by John Dunning
We managed to catch the ferry to the city. I stood out on the deck and watched the lights draw closer, but Burton seemed restless, circling, looking out to sea, making his notes in light almost too dim to see. He spent his time on the port deck, watching the dark, empty hulk of Fort Sumter, and aft, where he could see Fort Moultrie and the lights of the lonely federal garrison stationed there.
We got in at eight o’clock. “No more backwoods inns for us, Charlie,” Richard said merrily. “Now we go first-cabin.”
He instructed our driver to take us to the best hotel and soon we were on Meeting Street in front of an elegant blockwide, four-story building, gas-lit, with a marvelous facade. I had studied Greek architecture briefly in college, and immediately I loved that hotel and its magnificent colonnade: fourteen great white Corinthian pillars that reached from the second-floor balcony to the roof. The Charleston Hotel. That night I slept the sleep of the dead.
* * *
All the next day we were like tourists, walking the streets, talking to people we met, probing the babble of the marketplace not far from our door, strolling along the Battery. The Battery is a walled promenade around the tip of the city with a green behind it and some of the town’s finest old houses in the background. The view of the harbor is spectacular. One elderly gentleman offered the pompous opinion that this was where the Cooper and Ashley rivers met to form the Atlantic Ocean. We should all have shared a hearty laugh except that the old bird seemed absolutely serious and might have been offended. Richard listened politely but I knew he was far more interested in the geography than in any local silliness advancing this city, as lovely as it was, as the center of the Western world. From any point on the Battery we could see Fort Sumter, that brick fortress sitting on its man-made shoal in the mouth of the harbor. On both sides the land curved in tight, with Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island to our left and Fort Johnson on James Island to the right, giving Sumter the appearance of a cork in a bottle. “Exactly right,” Burton said when I put it that way. “It’s a cork in a bottle.”
“When it’s finished it will make the city pretty much impregnable,” I said.
“If they finish it. And if they get the guns mounted, and if all three forts are controlled by the same side.”
“A lot of ifs.”
“Indeed. And if the wrong side had it, speaking from their viewpoint, its guns could easily be turned on the city it was built to protect.”
The fort was just a speck from there and I doubted that even the most powerful guns could reach that far. But Richard looked askance and said, “You don’t know much about modern warfare, my friend,” and I had to admit the truth of that.
We walked around the point and back again. The sun was warm and bright, a blessed relief from the miseries of the road, and again I was so delighted I had come. I was in the company of an extraordinary man and he liked me: what else mattered? But then as I stood watching the waterbound fortress, Richard moved away, and when I looked around for him he was standing off at a distance, scribbling in that damned notebook. All my suspicion came back in a gush. What was he doing? If he wanted to spy, why bring me along? That part made no sense. But my doubt magnified and doubled again, and abruptly I walked up to him, quickly enough that I could see he was not making notes but a sketch of some kind.
“What are you doing there?” I asked, making the question sound as much as possible like idle curiosity.
“Just drawing a picture.” He snapped his book shut. “To remember the day.”
Again this was so plausible that it had to be real. Unless it wasn’t.
We walked up East Bay, turned in to Chalmers Street, and saw a slave auction. The building had a platform on its second story where the Negroes were paraded and sold. Richard, who must have seen other such events in his travels around the world, still stood mesmerized for an hour as a family of blacks was broken apart and sent off with their separate masters. The pain in the mother’s face was heartbreaking and I was angry and indignant on her behalf. “You must write about this,” I said, but Richard only watched and kept his thoughts to himself. “These men are beasts,” I said, none too quietly, and Richard gave me a withering look and said, “Try to remember, Charlie, you are in their country now.”
We moved on. On East Bay near Queen Street we saw a photographer’s studio—barney stuyvessant, the sign said—and I asked if we might get a real picture made. “Something that will capture this day.”
Burton’s inclination was to dismiss this as silly, but before he could seriously object I went inside and made the arrangements. I didn’t want a trumped-up studio shot; something on the street would be much better, a picture that captured some semblance of the city and her architecture. Burton did protest then—he wanted no part of it—but the photographer was so young and eager for the business that his equipment was already out on the sidewalk, and I so clearly wanted it done that he stood still for it at last. The photographer fussed over the light: it was high noon and the sun was harsh, and Burton was such a reluctant subject that the young man knew he couldn’t keep us waiting long. He tried to chase away two little colored boys but Burton insisted they be left alone, and he gave each of them a penny. At last the photographer stood us on the walk near a palmetto tree, with the old Exchange Building rising dramatically behind us: Richard smiled and draped his arm over my shoulder, and there we were. The picture we took that day long ago was perfect, and remains one of my dearest possessions.
We lunched at the hotel, and I finally broached the dreaded subject. “You must know Lord Palmerston well.” I said this innocently, I thought, but Richard looked hard in my eyes: there was no fooling him, and his answer was vague. “We’ve met a few times in social gatherings.”
I pushed the point. “What do you think of him?”
“A colorful man. Not one you’d want to trifle with or have as an enemy. Rather like Calhoun was, I would imagine, like some of your fire-eating Southerners of today when he’s opposed.” A long moment passed while he leveled me with those eyes. “Why do you ask?”
Another long moment, and I saw that there could be no lying or evasion. “Richard,” I said, looking straight at him.
He waited.
“I’ve become uneasy about a few things.”
“I could sense as much.”
I felt my insides trembling: my God, I did not want to lose him! In those few seconds a dozen thoughts flooded through my mind. I imagined him taking dire offense, wounded in the heart. I saw him getting up from the table, walking away without a word, checking out of the hotel and disappearing into the bright sunlight. I saw myself rushing along beside him, pleading, I didn’t mean it, you’ve taken me wrong! But in fact if I offended him, he would be taking me exactly right.
I mustered myself and as calmly as I could said, “I would rather cut out my tongue than say this.”
Then to my amazement, he said it for me. “You are worried that I am spying against your country.”
“No,” I lied quickly. “No, no, nothing like that.”
“Please…Charlie.”
“All right, yes. I can’t help it, the thought crossed my mind and it won’t go away. I just wouldn’t have put it so bluntly.”
“Sometimes bluntness is the best way. The only way.”
“The thought never once occurred to me until we were in the backwoods, and you seemed so preoccupied with everything and everybody.”
“I told you, I do that everywhere. It’s my way.”
“Of course it is and I know that. I know as well as anyone how your books were compiled and written. I know these things and yet…”
“No,” he said. “You may think you know them, but you can’t understand the volume of material that runs through my mind in the course of a work. In India, just as an example, I had to make my notes in conditions that only one writer in ten thousand would endure. Impossible working conditions, yet there I worked, sitting under a table in an endless rain, the air so hot I could barely breathe,
the paper shredding and falling apart even as I wrote on it.”
“You’re right, I don’t understand that. What’s the point of it?”
“Discipline, Charlie, discipline! And it did serve its purpose. Once I had written it down I had it committed to memory, even if the notes themselves didn’t survive.”
Well, at least I could believe that. I smiled wanly and said, “All right,” and we ate for a time in silence. I thought the discussion was over: if so, it had been wholly unsatisfactory from my point of view, for Richard had not yet answered the most difficult question in plain language. I decided to say no more about it, to forget it, but I had made such resolutions before and what had they come to? Once a dark thought crosses the mind, it is there forever.
Then Richard said, “I sympathize with your worry. This is a very bad time for your young nation, more so than I imagined from the other side of the sea. Anything could tip you into war.”
England, for instance, I thought: Britannia, who could not defeat us in two staunch attempts when we were united but might have far easier pickings if we so stupidly divided ourselves. But I said, “Nothing will come of this. These people are noisy braggarts but they are not going to destroy the Union.”
“If you think that, you are naive.”
I shook my head. “In fact, I don’t think that.”
“No. This is a powder keg. It will take just one incident, and these people are itching for that excuse. It is inevitable.”
I shivered at his words, knowing how right he was. Richard had coffee and I joined him across another silence. Eventually he said, “I will give you an answer, but for your ears only.”
I felt myself blush again. “Richard, you know I can’t accept that.”
“Then let’s put it another way. You must never divulge anything of what I say unless it compromises your own sense of loyalty to your country.”
“And then?”
“Then you are free to do or say whatever you wish.”
I was still uneasy. He smiled and said, “That leaves an awful lot to your own discretion, Charlie. I can’t be much fairer or more trusting than that. And if you think about it, this says a good deal about my faith in your honor.”
I was moved by his words, but I knew what he was really saying. My honor could be clear, for any reason of my own choosing, but I knew our friendship would be lost.
Burton sipped his coffee and said, “I’m not spying on you, my friend. It’s just that there are personalities involved. Issues unresolved in England. Things I still haven’t decided how to deal with— personal things that influenced my decision to come here. I don’t want my business scattered about for everyone to know. Isn’t that reasonable?”
“Of course it is,” I said, but I knew my tone was unconvincing.
He made a small gesture of impatience and lit a smoke. “Damn it, you brought this up and now it must be dealt with. The alternative is fairly unattractive for both of us. We must part company in distrust.”
“I cannot accept that. I won’t.”
“Then what do you say?”
I nodded warily.
For a time I thought he still would not tell me. Even when he did speak his talk was rambling and not obviously to the point.
“You may have heard that I came home from Africa as something of an outcast. If that sad news hasn’t yet reached America, it will. And it will only get worse as Speke publishes his opinions. In my own forthcoming book I mention our differences only briefly. But Speke and I are at impossible odds: he has made his claim to the discovery of the big lake, insisting that this alone must be the source of the great Nile River. Never mind that he has no scientific evidence: he saw nothing more than a vast body of water, not even a visual sighting of a river flowing outward, to the north or any other direction. So it all remains unproved, unprovable, really, without another expedition. None of that mattered in the jubilation of the moment. People wanted a hero, and Speke rushed to get home first and give them one. At my expense, if that’s how it had to be.”
He sniffed derisively but there was no missing the hurt in his face. “We had an agreement: discussion first, before any publication or speech making. We would decide together what we had found and what it meant. But I was burning up with fever and Speke hurried home alone. His book, if he writes one, which I can’t imagine—my God, the man is almost illiterate—but you watch, publishers will wheedle it out of him, and such a book will be calculated for one effect above all others: the glorification of Jack Speke. The public already believes it, hook and sinker, so what more does a publisher need? Damn the truth.”
His eyes took on a faraway look. “The Nile,” he said, almost wistfully. “Do you know how many centuries people have been wondering where it comes from? But no one could penetrate that wilderness until Speke and I did it.”
He sipped his coffee. “I have many enemies in London, Charlie. One has to choose what to believe, and a great number chose to believe Speke’s accounts. And his slanders.”
“I believe you,” I said. “I don’t think it’s in you to write an untrue word.”
He smiled gratefully. “I’ll tell you one of the truest and ugliest things about human nature. If a man betrays a friend, even a little, he must then turn completely on that friend and destroy him. That’s what Speke must now do to me. I alone know what happened. I’m the greatest threat in his life so there’s no other way to validate himself. And maybe get rid of a little self-loathing.”
He looked down at his cup. “I swore I would never trust another man after Speke, but here I am, trusting you.”
Yet another long silence passed, as if he of all people could not find the words he sought. “Listen, Charlie. This must not sound like any form of self-pity.”
At once I said, “I would never suspect you of any such thing. Never, Richard.”
He cocked his head slightly. “There is a woman I have decided to marry.”
I gave him a heartfelt congratulation and predicted that he would greatly enjoy his wedded life. But he looked doubtful and said, “Her family is furiously opposed. Her mother is impossible.”
My look told him how sorry I was.
He said, “This is how things are. If I had returned a hero, many things might have been different. But getting back to the prime minister.”
“Yes.”
“Lord Palmerston was not unkind to me, as some were. I was invited to his home. We had several confidential chats. It was he, in fact, who suggested that I come here.”
I felt suddenly alarmed: we had moved perilously close to that point of leeway Richard had given me. But he said, “There was no intrigue about it. Palmerston simply said that in my shoes, under the circumstances, he would undertake a new journey, something completely unexpected. To the States, for instance.”
He lit another smoke. “That was the first thought I had of it. But I warmed to the idea at once. Suddenly it felt very right. I couldn’t bear London any longer.”
“And that’s all there was to it?”
“Almost all. The prime minister summoned me to his home again, just before I left, to say he’d be anxious to hear my impressions of America when I returned.”
“But no specific expectations—no assignments, so to speak?”
He laughed softly. “No assignments, Charlie. I do have a list of people he wants me to see. To convey his respects.”
“Southern people, you mean. Charleston people.”
“And others. I am going on to the frontier. Your secretary of war was very helpful to me in that regard. He also gave me a letter to the commander at Fort Moultrie.”
I let that pass. There was no use telling Burton of my own personal disdain toward Mr. Floyd. What difference did it make what I suspected or thought?
“But in the main this journey is for my own self-renewal,” Richard said. “Something I needed badly. And am finding, by the way.”
Pointedly he said, “I hope that satisfies you.”
“Of course.�
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It had damned better, I thought.
With that we dropped it. But it never really went away.
Richard.
His eyes were so full of mystery, his presence so quietly formidable. He was nothing like I had imagined him to be. With me he was always gentle and respectful, and I found it difficult to imagine him as the intimidating and often feared presence that others saw in him. The pictures drawn by his biographers, by accounts in the press before and after his death, and even in the writings of his widow more than thirty years past the events I am describing, miss much of the Burton I knew. I cannot challenge them: Who am I to challenge anyone? What was I compared with Isabel, or with men who spent years studying his life? I was at best a shirtsleeve authority. Our time together was so brief, and all I can ever be is the authority on those few weeks. Today I see how random it all was: how easily we might have failed to meet and never known what each of us would bring to the other. But we did meet, and I know I had at least a small effect on Richard’s life, and it would be impossible to overstate the vast effect he has had on mine. There has never been a day in forty years that I have not thought of him, written to him, reread favorite passages from his work.
It was only by chance, browsing through a dusty used bookstore in New York, that I first became aware of his name. There I saw in a bargain bin a small volume bound in red cloth: his 1853 book on bayonet exercise. Today it is a rare piece, but then it looked like just another book of narrow interest, to be thrown down among the sales items. What was it about this little book that drew me to him and ultimately led me to this marvelous journey? Was some hand of Providence at work? I remember thumbing through it, ambivalent, waiting for my companion to finish her Christmas buying from a shelf of leather-bound items behind the counter. I looked at the plates and, caring nothing about the subject, tossed it back in its place. I walked away and browsed the shelves, but eventually some compelling force—how else can I put this?—drew me back to the sales bin. I could see from the title page that the author was then a lieutenant in the Bombay army, that he had written of his travels in the Scinde, in Goa and the Blue Mountains. None of that had interested me then, but Burton had also written a book on falconry, and I was a birdman, so that did have some appeal. I bought the bayonet book on a whim, and as we left the bookshop my soon-to-be-wife looked at my purchase and said, “What on earth are you doing with that awful thing?” I joined her in a laugh at Burton’s expense, saying, “It’s no great loss, it only put me half a dime down.” What I could never make her understand was how quickly and deeply my involvement with Burton grew. Even when she knew how and why, years later, she had no idea. Some things, like Burton making his notes under impossible conditions in India, simply can’t be shared. A friend can be told, as I was told, of the table and the rain and the paper shredding as he wrote on it, but no one can ever truly know the experience of another. In the beginning I made light of it, but almost at once I searched out and read his falconry book, then his works on Goa and the Scinde. There was something bigger than life in his words, some mysterious sense of things, an attitude that drew me from one book to another. I sent away to his publisher, John Van Voorst in England, and obtained my own copies of the falconry title. But it was the monumental achievement of his travels to Mecca and Medina that captured my mind and thrilled my imagination. That’s when I became a serious Burton collector.