The Commanding Officer’s Wife screamed and with the slightest bit of a push sent Mexican Jake face first into the floor. This brought Lt. Dana and the Commandant rushing into the room and simultaneously triggered a wild response from Mrs. Dana, who after seeing her escort in the horizontal position, immediately attacked Abbie Goodwin.
The two officers and I were trying to subdue Mrs. Dana, but this was not an easy task. She had Mrs. Goodwin’s hair wrapped around one hand and the other in the Commanding Officer’s Wife’s mouth. Abbie Goodwin bit down, and in response Mrs. Dana reared back and attempted to kick her adversary into letting go. She missed, and instead delivered a stunning blow to the head of Mexican Jake who had by this time crawled up to the Commandant’s wife’s ankle, upon which he was attempting to land a slobbering kiss.
A sergeant at arms arrived and the four of us were able to wrestle Mrs. Dana to the ground and hold her until she calmed down. Mexican Jake was allowed to leave on his own, which he did after some crawling about on hands and knees before being able to stand. He was still very drunk and somewhat disoriented from the kick. He kept saying “Please, Senora, you are too beautiful.” Poor Mrs. Dana; like the fly she has quit camphor to settle on compost.
34 I am dying of thirst at the fountain’s brim. —Ed.
35 Latin technical terms for types of male and female reciprocating sexual motion. —Ed.
36 Sweet biscuits. —Ed.
XIX
ECCE HOMO: BURTON FINDS HIMSELF IN OTHERS AND DISSECTS MANKIND
September 27th, 1860
Salt Lake City
Utah Territory
The Camp Floyd reception spectacle was my parting memory of Mrs. Dana and the final scurrility of her former image. Her husband actually suffered a mild apoplectic stroke on account of the event, and as twisted fate would have it, ended up trapped in the camp’s infirmary in a bed next to Mexican Jake. The crusty caballero had been collected from the dirt only a few feet from the Goodwin’s front door and was being treated for alcohol poisoning and a concussion. For obvious reasons, the attending physician has forbidden any further conversation between the two for fear of worsening the lieutenant’s condition. No one can say what has become of his wife. It is impossible not to sigh when contemplating the sin and sorrow of it all, this tale of the Dana’s fate, this preposterous frontier drama and its quizzically melancholy ending.
And from that other American metaphor, Gaston La Mash, comes an equally fitting fare-thee-well. On my way to the stables where a new coach awaited, I paused in front of a saloon on Whisky Street after recognizing my companion’s voice booming out from inside. He had cornered an audience and was in mid-delivery of a high volume rendition of the Flathead squaw story. I lit a cigar and leaned against the wall near an open window to get a last dose.
“So I give her back to that old chief, and don’t you know a minute later her brother comes a whoopin’ at me with a scalpin’ knife over his head. Wal, I figured that was a sure sign they wanted me to keep her, but I’ll be chewed-up before any man tries to make me do what I don’t want to do. No sir! No siree Bob! Why that’s all I live for, someone tellin’ me what to do an’ tryin’ to take away my freedoms. I’ll burst any man that tries. I’m the first cousin to Beelzebub in the American land of milk and honey, you can believe that!”
Yes, Mr. La Mash, this is indeed America, and it is a dizzying thought to imagine what will come from all those freedoms and the staunch efforts to protect them. Any man in this sweaty world who would suggest there is no excitement or merit in all this is an unblushing liar, but woe to the society that invites chaos through the headstrong pursuit of noble goals.
Enter now the barristers, bureaucrats and politicians, the missionaries, the money-mad, and other shielded sinners. It is a blood-chilling thing to contemplate just how many profligates this vast land could hold or where their varying interests may take it. In sum, it is a sad fact that Freedom also means one is free to be an insufferable and unmitigated bloody ass, and there is a fear that this wonderful and hearty land will not be conquered but rather will be ruined from within.
This journey has left me thinking about Man’s natural genius for ruining things. Even loved and cherished things seem destined to be ripped apart, and often by those who love and cherish them. One need only recall the reburial of John Milton. A hundred years or so after the great bard passed, the population decided to dig him up and replant him under a proper memorial. When the adoring citizens got down into the grave they found three caskets, and the one on top was made of lead and sealed quite tightly. Everyone assumed that this was the one that held Milton, but they wanted to make sure, so tools were brought to peel back the cover of the coffin. Once it was hacked they indeed found John Milton himself in a great state of preservation.
So far so good, I suppose; but then it got nasty.
The Milton-infatuated populace who did this to preserve the man’s honour went mad and began ransacking and insulting the coffin, grabbing in for his hair, bits of clothing and bone relics. And the woman who inherited the backyard that once was his graveyard then began charging admission so people could pay to see what was left—and that wasn’t much after those who loved him all but dismantled him.
What is this about the human mania to ruin what we profess to love? Matrimony and money may be the first and greatest examples, but added to the sorry list may be friendships and nations, the animals that serve us, and the soil, water, and air that sustain us. We need not pretend that any place on earth is immune or that one society is less guilty than any other if given the opportunity; but if advancement equates proportionally to ruination, then we need only look to mighty and successful London, where one’s clothes are covered and ruined with soot around the clock, where the air is unbreathable, the Thames an open sewer, and a place where otherwise healthy people come to die.
What to make of it all? This journey, which originated in a mud hut in Zanzibar and was forged by an enigmatic and even spiritual hunt for humanity, has cumulated in a realization that all of humanity is one and that the beast is a disease of the species and not particular to any people. Likewise the beauty that is in all men as well coexists somehow with the brute under the same skin.
As my laibon instructed, this trip was about being rather than doing. I can see that now. And I can see that witnessing, thinking, and the wisdom in setting my observations to page in a privy journal rather than in a formal travel book have all paid their dividends. Applied and careful thought are not matters for any kind of substitution (although there is much action in the world absent this process), and my private thoughts here have freed me from writing a book which would either be edited heavily by the censors or left unpublished—and if brought into print, destined for the indignity of being vetted by stodgy propriety.
The laibon predicted the freedom and security of writing the truth when he said that no king or earthly gods could suppress it. I celebrate being able to write without government, religious censor, or timid publisher destroying or hiding my words this time. And I cannot forget the happy street children of Zanzibar who sang out for “ink and paper” and the wealth they bring. Could they have been participants in this curious journey as well?
Having the pen replace the sword forced a mindfulness of the cadence of life and a chance to step back and have a deeper look into the performers on this stage—their actions, atrocities and affections, the way they interact with each other, with opportunity and adversity, and even their articulation with earth itself. At the moment I think this may be called the religion of existence.
Laibon Mbatiany directed me here to investigate Man, and in the process he hoped that I would find myself. He picked the right place, for America offered much in terms of diversity, exposed me to both the raw and the cooked, and along the way I think I did find myself. In the end I found myself in everyone else.
I confess to being John Hanning Speke—sober, stilted and solitary—and John Steinhaeuser—binged, benevolent and befr
iended. I am Col. Atkins Hamerton ground-down by the tropics and I am the tropics itself that feeds on life as greedily as a thirsty man drinks water. I am a sporting event and election with carefully constructed rules and formalities that fall before human chaos.
As the captain of a paddle boat on the Mississippi I am both the sternly religious Ezekiel Bibbs and the profligate Lester Beach. I am the resentful slave Kwomo and the man he became who delighted in having a slave of his own. In the same person I am the innocent and likable Pony Express rider and the Hunkpapa who couldn’t help but murder him.
I am both the troopers and the Mormons, the hopeful settlers in the wagons and the Indians that had to end their dreams. I am the dead warrior Looking Bird without his necklace for the death journey, and I am the little boy who stole it from him. I am every Indian who ever hated another Indian, and I am Johnny Cotton and his son, and at the same time every poor soul in their wagon train. And I am Mrs. Dana.
Who I am, and who we all are, is not really a mystery to me at this point, thanks to my laibon. We are the animals who have coined the terms, “gentle as a lamb” and “the lamb of God” to capture in our minds the image of innocence, serenity, and peace; and the same animals that turn around and kill, butcher, and eat the very symbol of tranquility that we have created. Curious stuff. Yet we are also creatures of tears and unique compassion that is found nowhere else in the animal kingdom, and that makes it all even more curious.
What I learned about a few other things on this directed journey now captures my attention. This business with Laibon Mbatiany and the Marie Laveaus fascinates. Be it East African Shamanism or hoodoo in Louisiana Territory, I have seen with my own eyes that there is something to it that goes well beyond the pomp and ceremony that is a component of all yawning and conventional religions. I am not a proponent of the efficacy of prayer, but is not what I have witnessed a form of it?
There is an undercurrent to our perceived existence that reason and science cannot measure, a way of working that manifests itself in certain men and women who have found an ability to bring the extraordinary into the conventional. Magic—I want to know it and the world needs to want it.
Surely it is not the exclusive property of dark-skinned people, but so far it seems the white man hasn’t found time to access the supernatural enchantments. Through their industry and genius they have given mankind much to make life easier, safer, healthier, better informed, better fed, and perhaps even a bit more beautiful; but I think they best relax and hope to use their talents to make their world a more intriguing and electrifying place.
I also wish to have a few words about Mr. Gaston LaMash. After a full exposure, I found his extroverted personality refreshing and perfectly emblematic of America. There is something to say for a man without pretensions, for in such cases one knows who one is dealing with and does not have to be troubled looking behind him all the time to try and find the other half. To be forthright is to compensate for much else, and creation would be a better place with more plainspoken people, as well as nations.
Finally there is Rifle Shot, the stoic and storied introspective warrior, who knows enough of two worlds to find the truth in both. The man who “can shave the eyelashes off a wolf as far as a shootin’ iron can carry a ball and put an arrow through a keyhole a hundred yards away” is also the man whose words echo over and over again in my head. It is this giant of a man who said, “But is it not the same in the land of the white man? Has it ever been any other way?” and “Mormons do not want peace any more than I do, or you, or any of the decent people you speak of. We all want what we want, and want to take what we need. Peace is just a word that sometime man puts in between. Is the hunter more peaceful than the rabbit he takes for his fire? Does the deer ask the wolf for peace? It is not the way of things. The only real peace is death, when it is all finished, the way it must be.”
His introduction to the term “ironic” and in his struggle to adapt it to a universal and unsolvable domestic situation only adds to his brilliance. Although a man with potentials of vast personal panorama, he was always controlled and stayed within his good self. This is not an easy thing, and I have never met a man like him.
Mr. Frank Baker37
Athenaeum Club
London
Dear Baker:
This is strictly entre nous. I can’t tell you how troubled I am over our growing misanthropic perception of the other fellow. It is nothing short of scandalous.
This realization of the human condition must be the saddest of all sad stories. Perhaps we should lay blame at the feet of the Christian God, for it is He who insists that all men are fallen before birth. Perhaps we should ask Him if simple baptism can really extinguish the curse of this original sin or how to deliver into the world a decent man with a lasting fair chance for civility. From all that I’ve seen—and I’m certain you agree—the response would be a disappointed and unequivocal blank stare.
While we have His attention, we might also inquire why pagandom owns all the handsome dressing, the greatest music and verse, and why the devil is in possession of the best sex. But to what end? We already know the answer. Blemished man is a hunter after life, love, and want of all else that suits him. This is the war we see both between nations and each other. Our religions are manufactured for charitable purposes and designed to help check the madness, but in the end they only serve to accelerate it. In fact, the more I study religion, the more I am convinced that man never really worshiped anything but himself.
At the very least, we may take sad succor in the knowledge that the glove which fits the disciples of Christ is also worn by the children of Jehovah, Buddah, Shiva, and Allah. We cannot seem to help but get in each other’s way, and here is where the cloven foot shows itself. To lie about this would be a contemptible thing, Frank, but what to do about it?
This is our moral dilemma, and it is that for which no man has an answer.
We are the creator, the destroyer, the hero, and coward; at once both the prince and the pissant. Through the whirling complexities of circumstance we stand luckless as Basus, the Israelite who was given the much celebrated “Three Wishes.”
The man’s loving bride convinced him to use the first wish to make her more beautiful. When this was granted, her contumacious behaviour so infuriated her mate that he used the second wish to have her transformed to a bitch. With both of them thoroughly dissatisfied with the results of the first two wishes, the third was used to return her to the original state.
Mankind’s first wish directs him towards the attainment of what seems right, but once this is granted we offend, we infuriate, we murder. The second wish is a war against the results of the first, and if we survive the struggle—the third wish fulfilled—we are back to where we started and unlucky enough to begin the process all over again.
I’ll be the one to tell you, Frank, This is what makes the world go around. This is why the survivor’s tale is the only and imperfect measure of righteousness. It really isn’t fair but n‘importe, true life is sung in a voice Divinely sweet and a voice no less Divinely sad.
I am sir, as always,
You
Richard F. Burton
37 Frank Baker was one of Richard Burton’s favorite pen names. This was the last readable entry in the journal and was clearly a letter to himself. —Ed.
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