by Craig Murray
He wrote me just before he sailed, that he was proposing to publish an account of his trip […] I dare say his book will be […] interesting and amusing. He intends to be back in India in eighteen months, but whether he will return to his situation as my assistant, or be employed elsewhere, will depend on circumstances. I should think he will look for something higher in the diplomatic line than this.26
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Object of Adulation
Burnes left Calcutta for London on 3 June 1833 on the Hooghly, built in Calcutta in 1819.1 It was returning from Sydney to London, after an outward voyage as a convict transport. It was a convict ship for twenty years, before being used for Irish emigration during the Great Famine.2 On the voyage Burnes compiled tables of air and sea temperatures and made meteorological deductions, later published by the Royal Society. The Hooghly made the usual five-month voyage around the Cape.
Alexander disembarked at Dartmouth on 4 November 1833. Two days later he was in his brother David’s home in London. That very evening he was guest at a dinner of the Court of Directors in the London Tavern. His reputation had preceded him in official circles, but not yet with the public. The next day he called on Joseph Hume, still a radical MP and preparing another attack on the Corn Laws. He also called at the headquarters of the Company, where he met among others John Stuart Mill, the great philosopher, in his day job Secretary of the Political Committee. Their fathers had been schoolmates in Montrose. Burnes was instantly popular. He wrote to his mother: ‘I have been inundated with visits, from authors, societies, publishers and what-not. I am supposed to be at the Geographical Society this evening, but I defer it for a fortnight […] I wish I could hear you and my father, and I would despise all other compliments.’3
He spent Christmas Day with his brother David and family. The next day he woke early and with exceptional care put on full dress uniform, because he had an important call to pay – on the heir to the throne. He had an appointment with Princess Victoria at Kensington Palace.
The fifteen-year-old Victoria was not yet closely in touch with questions of policy. She was very much under control of her widowed mother’s aide de camp and presumed lover, Sir John Conroy. While Victoria made frequent public appearances to boost her popularity, her private life was closeted.
Her journal records very few calls in 1833. The purpose of the invitation to Burnes was educational and had been arranged by Joseph Hume, a close friend of her late father. Indeed it was at Hume’s urging that Kent and his pregnant Duchess had moved from Coburg to London. Hume had warned that Victoria’s right to the throne might be ‘challenged with effect, from the circumstance of the birth taking place on foreign soil’.4
Burnes met Victoria together with her mother, her governess and Conroy. Victoria recorded in her diary:
Thursday 26 December –[…] At ½ past 2 came Captain Burnes who has lately travelled over Northern East India. He gave us some very interesting accounts. He likewise brought with him to show us, his servant, a native of Cabul, dressed in his native dress. He is called Gulam Hussain; is of a dark olive complexion and had a dress of real Cashmere made in the beautiful valley of Cashmere.5
Four days later Burnes was presented to William IV at Brighton.6 The King took a lively interest in Asia. He regularly commented on the reports of the British mission to Tehran, and had vainly tried to persuade Palmerston to develop British trade via the Black Sea. Alexander wrote to Montrose:
There was no bending of knees […] no ceremony; I went dressed as to a private gentleman. I expected to find a jolly-looking, laughing man, instead of which, William looks […] careworn and tired. His majesty immediately began upon my travels and, desiring me to wheel round a table for him, he pulled up a chair […] Hereon I pulled out a map, and said that I hoped his Majesty would permit me to offer the explanation on it […] I told him of the difficulties in Sindh, the reception by Runjeet etc., but William the Fourth was all for politics, so I talked of the designs of Russia, her treaties, intrigues, agencies, ambassadors, commerce etc., the facilities, the obstacles regarding the advance of armies – I flew from Lahore to Caubul, from Caubul to Bokhara and the Caspian, and I answered a hundred questions […]
The King then got up, took me to a large map and made me go over all a second time, and […] asked a great deal about me personally. ‘Where were you educated?’ ‘In Scotland, Sir.’ ‘What is your age?’ ‘Twenty-eight, please your Majesty.’ ‘Only twenty eight! What rank do you hold?’ I replied, that I was only a Lieutenant in the army, but that my situation was political. ‘Oh, that I know. Really sir’ commenced the King, ‘you are a wonderful man; you have done more for me in this hour than anyone has ever been able to do […] I now see why Lord William Bentinck places confidence in you; I had heard that you were an able man, but now I see that you are most able. I trust that your life may be spared, that our Eastern Empire may benefit by the talents and abilities which you possess. You are intrusted with fearful information; you must take care what you publish. My ministers have been speaking of you to me, in particular Lord Grey. You will tell his Lordship and Mr Grant all the conversation you have had with me, and you will tell them what I think upon the ambition of Russia […] your suggestions and those of Lord William Bentinck are most profound; you will tell Lord William, when you return to India, of […] my satisfaction at his Lordships having brought these matters before the Cabinet. Lord Grey thinks as I do, that you have come back on a mission of primary importance – second only to the politics of Russia and Constantinople. Lord Grey tells me that you have convinced him that our position in Russia is hopeless […]’7
Burnes now found himself much in social demand, and so pressed for detail on the opulence of the Orient, that he had to revise for his appearances. He wrote from London to Lord Dalhousie asking for a copy of his own letter on the Rupar meetings and received this together with illustrations of the gathering drawn by Lt Col Cassidy of the 31st Foot, which Dalhousie thought might be useful to illustrate his talks.8
Burnes was providing private reports to the Company and to ministers. In these he argued that both the Herat–Kandahar route and the Balkh–Kabul route were viable for a Russian army. Artillery could move down the Oxus from the Aral Sea to Balkh. Large fishing boats were available, and were dragged up the Oxus by horses. The terrain beside the river was level. From Balkh, a Russian army could march in summer to Kabul in forty days. The pioneers of a modern army could make the passes of the Hindu Kush practicable for artillery, though not in winter. In two campaigning seasons Russia could progress from Balkh to the Indus.
Alexander was living with his brother David whose career as a naval surgeon had been cut short when he became himself a victim of disease, probably malaria, and never fully recovered. He was now on sick leave and half pay, quitting the navy in 1835. He was attempting to set up in private medical practice in Bloomsbury. This area was being rapidly developed from open field by the Duke of Bedford. Its principal streets and squares were named after the Whig ascendancy. Bloomsbury became the address for those on their way up the social ladder.
David Burnes’ house at 5 Woburn Place no longer exists, but it stood on the corner of Russell Square. From it you could see the home of Isaac D’Israeli, one of John Murray’s leading authors and a staple of the publisher’s famed soirees in Albemarle Street, to which Alexander was repeatedly invited. Isaac’s solicitor son Benjamin had published Vivian Grey and three more successful novels. Benjamin Disraeli had shown that literary success could open the most distinguished of social doors – he was a fashionable man about town who was to enter Parliament three years later. In London Alexander and Benjamin met socially; at the Athenaeum club,9 and salons including Holland House and Albemarle Street. They were both twenty-nine years old.
Fraser’s Magazine employed a dashing Irish artist, Daniel Maclise, who for each issue produced a sketch of a celebrity, usually literary. Maclise had sketched Benjamin and now sketched Alex, just as Maclise started an aff
air with Benjamin’s long-term mistress Henrietta, wife of Sir Francis Sykes, whose own energetic sex life left no room for her. Disraeli had shared Henrietta with Lord Lyndhurst.10
Burnes also was a guest of Edward Bulwer Lytton, then an immensely popular novelist, and John Gibson Lockhart, a powerful arbiter in London literary society and formerly part of the Edinburgh Noctes Ambrosianae. Lockhart borrowed Burnes’ manuscript journals to read the uncensored story.11 At a party at Bulwer’s, arriving together with Lockhart, Disraeli met his future wife Mary Ann, who was married to Tory MP Wyndham Lewis.12 Disraeli started an immediate affair with her.
Palmerston as Foreign Secretary was to have a major role in directing Burnes’ fate. This recent account of Palmerston’s relationship with the married Emily Cowper, sister of incoming Prime Minister Melbourne, is revealing:
In 1820 Lady Cowper had borne him [Palmerston] another child […] but she was still sharing her affections, not only with Count Giuliano, but also with […] the witty little Earl of Clanwilliam, who was Castlereagh’s private Secretary at the Foreign Office, and now a tall, dark and famously handsome officer in the Life Guards, Lord Francis Conyngham, whose mother was the King’s latest mistress. On many […] of his evenings in London, Palmerston had no choice but to seek solace elsewhere, usually with Emma Murray […] or with beautiful Eliza Blackburn, whose busy barrister husband had been at Harrow and St John’s with him.13
These brief examples constitute a fair representation of the morals of the strata of London society in which Alex now moved. The most important rule was that a woman must have a complacent husband willing to give cover: ‘No objection was ever made to the appearance at Court of a woman living with her husband, let her conduct be what it might.’14 This was stricter than the etiquette of George IV, who had been happy to receive ‘immoral’ women without cover. William IV had ten of his numerous illegitimate children living in the palace with him, under the name Fitz-James. That is worth remembering when we talk of the contemporary Afghan zenanas.
Lionised by royalty, politicians and the Company, Burnes now reached a wider audience through his book. John Murray, the greatest publisher of the age, had such faith in Alex’s book that he paid him the serious sum of 800 guineas for the rights. Burnes had even more belief in his own worth. He told Mountstuart Elphinstone that he had better cash offers but he preferred Murray ‘for a variety of reasons’.15 He wrote to Murray from Bow Butts: ‘I might, I am aware, have received a larger sum of money for my work but I feel much obliged to you for your liberal offer.’16 He told Pottinger that he could have doubled the money through serialisation with The Family Library, but his object was reputation not cash.17
This was an extraordinary time for Alexander. Not only was he a celebrity; he was receiving large sums of money. In January 1834 the Court of Directors approved payment of ‘allowances specially granted’ of £1,232 9s 6d. Uniquely, these were to cover Burnes’ expenses in the UK, in addition to the money paid for his mission. The Company wished its young hero to cut a good figure in society.18
Burnes did not forget the other intrepid traveller, Arthur Conolly. Alexander assiduously collected reviews of Conolly’s book and posted them back to him in India, and presented copies of Conolly’s book to influential societies.
He retired to Montrose to finish his book. He arrived on Monday 14 January 183419 and was greeted as a hero. At a Town Hall banquet in his honour ‘all the principal persons, merchants, manufacturers and farmers in the neighbourhood assembled to greet him’,20 including his old sadistic schoolmaster Calvert.
Politics were always to the fore in Montrose. It had been proposed that the MP for Arbroath, Mr Ross, take the chair but this was changed as he had recently made a speech defending the Corn Laws, and according to the Montrose Review his presence would have ‘deterred 100 of the 140 people from attending’.
On 14 February 1834 Alexander gave an address to a packed meeting of St Peter’s Lodge, Montrose. He gave details of his travels, and particularly his archaeological discoveries.21 As reported in the Freemasons’ Quarterly ‘He gave many many undoubted proofs of Masonic remains and in particular when near Bokhara, he traced on the ruins of an encampment the symbols of the Square and Compasses.’22
Life in Montrose continued in its regular rhythms. James Burnes Sr was still Town Clerk and Chief Magistrate. The family’s influence was in no way diminished by the Scottish Reform Act of 1832 which instituted a £10 property qualification for voters, or the accompanying reform of burgh government. We find James Sr in 1834 taking action on behalf of Patrick Chalmers, MP for Brechin, against a tacksman named Frazer ‘insisting on a settlement of his arrears’. He advised Chalmers to have notice to Frazer delivered by a trusty messenger so ‘he may not pretend he got no warning, as is common practice with these people’.23 If we recall the afflictions, as tenant farmers in debt, of his Burns relatives, the lack of empathy for ‘these people’ is chilling.
Alex wished to do something for his hometown, and on his father’s advice he gave an endowment of £100 each to Montrose Academy and to the Trades School which had just opened for the children of artisans.
He was then in London at least from 12 March to 16 July 1834. It was John Murray, rather than the EIC, who first informed Burnes he needed to submit his manuscript for approval,24 and the vetting was co-ordinated by Mounstuart Elphinstone, consulting Mackeson, Maconochie and McNeill.25 Elphinstone did not confine his role to censorship – it was he who suggested that the voyage up the Indus should form the third volume, with the more marketable material about Kabul and Bokhara first.26 He also gave advice on the maps.
David Burnes received the proof sheets and did the first corrections. This was a very close family. Alex tried but failed to persuade Murray also to reproduce James Burnes’ account of his visit to Sind.
Every modern history of the Great Game contains the same picture of Alexander Burnes. A small, rat-faced individual peering out from under a giant turban. It is hard to reconcile this character with the daring explorer and charismatic officer. That picture first appears, labelled ‘Costume of Bokhara’, in John Murray’s 1834 publication of Travels into Bokhara. There is a copy in the National Portrait Gallery in London and one in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, both entitled: ‘Sir Alexander Burnes, by Edward Frances Finden, after Daniel Maclise, stipple engraving’.
But in fact this best-known image is not of Burnes at all. He had been uncomfortable about the idea of having his portrait in the book, regarding it as ‘vanity’ and had written to Murray ‘With reference to your request that my picture should form the frontispiece of the book I am ready to comply with it on these terms that the likeness be given in costume with these words under it “The Costume of Bokhara”.’27
He had disliked Maclise’s sketch, and after seeing Finden’s engraving from it wrote to Murray:
I would like however if you could make some alteration in my visage in the ‘costume of Bokhara’ for it is said to be so evil and cunning that I shall be handed down to posterity as a real Tartar!! Suppose you strike it out altogether or get Mr Maclise to touch it up a little, or […] substitute a lithograph of the miniature which I shewed to you […] Do any of the three which you like.28
We know that the face was altered as requested. David sent a note to Murray asking ‘Could you let me have five or six of the proofs of my brother’s picture (the altered one) […]’29 There is no claim in the book that the altered image is a portrait of Burnes. Burnes specifically wrote to John Murray complaining that an advertisement for the book in the Quarterly Review still stated that it would contain a portrait of the author.30 This altered face is plainly not the same person as the fine portraits of Alexander Burnes by William Brockedon.
I not only discovered that the best-known likeness of Burnes is not him at all, but I also found the best portrait of Burnes, which had been lost. In the basement of the Mumbai Asiatic Society, I found a reference to a portrait of Burnes commissioned from Brockedon.31 Sea
rching the walls, I could not find Burnes. I asked the officers of the Society and was told a number of old unidentified portraits had been taken down.
In a gloomy corner under a tarpaulin, their large hardwood frames littered with bat droppings, a number of portraits lay on edge. They were very heavy. I chose one at random, got it up and – there was Alexander Burnes, staring at me with a quizzical gaze. An intelligent and sensitive face with a high forehead, bearing a distinct family resemblance to Robert Burns, but resplendent in uniform and with military moustaches. I saw immediately that it was the military twin to the civilian version in the Royal Geographical Society.
Murray liked Burnes, and was very anxious to get the book to press while Burnes was a fresh sensation; Burnes was exemplary in his manuscripts and corrections. There is one complaint from Alex that the printing is less handsome than he expected – duodecimo, not quarto. The engravings were for Burnes to fund, and there was some rearrangement on these to save money, and the cancellation of a large map. But by 8 December 1834 all was complete and ready for the press.32
The first and second editions of Burnes’ book sold out instantly. Alex wrote to Murray in July 1835 asking him to give one of the few remaining copies to Brockedon.33
Honours rained in. On 13 February 1834 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society at a meeting chaired by its President, the Duke of Sussex34, also the worldwide head of freemasonry. Doubtless the ‘Royal premium’ of 50 guineas from the Royal Geographical Society he received in May 1834 was as welcome as his honorary membership of the Royal Asiatic Society, received from the Earl of Munster at a dinner on 21 February 1835. Just the night before amid the Palladian grandeur of Somerset House he had been guest of honour at the Geological Society annual dinner, at which Charles Lyell noted that Burnes’ speech was well received. Burnes wrote to Montrose ‘I am being killed with honors and kindness, and it is a more painful death than starvation among the Usbeks.’35