Lady Burton thus describes the reception of the news.  “On the 5th of February 1886, a very extraordinary thing happened[FN#503]—­ it was a telegram addressed ‘Sir Richard Burton!’ He tossed it over to me and said, ’Some fellow is playing me a practical joke, or else it is not for me.  I shall not open it, so you may as well ring the bell and give it back again.’  ‘Oh no,’ I said, ’I shall open it if you don’t.’”

It was from Lord Salisbury, conveying in the kindest terms that the queen had made him K.C.M.G. in reward for his services.  He looked very serious and quite uncomfortable, and said, “Oh, I shall not accept it."[FN#504] His wife told him, however, that it ought to be accepted because it was a certain sign that the Government intended to give him a better appointment.  So he took it as a handsel.

143.  Burton at 65.

Having accompanied Sir Richard Burton to the meridian of his fame, we may fitly pause a moment and ask what manner of a man he was at this moment.  Though sixty-five, and subject to gout, he was still strong and upright.  He had still the old duskened features, dark, piercing eyes, and penthouse brows, but the long and pendulous Chinaman moustaches had shrunk till they scarcely covered his mouth.  The “devil’s jaw” could boast only a small tuft of hair.  There were wrinkles in “the angel’s forehead.”  If meddlesome Time had also furrowed his cheeks, nevertheless the most conspicuous mark there was still the scar of that great gash received in the ding-dong fight at Berbera.  His hair, which should have been grizzled, he kept dark, Oriental fashion, with dye, and brushed forward.  Another curious habit was that of altering his appearance.  In the course of a few months he would have long hair, short hair, big moustache, small moustache, long beard, short beard, no beard.  Everyone marked his curious, feline laugh, “made between his teeth.”  The change in the world’s treatment of him, and in his circumstances, is noticeable to his countenance.  In photographs taken previous to 1886 his look betrays the man who feels that he has been treated neglectfully by an ungrateful world for which he had made enormous sacrifices.  Indeed, looking at the matter merely from a pecuniary standpoint, he must have spent at least (pounds)20,000 of his own money in his various explorations.  He is at once injured, rancorous, sullen, dangerous.  All these pictures exhibit a scowl.  In some the scowl is very pronounced, and in one he looks not unlike a professional prize-fighter.  They betray a mind jaundiced, but defiant.  A restless, fiery soul, his temper, never of the best, had grown daily more gnarled and perverse.  Woe betide the imprudent human who crossed him!  What chance had anybody against a man who had the command of all the forcible words in twenty-eight languages!  His peremptory voice everywhere ensured obedience.  To all save his dearest friends he was proud and haughty.  Then came the gold shower.  There