[1] For Robertson Smith, the standard biography remains The Life of William Robertson Smith by John Sutherland Black and George Chrystal (A & C Black 1912). There are numerous Burton biographies, of which the delightfully hagiographic Life by Lady Isabel Burton (Chapman & Hall 1893) offers the reader a particularly interesting psychological insight into a curious yet lasting marital relationship.

[2] The transliteration of Arabic words and names into English is extremely inconsistent and no attempt at uniformity has been made.

[3] The manuscript letters (ADD MSS 7476, D109-113) are preserved in Cambridge University Library and I am indebted to the University for permission to quote the excerpts given here.

[4] The incident is described by his wife Isabel (Life ii, pp.177f., and again on p.179): “On the 2^nd or 3^rd of May, as he was returning from dining rather late in Alexandria, he was attacked by nine men, and hit over the head from behind with some sharp instrument. He fell to the ground, and on coming to, staggered to the hotel, and was all covered with blood. . . It was supposed to be foul play with a motive, as the only thing they stole was his “divining rod” for gold . . . and his signet ring . . .”. She adds, very plausibly: “He kept it a profound secret in order that it should be no hindrance to his going back to work the mines in Midian”.

[5] Interestingly, Smith’s short, unsigned article, “Lamech”, prepared for a forthcoming volume of the Britannica, carries strong echoes of this. See vol. xiv (1882) p.238, where he writes: “The savage ‘sword song’ of Lamech is unique to the Bible, and breathes the true spirit of the desert. The remarkable translation which follows can only be Smith’s own: I slay a man for a wound/ A young man for a stroke/ For Cain’s vengeance is sevenfold/ But Lamech’s seventyfold and seven.

[6] An Open Letter to Principal Rainy: publ. David Douglas, Edinburgh,, 1880.

[7] Robert Rainy (1826-1906) was Principal of New College, Edinburgh, and effectively leader of the Free Church for more than two decades.

[8] Cf. B&C pp.343f. for a succinct account of these events.

[9] This was unpublished but is reported in minute detail in the Scotsman of October 28 and is well summarised in B&C pp.432ff.

[10] The offending articles were “Hebrew Language and Literature”, which appeared on June 8, 1880, in vol. xi of EB(9); and “Animal Worship and Animal Tribes among the Arabs and in the Old Testament”, published in the Journal of Philology (9.17) on June 1, 1880.

[11] Stick in, lad.

[12] This part of the letter is quoted in B&C p.406f. Burton should have known that Smith would be entirely familiar with Spinoza’s work.

[13] Burton’s translation of Os Lusiads, the epic poem on Vasco da Gama by the Portuguese poet Camoens,was first published in April, 1880, with his Life and Lusiads: a Commentary appearing a year later, both being published in London by Bernard Quaritch.

[14] The first volume of Burton’s ambitious yet commercially unsuccessful Book of the Sword was published by Chatto & Windus in 1884.

[15] Disappointingly, no trace seems to exist of this proposed joint account of the expedition to El Faiyum.

[16] The article first appeared in the Manchester Examiner (March 21-24, 1881) and is reprinted in Lady Burton’s Life (ii, pp.192ff.) where the whole of chapter vii is devoted to the topic. Burton wrote several letters to the Foreign Minister, Lord Granville, describing how the slave convoy was encountered when “On April 10. 1880, Professor W. Robertson Smith, of Aberdeen, and I, set out together with the view of visiting the Coptic convents in the Desert about the Natron Lakes to the north-west of Cairo.” (p.197). Curiously, the location of the Natron Lakes is quite incorrect – they lie south-west of Cairo; and the error is repeated in B&C, where the lakes are wrongly named the Nitrian Lakes.

[17] See Life (ii, p.189f.) where Isabel reproduces, under her own name, a letter on the therapeutic value of the Monfalcone baths, especially for “rheumatism, gout, neuralgia, lumbago, sciatica”. In 1881 it appeared in The Medical Times and Gazette.

[18] Evidently Isabel had her way on the matter. A.M. Penzer’s exhaustive Annotated Bibliography of Sir Richard Burton has no reference to any tract of that name.

[19] Cf. B&C pp. 409-11.

[20] Although numbered D113 and assigned no year date (as J S Black, Smith’s biographer, conscientiously applied to the others) this  letter, superscribed “Trieste, May 13”, clearly precedes both D111 and D112. The page numbers quoted by Burton refer, of course, to the original OTJC edition of 1881 and not to the revised edition of 1892.

[21] Burton always wrote either “Bedawin” or Badawin” and (plural) “Bedawi” or Badawi”, deploring the customary “frenchified” style.

[22] Cf. B&C pp.423ff.

[23] Cf. B&C p.419f. The Athenaeum and some other reviews had been mildly critical of the “ultra-Protestant” theology expressed in The Old Testament in the Jewish Church. Given the audience for the lectures on which the book was based, this Presbyterian bias is hardly surprising.

[24] The year [’82] has been inserted by Black, correctly in this instance.

[25] Cf. Life, vol. ii, pp.236ff., where Isabel describes the social whirl of  their brief stay in London during June and July, 1882.

[26] Few of the many contemporary accounts of  Britain’s entanglement in the Egyptian crisis of that period are at all trustworthy, apart perhaps from that of Dicey (1902). For widely contrasting examples, cf. the pro-Islamic stance of the poet Wilfred Scawen Blunt (1907) and the imperialistic attitude of Lord Cromer (1908). As Sir Evelyn Baring, Cromer had been Consul-General at Cairo at the time of the insurrection.

[27] The telegram seeking Burton’s assistance is dated October 27, 1882, and is quoted in full by Isabel (Life, vol. ii, p242). Burton’s own rambling and disconnected account is given in Appendix H of the same volume (pp.591-616). Typically, he suspected a conspiracy: “The whole conduct of the crime evidently suggests the far-seeing iniquity of civilised men; nor is it hard to divine whence came the suggestion”.

[28] Cf. B&C, pp.463-468 for a full account of Smith’s candidature and appointment.

[29] Cf. Edward Said’s perceptive comments on Burton (Orientalism, pp. 194-197).

[30] M. Hastings, Sir Richard Burton: a Biography (1978) p.225.