Colonel Frederick Burnaby was a popular writer for Punch, Vanity Fair and The Times. His larger
than life exploits took him across Europe, Asia, Africa and Russia. As a member
of the Royal Horse Guards he saw active duty in Egypt, was wounded at El Teb in
1884 and met an untimely end in vicious hand-to-hand fighting at the Battle of
Abu Klea.
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| Frederick Burnaby as a Captain in the Horse Guards by James Tissot |
Frederick Burnaby
(1842-85). Burnaby is almost totally forgotten, but in his day he was so famous
that the Queen reportedly fainted at news of his death. The Times gave
him a 5000-word obituary. Grown men broke down and wept in the street.
Burnaby’s
exploits make Rambo’s seem a little dull. Very few people have survived
frostbite, typhus, an exploding air balloon, and poisoning with arsenic. Few
have explored Uzbekistan (where it was so cold, his beard froze solid and
snapped off), led the household cavalry, stood for parliament, could speak
seven languages, crossed the channel by air, written a string of bestsellers,
commanded the Turkish army, and founded Vanity Fair; all before his
early death aged 42.
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| Colonel Frederick Burnaby - John Jenkins Designs. |
Immensely strong, with a 48-inch chest, Burnaby could break a horseshoe
apart with his bare hands. His party trick was to bend a poker double round a
dull dinner guest’s neck. Most famously, when fellow officers coaxed a pair of
ponies into his room for a jape, Burnaby simply picked them up, one under each
arm, and carried them downstairs “as if they had been cats.” Burnaby’s talents
only half explain his fame. Then, as now, media attention was just as
important.
In the grimy,
serious society of Dickens and Brunel’s the early Victorian world a combination
of societal change, a lust for adventure and Gladstone’s 1870 Education Act, brought
a dramatic change in Britain. Before 1870, public support of the Empire was low,
within a decade, all that had changed. Against a backdrop of Sherlock Holmes, the
waxed moustache, to the beat of the oompa band, a media revolution marched
forward.
Frederick Burnaby
was in the right place, at the right time.
Whilst Burnaby
did not suffer the indignity of the red carpet, commentary on his grooming
habits, choice of attire or women with which he kept company, he still had to
live up to intolerably high expectations and fame nonetheless took a terrible
toll. Victorians could not see Burnaby’s, so they continued to expect the
impossible. As he entered middle age, Burnaby increasingly struggled to keep up
with his dashing image.
Ultimately, the
weight of expectation became too much. Resolving not to die old, Burnaby set
out on one last mission. Ignoring orders, he joined the attempt to rescue
Gordon at Khartoum. On leaving, he wrote to his footman: “I am very unhappy
and I can’t imagine why you care about life. I do not mean to come back.” Sure
enough, during an ambush by Sudanese warriors, he pushed through his ranks and
rode out alone, determined to meet the public expectation of heroic death. So
ended the life of a Victorian icon.
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| The Death of Burnaby - John Jenkins Designs. |
His adventures can be
read about first hand in either of his books; A Ride to Kiva or On Horseback through Asia Minor.
