Sir Richard Francis Burton (19 March 1821 – 20 October 1890) was a British explorer, army officer, writer and scholar. He was famed for his travels and explorations in Asia, Africa and South America, as well as his extensive knowledge of languages and cultures, speaking up to 29 different languages.
Born in Torquay, Devon, Burton joined the Bombay Army as an officer in 1842, beginning an eighteen-year military career which included a brief stint in the Crimean War. He was subsequently engaged by the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) to explore the East African coast, where Burton along with John Hanning Speke led an expedition to discover the source of the Nile and became the first European known to have seen Lake Tanganyika. He later served as the British consul in Fernando Pó, Santos, Damascus and Trieste. Burton was also a Fellow of the RGS and was awarded a knighthood in 1886.
His best-known achievements include undertaking the Hajj to Mecca in disguise, translating One Thousand and One Nights and The Perfumed Garden, and publishing the Kama Sutra in English. Although he abandoned his university studies, Burton became a prolific and erudite author and wrote numerous books and academic articles on subjects such as human behaviour, travel, falconry, fencing, sexual practices and ethnography.
Richard Burton was born in Torquay, Devon, on 19 March 1821; in his autobiography, he incorrectly claimed to have been born in the family home of Barham House in Elstree, Hertfordshire. Burton was baptised on 2 September 1821 at Elstree Church in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire. His father, Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Netterville Burton, was an Anglo-Irish officer in the British Army's 36th (Herefordshire) Regiment of Foot. Joseph, through his mother's family, the Campbells of Tuam, was a first cousin of Henry Pearce Driscoll and Eliza Graves. Burton's mother, Martha Baker, was the daughter and co-heiress of Richard Baker, a wealthy Hertfordshire squire after whom Burton was named. He had two siblings, Maria Katherine Elizabeth Burton (who married Lieutenant-General Sir Henry William Stisted) and Edward Joseph Netterville Burton.
In his early life, Burton grew up between Elstree in England, the home of Richard's esteemed and wealthy namesake, Richard Baker, and, initially, Tours in France, the latter after their father sought a better climate for his asthma. The transition to Tours appears to have been before the death of Baker, on 16 September 1824. Burton was looked after while very young, in both England and France, by the family's "Hertfordshire nurse, Mrs. Ling, a good, but obstinately English soul"; his formal, early education began at a school in Tours, taught by "a lame Irishman named Clough", which was followed, when "for the children's sake" the family moved to a house in the Rue De L'Archeveche, "the best street" in Tours, after which "[t]he little Burtons... attended the academy of a Mr. John Gilchrist, who grounded them in Latin and Greek".
The Colonel, earlier preoccupied with (but also sustaining injury by) boar hunting, eventually began a pursuit of the study of chemistry, including experimental, that would persist for some time, while, during forays "into society", becoming known for his ability to "inexpressibly shoc[k]... sensitive company" in his directness of speech (e.g., publicly referring to "an adulteress" in that way), a characteristic that Thomas Wright, in his Life, suggests the son learnt from the father. The Burton family returned to England in 1829, and Richard and his brother Edward were sent to a preparatory school at Richmond Green run by a Reverend Charles Delafosse, a school that Wright describes in his Life as having "fees [that] were high", and the school as being "badly conducted" with the boys being "both ill-taught and ill-fed".
By the time measles broke out in the school, the Colonel had "tired of Richmond", and after arranging tutors for the children—a Rev. H. R. Du Pre for the boys, and a "peony-faced lady named Miss Ruxton" for Maria—the family moved to Blois, France (Du Pre continuing tenaciously, but Ruxton returning home, having "g[iven] up in despair"). The time in Blois would amount to a year, after which, via Marseille and "Leghorn" (Livorno, Italy), on the coast of Tuscany,), the family settled in Pisa, allowing the boys to become "proficient in Italian and drawing", and to begin the violin (against which Richard would rebel, and in which Edward would excel). By July 1832, they were in Siena and Perugia, then Florence, Rome and Naples, then Sorrento and Capri (with Rev. Du Pre yet in tow, and the Colonel still devoted to pursuits related to "[o]xygen, abandoning... mass" to become a gas). At this juncture, the boys are described as having become "generally ungovernable", with escapades that included "a visit to a house of poor reputation" and thwarted whipping by father and tutor.
Colonel Burton quit England again for France in 1836, for Pau in the south, and soon again after, for Italy, first Pisa, then Lucca, where the sons divided time "ruffl[ing] it with a number of dissolute medical students" learning "several quite original wickednesses", and time spent under the influence of their parents, in "more wholesome society", in the latter case with introductions to the painter Louis Desanges, to "Helen Croly, daughter of... [George Croly, author of] Salathiel", and to Virginia Gabriel, later a composer, and daughter of an English Major-general.
As well, during his youth, he allegedly had a sexual relationship with a Roma girl and learned the rudiments of the Romani language. The peregrinations of Burton's youth may have encouraged him to regard himself as an outsider for much of his life. In The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1880) he wrote, "Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause. He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws."
Throughout the foregoing period, Burton had ample opportunity to learn languages, modern and ancient, for which he had demonstrated aptitude; prior to departing for university, he had become acquainted with written ancient Greek and Latin, and had become fluent in French, Italian, and modern Greek, quickly learning these as well as Neapolitan and several dialects. According to biographer Ed Rice, during Burton's days at university, he wouldsti[r] the bile of the dons by speaking real—that is, Roman—Latin instead of the artificial type peculiar to England, and [by speaking] Greek Romaically, with the accent of Athens, as he had learned it from a Greek merchant at Marseille, as well as [knowing] the classical forms. Such a linguistic feat was a tribute to Burton's remarkable ear and memory, for he was only a teenager when... in Italy and southern France."
In October 1840, he matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford. Before getting a room at the college, Burton was coached by William Alexander Greenhill and by a "Dr. Ogle"; he lived for a short time in the house of Greenhill, a doctor at the Radcliffe Infirmary. Wright, in his Life, notes that Burton "spent his first months, not in studying, but in rowing, [and] fencing"—in the latter case, in the "fencing saloons" of an Italian and a Scotsman, with mastery of foil and broad-sword—to which he added falconry. As well, he had engaged in "shooting the college rooks, and breaking the rules generally", and, despite his expressed respect, in pranks "at the expense of [a] Dr. Jenkins".
For all the experiences and education Burton brought with him to Oxford, he described his reception there as being unpleasant, and disparaged its educational offerings, stating that the "college teaching for which one was obliged to pay... was of the most worthless description", with "[t]wo hours a day... regularly wasted", noting that "those who read for honours... choose and pay a private coach". On a personal level, he describes having "grown a splendid moustache... the envy of all the boys abroad", that, despite his mentors Greenhill and Ogle advising removal, was only shaved after being given formal college orders; he describes havingalready formed strong ideas upon the Shaven Age of England, when her history, with some brilliant exceptions, such as Marlborough, Wellington and Nelson, was at its meanest. On being laughed at by a fellow undergraduate, he responded by challenging him to a duel. While there, he sat under the Christian teaching of John Henry Newman, "[t]he only preacher Burton would listen to"; Greenhill, Burton's mentor, was Newman's churchwarden.