As some DMR readers may recall, I started doing a series on Richard F. Burton’s literary legacy quite a while back. The whole project grew out of my research for RFB’s bicentennial. The subject matter was so fascinating--and Richard’s acknowledged and/or apparent influence was so widespread--that I had to pursue it.

Then the Long Month of Cyber-Woes happened.

Thus, this blog entry represents my attempt to get back on track. My previous post looked at Burton's influence upon various Victorian authors. This blog entry examines the profound effect Burton had on certain facets of the Edwardian literary scene.

By 'Edwardian', I'm really referring to what I call the 'Greater Edwardian Era', which I consider to run from about 1890 until World War One in 1914. By 1890, Queen Victoria had one foot in the grave and things were beginning to look a bit 'decadent' in the field of British letters and in society overall. In the real world, Burton’s death and Jack the Ripper ushered in the decade, with Jack stalking the streets of Whitechapel. The 1890s would see the likes of Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley taking things to the wilder side. Arthur Machen would publish The Great God Pan in 1894. Bram Stoker published Dracula in 1897.

Burton, from the Leighton portrait, as Stoker’s Dracula. The portrait was painted during the same period as when Stoker first met RFB.

Stoker, who was about a quarter-century younger than Burton, met Richard by way of the actor/playwright, Henry Irving. Stoker, as had so many before him, found RFB 'riveting'. When I first read about Bram meeting Burton back in 2004, it immediately occurred to me that Richard might have provided some sort of inspiration for Stoker's rendition of Dracula. As it turns out, Stoker biographer, Barbara Belford, had the same idea in 1996.

Here's how Victoria Hooper put it at the Bookdrum website:

'Jonathan Harker’s first meeting with Count Dracula: “The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking."
Bram Stoker wrote a book about his beloved friend Henry Irving, titled Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving. In it, he records the time they met Sir Richard Burton, a Victorian explorer, writer, soldier and diplomat. Bram Stoker was struck by Burton’s ‘iron’ appearance, and the description given seems to match some of Dracula’s traits. Could Bram Stoker have been influenced by Richard Burton when creating the cruel, steely Count?
“But the man riveted my attention. He was dark, and forceful, and masterful, and ruthless. I have never seen so iron a countenance.” (p.224.)
“The predominant characteristics were the darkness of the face - the desert burning; the strong mouth and nose, and jaw and forehead - the latter somewhat bold - and the strong, deep, resonant voice. My first impression of the man as of steel was consolidated and enhanced.” (p.225.)
Compare the picture of Richard Burton [above] to this description of Dracula: “His face was a strong - a very strong - aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples, but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive ... The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking ... the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin.”
And, after Richard Burton remorselessly describes what it is like to kill a man: “As he spoke the upper lip rose and his canine tooth showed its full length like the gleam of a dagger.”- describing Richard Burton. (p.229.)'

Interesting. Since I myself possess a fully-functional set of canines, that's cool to know. We also know from Stoker's Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving that Bram requested a photo of Burton from RFB's widow, Isabel Burton, who granted his request.

Richard's mien and personality aren't all that might have influenced Stoker's classic novel. There is also RFB's Vikram and the Vampire. First published in 1870 and reprinted in 1893--four years before Dracula--the book centers around a Hindu baital, or vampire. It is notable for strongly associating vampires with bats and/or being 'bat-like', a motif found in Dracula, but far less so before that. Might Francis Ford Coppola have beaten Barbara Belford to the punch in 1992's Bram Stoker's Dracula regarding the Burton-Vlad connection? One scene from the film has Mina and Lucy laughing over erotic illustrations in Burton's Arabian Nights.

As I noted in my biographical post on Burton, he was second cousin to Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett--also known as Lord Dunsany. I asked Dunsanian scholar, Martin Andersson, if he knew of anything Dunsany had to say about the Notorious RFB. Here's one anecdote:

"Once, when hunting in Northern Africa, Dunsany lost face with his guides by claiming that the earth moved around the sun, but regained it by telling them he was related to Burton."

Besides showing how Dunsany was willing to boast of his connection to Richard, this also demonstrates the notoriety which Burton still enjoyed in the Muslim world, even decades after his death.

Here's an excerpt, courtesy of Martin, from Dunsany's unpublished essay, ‘Influences of the East on English Writers’:

"In the work of Powys Mathers, who died in the year 1939, the inspiration of the East is to be found undiluted; for all his poetry is translation from the Arabic and from other eastern languages. He also translated the whole of the Arabian Nights, as Sir Richard Burton had done before him.
In Burton we have a writer not so much inspired by Arabia as lured to it, until his thought became Arabic thought, and his way of life almost the way of the Arabs. He was not the first to translate the Arabian Nights into English, but when he did he brought to England what is probably the most famous story Europe knows, so directly out of the lands and the thought of the Arabs that it comes to us like merchandise not brought by our trains and steamers or packed by English hands, but rather as though it appeared in London in bales on the backs of camels. An influence is, after all, a thing that can work both ways, so that sometimes English writers have drawn inspiration from the East and at other times the East has drawn English travellers to Arabia and has always done so in every generation. Burton was one of these."

Burton as Jorkens, from a photo taken during the 1880s.

Even a cursory scan of that excerpt shows that Dunsany had read at least some of RFB's works, with high praise for Richard's translation of The Arabian Nights. Since Andersson informs me that there is a set of Burton’s The Arabian Nights at Dunsany Castle, one could certainly argue the possibility that Burton's inimitable translation of those tales had, at least, some influence on Dunsany's own tales of the East.

Speaking of Dunsany's stories of the East and points south, what of his multitudinous 'club tales' starring Joseph Jorkens? Jorkens is an aging member of a London men's club who likes nothing better than to drink whiskey and regale his colleagues with tales of his travels in Africa, Asia and locales even more exotic. Most of his exploits cross right over the line into outright fantasy, yet his fellow clubbers and the reader are left seriously considering that Jorkens might be telling the truth.

Compare that with Richard F. Burton, considered one of the foremost raconteurs of the Victorian Age. RFB was famous, and infamous, for the tales he told at parties, small gatherings and in club settings. Many listeners considered Richard's travel stories to be scandalous, if not outright lies...but they loved them anyway. He and his entourage of not-quite-respectable compadres even had their own dining club which was known as the 'Cannibal Club', where all manner of outlandish things were discussed. Need I mention that Burton was a confirmed drinker? In fact, we have a short anecdote from Dunsany in which he asked about Burton and was told, simply, "He drank."

Perhaps Burton's greatest influence was as an example to Dunsany. Richard was a soldier, a far-traveler, a polymath and a teller of fanciful tales. Does not that same description fit Dunsany? Here was a kinsman that Dunsany could model himself after to some degree.

In my previous post, I stated that things were "going to take a bit more of a villainous turn" when Part Three went live. We've already covered Dracula. How about one of the first, and greatest, super-villains: Fu Manchu?

"The brow of a Shakespeare and the face of Satan". Another faux ‘Oxford’ cover. No, Burton doesn’t look particularly like Fu Manchu—as described by Rohmer—in some ways, but neither do many of the depictions of the Devil Doctor on numerous actual book covers. — "The brow of a Shakespeare and the face of Satan". Another *faux* ‘Oxford’ cover. No, Burton doesn’t look particularly like Fu Manchu—as described by Rohmer—in some ways, but neither do many of the depictions of the Devil Doctor on numerous actual book covers.

Sax Rohmer was a lifelong fan of Richard F. Burton. As William Patrick Maynard quite ably demonstrated in his recent post, Rohmer largely based Lionel Barton--a mainstay of the Fu Manchu novels--on Burton. That has been known and acknowledged by Rohmer scholars for decades. However, I think I've found another possible Burtonian influence on the Fu Manchu tales.

Submitted for your consideration...

"Burton had the jaw of a Devil and the brow of a God." --Algernon Swinburne
Fu Manchu possessed "the brow of a Shakespeare and the face of Satan". -- Sax Rohmer's description of the Devil Doctor from numerous Fu Manchu novels

Knowing that Rohmer was not only a Burton fan, but also an aficionado of poetry, what are the odds that he didn't read or hear about that quote from Swinburne?

Consider the numerous points of similarity between RFB and the Devil Doctor: Polymaths, world-travelers, intriguers/spies, 'outsiders' within their native cultures, men of honor. Of course, there are numerous differences which I hope I don't have to itemize.

As with Doyle's Professor Challenger and Lord Roxton, I think that Rohmer 'split' Burton between the two characters of Fu Manchu and Lionel Barton. In many ways they are, as Rene Girard would call them, 'mimetic twins'; highly similar figures on either side of a cultural divide.

It just occurred to me that Stoker, Dunsany and Rohmer were all Anglo-Irish to one extent or another—as was Burton. Not sure what to make of that, but there it is.

Richard’s influence upon the Edwardians was strong. The strength of his legacy abated little—if at all—during the Interwar Period, when the pulp writers raised upon the exploits of Burton and the tales of Doyle and Rohmer began to tell their own stories. We’ll look at all of that in Part Four.

Previous installments in this series:

The Literary Afterlife and Legacy of Richard F. Burton (Part One)

The Literary Afterlife and Legacy of Richard F. Burton (Part Two)