harridan Fatimah next obtrudes, and, exhibiting again her devilish propensities, receives her quietus by being very properly "smitten on the neck." So ends this fine story, and then comes the conclusion of the whole work. This is very touching, especially where the story-telling queen, who a.s.sumes that death is to be her portion, wants to bid adieu to the children whom she had borne to the king. But, as the dullest reader must have divined, the king had long before "pardoned" her in his heart, and all ends pleasantly with the marriage of her sister Dunyazad to the king's brother.

What an array of figures--beautiful, revolting, sly, fatuous, witty, brave, pusillanimous, mean, generous--meets the eye as we recall one by one these famous stories; beautiful and amorous, but mercurial ladies with henna scented feet and black eyes--often with a suspicion of kohl and more than a suspicion of Abu Murreh [456] in them--peeping cautiously through the close jalousies of some lattice; love sick princes overcoming all obstacles; executioners with blood-dripping scimitars; princesses of blinding beauty and pensive tenderness, who playfully knock out the "jaw-teeth" of their eunuchs while "the thousand-voiced bird in the coppice sings clear;" [457] hideous genii, whether of the amiable or the vindictive sort, making their appearance in unexpected moments; pious beasts--nay, the very hills--praising Allah and glorifying his vice-gerent; gullible saints, gifted scoundrels; learned men with camel loads of dictionaries and cla.s.sics, thieves with camel loads of plunder; warriors, zanies, necromancers, masculine women, feminine men, ghouls, lutists, negroes, court poets, wags--the central figure being the gorgeous, but truculent, Haroun Al Ras.h.i.+d, who is generally accompanied by Ja'afer and Masrur, and sometimes by the abandoned but irresistible Abu Nowas. What magnificent trencher-folk they all are! Even the love-lorn damsels. If you ask for a snack between meals they send in a trifle of 1,500 dishes. [458] Diamonds and amethysts are plentiful as blackberries. If you are a poet, and you make good verses, it is likely enough that some queen will stuff your mouth with bala.s.s rubies. How poorly our modern means of locomotion compare with those of the Nights. If you take a jinni or a swan-maiden you can go from Cairo to Bokhara in less time than our best expresses could cover a mile. The recent battles between the Russians and the j.a.panese are mere skirmishes compared with the fight described in "The City of Bra.s.s"--where 700 million are engaged. The people who fare worst in The Arabian Nights are those who pry into what does not concern them or what is forbidden, as, for example, that foolish, fatuous Third Kalendar, and the equally foolish and fatuous Man who Never Laughed Again; [459] and perhaps The Edinburgh Review was right in giving as the moral of the tales: "Nothing is impossible to him who loves, provided"--and the proviso is of crucial importance--"he is not cursed with a spirit of curiosity." Few persons care, however, whether there is any moral or not--most of us would as soon look for one in the outstretched pride of a peac.o.c.k's tale.

Where the dust of Shahrazad is kept tradition does not tell us. If we knew we would hasten to her tomb, and in imitation of the lover of Azizeh [460] lay thereon seven blood-red anemones.

Chapter XXVIII. The Two Translations Compared

134. The Blacksmith Who, etc.

Having glanced through the Nights, let us now compare the two famous translations. As we have already mentioned, Burton in his Translator's Foreword did not do Mr. Payne complete justice, but he pays so many compliments to Mr. Payne's translation elsewhere that no one can suppose that he desired to underrate the work of his friend. In the Foreword he says that Mr. Payne "succeeds admirably in the most difficult pa.s.sages and often hits upon choice and special terms and the exact vernacular equivalent of the foreign word so happily and so picturesquely that all future translators must perforce use the same expression under pain of falling far short." Still this does not go far enough, seeing that, as we said before, he made his translation very largely a paraphrase of Payne's. Consequently he was able to get done in two broken years (April 1884 to April 1886) and with several other books in hand, work that had occupied Mr. Payne six years (1876-1882). Let us now take Mr. Payne's rendering and Burton's rendering of two short tales and put them in juxtaposition. The Blacksmith who could handle Fire without Hurt and Abu Al Hasan and Abu Ja'afar the Leper will suit our purpose admirably.

The portion taken by Burton from Payne are in italics.

Payne Burton Vol. V. p. 25 Vol. V. p. 271 (Lib. Ed., vol. iv., p. 220)