128 A Recollection of Sir Richard Burton [1906 



neath them bedded, and they lay there not daring to move till our 

 other guide cut steps in the ice down to them, and so rescued them. 

 It was a wonderful escape. George Fox, the elder of the two, became 

 a Catholic, and was disinherited by his father, the old Squire of Bram- 

 ham, for his change of religion, and Dick became the heir. He passed 

 his whole life fox-hunting, and died when he could no longer ride. 



" gth March. — George was again yesterday full of his parliamentary 

 plans. He is taking the lead in Opposition now, which he does well, 

 though I hate most of his public politics. His private ones are very 

 different. I gave him my idea of a policy of education, and he said he 

 would follow it when the question came forward in the House. What 

 I thought he might say is this : ' It is right and proper that education 

 should be compulsory to the extent of the three R's, writing, reading, 

 and arithmetic, for this the State should pay, but no child should be 

 be compelled to go beyond this, or to attend school after twelve years 

 old. The State school should be undenominational, inasmuch as the 

 three R's can be taught without involving any religious question. 

 Beyond the age of twelve each denomination should provide its own 

 education, History, Literature, and Science being unteachable without 

 involving religion. Such secondary schools should not be compulsory.' 

 This would certainly be enough in the country schools, and would help 

 to keep labourers on the land. 



' 18th March. — There has been a new life of Richard Burton pub- 

 lished, and much discussion of his character in the papers. I will 

 try and recollect my own impression of him. I knew his wife when 

 she was an unmarried girl, having met her several times at the house of 

 her aunt, Monica Lady Gerard, at Mortlake, in the fifties or early 

 sixties. At that time she was a quiet girl enough, of the convent type 

 — at least so I remember her — fair-haired and rather pretty — very 

 different from my recollection of her in later years. When I next 

 met her it was at Rio Janeiro in the autumn of 1867, where I spent 

 some days in her company on my way to the Legation at Buenos Aires. 

 Her husband was Consul then at Santos in Brazil, and he was travel- 

 ling somewhere in the interior of Brazil, and had left her at Rio 

 during his absence. She had developed into a sociable and very talk- 

 ative woman, clever, but at the same time foolish, overflowing with 

 stories of which her husband was always the hero. Her devotion to 

 him was very real, and she was indeed entirely under his domination, 

 an hypnotic domination Burton used to boast of. I have heard him 

 say that at the distance of many hundred miles he could will her to do 

 anything he chose as completely as if he were with her in the same 

 room. Burton's sayings, however, of this kind, were not to be alto- 

 gether depended upon, and he probably exaggerated his power. 



" A few months later Burton himself turned up, but without his wife, 



