Page:The life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (IA b21778401).pdf/18

viii divided our intended journey into two lots. We cut India down the middle, the long way on the map, from north to south, and took the western side, leaving the eastern side for a trip which was deferred, alas! for our old age and retirement. We utilized the voyage out (which occupied thirty-three days in an Austrian Lloyd, used as a Haj, or pilgrimship), and also the voyage back, in the part of the following pages which refers to his early life, he dictating and I writing.

In 1887, when my husband was beginning to be a real invalid, he lent some of these notes to Mr. Hitchman (who asked leave to write his biography), Richard promising not to tread upon his heels by his own Autobiography till he should be free from service in 1891. It will not, I think, do any harm to the reading public to reproduce it with more detail, because only seven hundred people got Mr. Hitchman's, who did not by any means use the whole of the material before he returned it, and what I give is the original just as Richard dictated it, and it is more needful, because it deals with a part of his life that was only known to himself, to me only be dictation; because everything that he wrote of himself is infinitely precious, and because to leave to the public a sketch of an early Richard Burto nis desirable, otherwise readers would be obliged to purcahse Mr. Hitchman's, as well as this work, in order to make a perfect whole.

I must take warning, however, that when Mr. Hitchman's book came out, part of the Press found this account of my husband's boyhood and youth charming, and another part of the Press said that I was too candid, and did nothing to gloss over the faults and foibles of the youthful Burtons; they doubted the accuracy of my information—I was informed that my style was too rough-and-ready, and of many others of my shortcomings. In short, I was considered rather as writing against my own husband, whilst both sides of the Press in their reviews assumed that I wrote it; this charmed Richard, and he would not let me refute. Not one word was mine—it was only dictation, and peremptory dictation when I objected to certain self-accusations. I beg leave to state that I did not write one single word; I could not, for I did not know it—and all that the family objected to, or