Page:The life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (IA b21778401).pdf/72

42. These eruptions are very hard to cure, and they often embitter a man's life. The village consisted of a single Establishment, in which all nationalities met. Amongst them was an unfortunate Frenchman, who had been attacked at Calcutta with what appeared to be a leprous taint. He had tried half a dozen places to no purpose, and he had determined to blow his brains out if Schinznach failed him. The only advantage of the place was, its being within easy distance of Schaffhausen and the falls of the Rhine.

When the six weeks' cure was over, I was hurried by my guardian across France, and Southern England, to the rendezvous. The Grandmother and the two aunts, finding Great Cumberland Place too hot, had taken country quarters in Hampstead. Grandmamma Baker received us lads with something like disappointment. She would have been better contented has we been six feet high, bony as Highland cattle, with freckled faces, and cheek-bones like horns. Aunt Georgina Baker embraced and kissed her nephews with effusion. She had not been long parted from us. Mrs. Frank Burton, the other aunt, had not seen us for ten years, and of course could not recognize us.

We found two very nice little girl-cousins, who assisted us to pass the time. But the old dislike to our surroundings, returned with redoubled violence. Everything appeared to us so small, so mean, so ugly. The faces of the women were the only exception to the general rule of hideousness. The houses were so unlike houses, and more like the Nuremberg toys magnified. The outsides were so prim, so priggish, so utterly unartistic. The little bits of garden were mere slices, as if they had been sold by the inch. The interiors were cut up into such wretched little rooms, more like ship-cabins than what was called rooms in Italy. The drawing-rooms were crowded with hideous little tables, that made it dangerous to pass from one side to the other. The tables were heaped with nick-nacks, that served neither for use or show. And there was a desperate neatness and cleanness about everything that made us remember the old story of the Stoic who spat in the face of the master of the house because it was the most untidy place in the dwelling.

Then came a second parting. Edwards was to be placed under the charge of the Rev. Mr. Havergal, rector of some country parish. Later on, he wrote to say that "Richard must not correspond with his brother, as he had turned his name into a peculiar form of ridicule." He was in the musical line, and delighted in organ-playing. But Edward seemed to consider the whole affair a bore,