Richard Francis Burton is one of the odder Victorian heroes. He was born March 19, 1821, at exactly the right time to come of age within the Victorian Empire. His family were Anglo-Irish squires, the same social class that the Duke of Wellington came from. Burton was born in England, though if he could claim one Irish trait, it was a rebellious streak a mile wide. Coupled with a love of shocking respectable opinion—Burton was what the French call an épateur—he usually found himself both at odds with authority and the center of attention.

Politics, the law, and military service were the natural occupations for men of Burton’s class. He ended up in the military after being expelled from Trinity College after defiantly telling the dons what he thought of them. In 1842 Burton joined the East India Company’s army, a corporate-owned military that acted as Britain’s enforcers in India. Burton just missed out on being in the First Anglo-Afghan War (immortalized by many, not the least George MacDonald Fraser), which was perhaps fortunate, as that conflict set the pattern for invasions of Afghanistan ending up in disaster. Burton’s talents were not greatly oriented toward being a front-line infantry officer anyway. He had amazing abilities to absorb new languages and a zest to study other cultures which made him perfect for undercover work.

At the time India was a jumble of jurisdictions with parts under direct British rule, parts owned by the East India Company, and native states that might be mere puppets or quasi-independent allies, any of which might decide to push back against British authority. The military took on the role of the police, using paramilitary gendarmes and extensive spy networks. With his expertise in Hindi (and a couple dozen other languages) and intense study of native ways of life, mannerisms, and habits, Burton was the perfect deep-cover agent.

British officers posing as natives was not new. Alexander Burnes had won an international reputation for reconnoitering the route from Afghanistan to Bokhara in disguise. Two later agents, Stoddart and Connally, paid with their lives when their cover was blown in Bokhara, as did Burnes in Afghanistan. Burton’s service tended to get more shocking results.

Among more routine military reports, Burton was detailed by General Sir Charles Napier to investigate a male brothel that British officers were allegedly frequenting. Burton undertook the assignment with such relish that his report was suppressed, and Napier suitably annoyed. Burton knew that the best way to shock Victorian mores was to talk about sex (presumably in the 21st century, he’d shock people by NOT talking about sex). Burton later developed a theory of “Sotadic Zones,” where sodomy flourished. On a more practical level, he wanted to understand other cultures which meant looking at their attitudes towards sex.

In the 1850s Burton was free of military duties and able to explore on his own. He set his sights on Mecca, being only the third non-Muslim to enter the holy city in disguise. He went to great lengths to get the disguise perfect, because failure meant death by an outraged mob. Burton made the pilgrimage and returned to write A Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah which gave him celebrity status as an explorer.

After briefly returning to the army for the Crimean War (which perhaps predictably ended up in a near mutiny), Burton’s next area of exploration was the Horn of Africa. He entered another forbidden city, Harar in Ethiopia, in disguise. In Somalia Burton’s party of explorers was ambushed by hostile tribesmen, and he barely survived getting stabbed through the jaw with a spear. Among the party was a young Englishman by the name of John Hanning Speke.

Undeterred by injury, Burton undertook another journey into Darkest Africa. This time he was looking for the source of the Nile, and for his sole white travelling companion he chose Speke. They endured tropical fevers, Speke was temporarily blinded, vital surveying equipment was broken or lost, and the horrors of the Arab slave raids were all too apparent. After great hardship, the two managed to reach the Great Lakes region, being the first Europeans to see Lake Tanganyika and Lake Victoria. However, on return to Britain the two men fell out. Disagreements over geographical conclusions, and perhaps simple jealousy over the limelight, led to a public feud. Speke died in a hunting accident the day before he was to debate Burton over the source of the Nile.

Burton’s career continued. With his wife Isabel he traveled to exotic places with strange sexual customs...like Utah. He met Brigham Young and Orrin Porter Rockwell, one of the Mormon “Destroying Angels”. Rockwell warned Burton against “white Indians” that lurked in the mountain passes. Burton travelled to Brazil, Paraguay (during the bloody Triple Alliance War), and the Congo, where he searched for the legendary cryptid known as the “gorilla” (the gorilla’s existence wasn’t confirmed until 1859).

Through all his years Burton was a prolific writer, if only for the income. He published accounts of all his journeys as well as various scholarly works of his own interests. He translated the Lusiads from Portuguese. Burton compiled his own multi-volume version of the Thousand and One Nights, with one thousand and one stories translated from the Arabic, and a few more. He translated the Kama Sutra and the Perfumed Garden, covering Indian and Arab sex manuals. He was an expert of swordsmanship and falconry, writing extensively on both subjects. Dozens more books, articles, and volumes of poetry flowed from his pen. All his works were embellished with copious notes, to the extent that they often overshadowed the main text.

Burton served as British consul in a number of postings, including a sensitive position in Damascus, Syria. Inevitably, he found ways to annoy his superiors. Eventually, Burton was posted to Trieste, an Adriatic port in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Trieste’s healthy climate was a benefit, for Burton was worn out after decades of hard travel in harsh tropical conditions. It was also a place where Burton was less likely to get in trouble. Burton died in Trieste on October 20, 1890.

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Burton is unique. There are many examples of explorers, of polymaths, men who could go native and come back at will, of rebels and iconoclasts. There are few, if any other than Burton, who combine all those traits in one. If you made him up, you’d be accused of trading in absurd Mary-Sues. Yet when a man’s life is lived as an adventure, adventure stories tend to sound like his life.

An obvious fictional parallel is Francis X. Gordon, a.k.a. El Borak, created by Robert E. Howard. Like Burton, he is a master of languages and disguise, able to penetrate forbidden cities at will (Yolgan in “The Daughter of Erlik Kahn” and Rub El Harami in “Country of the Knife” spring to mind). Moreover, he is his own master, readily telling off emirs and British authorities when they are in the wrong. Indeed, Gordon and Burton share Irish and Scottish ancestry! Burton was a cousin of Lord Dunsany and descended from Rob Roy MacGregor.

George MacDonald Fraser’s Harry Flashman is the other great parallel. Flashman gets to the war Burton missed in Afghanistan. Flashman is, if anything, more widely travelled (it’d be easier to list places Flashy didn’t visit). He is perhaps, nearly as good a linguist as Burton (Burton mastered over two dozen languages, plus working usage of many local dialects). Disguise is a constant in Flashman’s adventures, and he is constantly aware of the cost of failure.

Arguably, you find echoes of Burton in much fiction about the British Empire. Ronald Merrick from Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet comes to mind. Merrick is a policeman who has some skill in disguising himself as a native during the years of unrest leading up to India’s independence. Merrick is a capable linguist. Moreover, he has his own Sotadic obsessions. He is perhaps a dark shadow of Burton.

Of course none of these are more than shadows. Gordon is an American, a Texan. He’s not so much a rebel against authority, as a man who lives outside of it. Gordon definitely avoids attention (the easier to trick his enemies!). Burton seeks new places just for the experience, Gordon is a practical man, whose highest values are in helping his friends and getting even with enemies. REH was in fact familiar with Burton and read the Kasidah, a poem influenced by Sufi philosophy written by Burton under an Arab penname. He knew enough about Burton’s exploits to comment that he thought Burton often lied, but that lying is a requirement to be a good storyteller.

Fraser explicitly rejected Burton as a model for Flashman. Their personalities are completely opposite. Burton craved adventure, Flashman tries desperately to escape adventures. Flashman secretly admits he’s a cad and a bounder, while craving the credit due a hero. Burton wore his scandals as a badge of honor and invented a few more just to see people squirm. As for Merrick, Burton wouldn’t have a second’s time for the likes of him. Merrick is a dedicated social climber, a man who exudes arrogance while desperately kowtowing to those above him. He is no more than an echo, coming out of the dark crevices of empire.

None of these characters are Burton, how could they be? They share actions, not personalities. Rather it is the pattern of experience that forces a convergence of characteristics. The similarities are not intentional, merely inevitable.

The real Burton is certainly enough. Biographies of him abound, with The Devil Drives by Fawn Brodie being considered among the best. For an account of Burton and Speke, I am quite partial to Alan Moorhead’s The White Nile. I read it as a boy and Moorhead’s sweeping history of the region and the men and women whose destinies were entangled in the Nile fascinated me, as it does to this day.

There are also many direct fictionalizations of Burton. Harrison’s Burton and Speke (later reissued as Mountains of the Moon) captures the savage hardships of their journey and the messy end of their friendship marvelously. It was the Science Fiction version of Burton that gave me the idea that he was something larger than life. I speak of Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld novels.

Farmer’s Riverworld ran to six novels: To Your Scattered Bodies Go, The Fabulous Riverboat, The Dark Design, The Magic Labyrinth, The Gods of Riverworld. They were published over a twelve year period, from 1971 to 1983.

The premise is a simple one. All of humanity that lived and died from the Stone Age to 1983 is resurrected by an endless river on a strange world. The River snakes from pole to pole amid uncrossable barrier ridges. People are resurrected as they were in the prime of life. They are distributed in groups mostly corresponding to the societies they lived in, usually with a smaller group in the same area, and a larger number of random folk from any time or place.

They all have metal buckets known as “grails” which are filled with food, clothing, and other wants and needs daily by “grailstones”. The climate is temperate and thus there is no need to struggle for food or shelter. Should anyone die, they are resurrected immediately at some random point. The effect is to increase the admixture of societies. Humanity being humanity, free lunches don’t prevent wars of conquest, let alone lesser inhumanities, and humans have ample scope to visit new societies after every bloodbath.

Armed with a glimpse of the machinery behind the resurrection, Burton travels the River from end to end seeking answers as to why humanity has been brought here. In his adventures he meets Alice Liddell (i.e. the real Alice in Wonderland), Sam Clemens, Hermann Goering, King John, Jack London, and a host of fictional characters. They build riverboats and zeppelins to explore, and sometimes to fight. Some heroes become villains, and some villains become heroes. Indeed, the very concept of endless rebirth raises the question of moral progress, the basic thesis of Hinduism and Buddhism. If you can live your life over, can you avoid the failings of your previous incarnations? Farmer selects historical figures that have quite a few failings.

Perhaps the only character who does not change is Burton. Riverworld is the perfect existence for him. He has the chance for endless learning of every language ever spoken, every culture that ever lived, every event ever witnessed, every story ever heard. Moreover, he has a river greater than the Nile to explore and a deeper mystery to unravel, the very meaning of man’s existence. One wonders if the real Burton would have found Riverworld quite so satisfying, with no authority to rebel against and no fixed conformity to shock.

What would Burton have made of such things? Would he have been pleased at his fictional afterlife of high adventure or would he have dismissed it as balderdash? Maybe he would have written a few treatises on noted river explorers, poets, or the sexual practices of penny dreadful writers backed with voluminous footnotes. His pen was deadlier than his sword, and his sword was no mean weapon.

Of course, there’s no reason to think he would have cared at all. He did what few men ever do, he lived his life exactly as he saw fit, on his own terms. Burton’s life was its own adventure, a monument greater than any that could be bestowed by any other hand.

David Hardy is an award-winning scholar in the field of Robert E. Howard studies and is considered the foremost authority on REH's outlands hero, El Borak. Hardy is a prolific author of historical adventures and tales of sword-and-sorcery. Among those tales are stories of dangerous, desperate men on the frontiers of empire such as Trail of the Shark and Outlaws of the Legion.