Fifteen years have elapsed since the death of Sir Richard Burton and
twelve since the appearance of the biography of Lady Burton.
A deeply pathetic interest attaches itself to that book.
Lady Burton was stricken down with an incurable disease. Death with
its icy breath hung over her as her pen flew along the paper,
and the questions constantly on her lips were “Shall I live to
complete my task? Shall I live to tell the world how great and
noble a man my husband was, and to refute the calumnies that his
enemies have so industriously circulated?” She did complete it in
a sense, for the work duly appeared; but no one recognised more
clearly than herself its numerous shortcomings. Indeed, it is
little better than a huge scrap-book filled with newspaper cuttings
and citations from Sir Richard’s and other books, hurriedly selected
and even more hurriedly pieced together. It gives the impressions
of Lady Burton alone, for those of Sir Richard’s friends are
ignored–so we see Burton from only one point of view.

Sku: thelifeofsirrichardburton

My present task is one of considerable difficulty; but I have long
had a notion that some time or another it would fall to my lot to
perform it. I approach it, therefore, without apprehension, entirely
in consequence of having determined, to my own satisfaction, the
manner in which the biography of so singular and so richly endowed a
character as that of the late Lord Byron should be treated, but still
with no small degree of diffidence; for there is a wide difference
between determining a rule for one’s self, and producing, according
to that rule, a work which shall please the public.
It has happened, both with regard to the man and the poet, that from
the first time his name came before the public, there has been a
vehement and continual controversy concerning him; and the chief
difficulties of the task arise out of the heat with which the adverse
parties have maintained their respective opinions.

Sku: thelifeoflordbyron

This biography, though historically based, should not be considered factual.
It is not that there was no such man — indeed there was, and other accounts
indicate that Francis Marion is as deserving of praise as this account
would indicate — or moreso. It is not that the events described
did not take place — most of them, at least, did.
It is simply that Parson Weems (Mason Locke Weems, 1759-1825),
in an honest effort to teach a high patriotism, nobility, and morality,
sometimes embellished or exaggerated his stories to the point of falsehood,
as with his invention of the cherry tree anecdote in his Life of Washington.
It seems strange that such a devotion to moral teaching should use falsehoods
to reach its audience, but he apparently felt the means justified by the end.

Sku: weemslifeofgeneralfrancis

IN reading biographies I always skip the genealogical details. To
be born obscure and to die famous has been described as the acme of
human felicity. However that may be, whether fame has anything to do
with happiness or no, it is a man himself, and not his ancestors,
whose life deserves, if it does deserve, to be written. Such was
Froude’s own opinion, and it is the opinion of most sensible people.
Few, indeed, are the families which contain more than one remarkable
figure, and this is the rock upon which the hereditary principle
always in practice breaks. For human lineage is not subject to the
scientific tests which alone could give it solid value as positive
or negative evidence. There is nothing to show from what source,
other than the ultimate source of every good and perfect gift,
Froude derived his brilliant and splendid powers. He was a gentleman,
and he did not care to find or make for himself a pedigree. He knew
that the Froudes had been settled in Devonshire time out of mind as
yeomen with small estates, and that one of them, to whom his own
father always referred with contempt, had bought from the Heralds’
College what Gibbon calls the most useless of all coats, a coat
of arms.

Sku: thelifeoffroude

Grandfather had been sitting in his old arm-chair, all that pleasant
afternoon, while the children were pursuing their various sports, far
off or near at hand. Sometimes you would have said, “Grandfather is
asleep;” but still, even when his eyes were closed, his thoughts were
with the young people, playing among the flowers and shrubbery of the
garden.
He heard the voice of Laurence, who had taken possession of a heap of
decayed branches which the gardener had lopped from the fruit trees, and
was building a little hut for his cousin Clara and himself. He heard
Clara’s gladsome voice, too, as she weeded and watered the flower-bed
which had been given her for her own. He could have counted every
footstep that Charley took, as he trundled his wheelbarrow along the
gravel walk. And though Grandfather was old and gray-haired, yet his
heart leaped with joy whenever little Alice came fluttering, like a
butterfly, into the room. She had made each of the children her playmate
in turn, and now made Grandfather her playmate too, and thought him the
merriest of them all.

Sku: historyofbiography

Too near was I to the subject of this biography to write an impartial
introduction. When John Van Nest Talmage went, my last brother went.
Stunned until I staggered through the corridors of the hotel in London,
England, when the news came that John was dead. If I should say all that I
felt I would declare that since Paul the great apostle to the Gentiles, a
more faithful or consecrated man has not lifted his voice in the dark
places of heathenism. I said it while he was alive, and might as well say
it now that he is dead. “He was the hero of our family.” He did not go to
a far-off land to preach because people in America did not want to hear him
preach.

CONTENTS

I.       The Ancestral Home
II.      Call to China and Voyage Hence
III.     The City of the “Elegant Gate”
IV.    The Chiang-chiu Valley
V.     At the Foot of the Bamboos

Sku: fortyyearschina