Page:The life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (IA b21778401).pdf/33



I was born at 9.30 p.m., 19th March (Feast of St. Joseph in the calendar), in 1821, at Barham House, Herts, and suppose I was baptized in due course at the parish church. My birth took place in the same year as, but the day before, the grand even of George IV. visiting the Opera for the first time after the Coronation, March 20th. I was the eldest of three children. The second was Maria Catherine Eliza, who married Henry, afterwards General Sir Henry Stisted, a very distinguished officer, who died, leaving only two daughters, one of whom, Georgina Martha, survives. Third, Edward Joseph Netterville, late Captain in the 37th Regiment, unmarried. The first thing I remember, and it is always interesting to record a child's first memories, was being brought down after dinner at Barham House to eat white currants, seated upon the knee of a tall man with yellow hair and blue eyes; but whether the memory is composed of a miniature of my grandfather, and whether the white frock and blue sash with bows come from a miniature of myself and not from life, I can never make up my mind.

Barham House was a country place bought by my grandfather, Richard Baker, who determined to make me his heir because I had red hair, an unusual thing in the Burton family. The hair soon changed to black, which seems to justify the following remarks by Alfred Bate Richards in a pamphlet he wrote. They are as follows:—

"Richard Burton's talents for mixing and assimilating natives of all countries, but especially Oriental characters, and of becoming as one of themselves without any one doubting or suspecting his origin; his perfect knowledge of their languages, manners, customs, habits, and religion; and last, but not least, his being gifted by nature with an Arab head and face, favoured this his first enterprise"