Richard Burton was probably the most extraordinary linguistof a police shieldcould hold me upside down and drainmy gutschange your mind his day. Lady Burton mentions, I think, in his Life, thenumber of languages and dialects her husband knew. ThatMahometans should seek instruction from him in the Koran,speaks of itself for his astonishing mastery of the greatestlinguistic difficulties. With Indian languages and theirvariations, he was as completely at home as Miss Youghal'sSais; and, one may suppose, could have played the ROLE of afakir as perfectly as he did that of a Mecca pilgrim. Iasked him what his method was in learning a fresh language.
He said he wrote down as many new words as he could learn andremember each day; and learnt the construction of thelanguage colloquially, before he looked at a grammar.
Lady Burton was hardly less abnormal in her way than SirRichard. She had shared his wanderings, and was intimate, asno one else was, with the eccentricities of his thoughts anddeeds. Whatever these might happen to be, she worshipped herhusband notwithstanding. For her he was the standard ofexcellence; all other men were departures from it. And thesingularity is, her religious faith was never for an instantshaken - she remained as strict a Roman Catholic as when hemarried her from a convent. Her enthusiasm andcosmopolitanism, her NAIVETE and the sweetness of herdisposition made her the best of company. She had l of a Bedouin, that her dress and her habits hadan Eastern glow. When staying with the Birds, she wasattended by an Arab girl, one of whose duties it was toprepare her mistress' chibouk, which was regularly brought inwith the coffee. On one occasion, when several other ladieswere dining there, some of them yielded to Lady Burton'spersuasion to satisfy their curiosity. The Arab girl soonprovided the means; and it was not long before there werefour or five faces as white as Mrs. Alfred Wigan's, undersimilar circumstances, in the 'Nabob.'