Albert Tootal
| Albert Tootal | |||||||||
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| Born | 1838 | ||||||||
| Died | 1893 | ||||||||
| Residence |
Rio de Janeiro, c/o 6 Gt St Helens [1867] Rio de Janeiro, c/o G.B. Mee, 9a Great St Helen's, EC [1875] | ||||||||
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Contents
Notes
Office Notes
House Notes
proposed 1867.11.05
in A31/2/4 Agents Messrs E. Johnstone & Co,, 6 Great St Helen's changed by hand to Agent G.B. Mee Esq 9a Great St Helen's [1869]
Notes From Elsewhere
President of Beethoven Club, Rio
A clerk in Rio de Janeiro who eventually rose to head the Brazilian branch of the firm John Bradshaw & Co. The Burtons met him when they were stationed at Santos in the late 1860s, and a number of important letters between both of the Burtons and Tootal survive—see Volume 2. Tootal was fluent in German and collaborated with Burton in producing the first translation into English of The Captivity of Hans Stade of Hesse (London: Hakluyt Society, 1874), a memoir of South American cannibalism which Tootal translated and Burton annotated—to which he added a long description of his own travels in the area associated with Hans Stade, amounting to a third of the whole book.
Tootal was a member of the Anthropological Society, which he joined in 1867 as a result of Burton’s encouragement. After Hans Stade, Burton urged him to keep on: “hundreds of business men (e.g. John Lubbock) find time for study, and change of occupation [to] an active mind like yours is the best of rest. Why should you not go in regularly for anthropology, get all the books from Wilson downwards and read them carefully making notes in the margin? A couple of hours a day (regular) soon makes a giant hole in a subject. Your translation of Hans Stade will be noticed vy favourably and your name will have made its first appearance in public. The anthropology of the Brazil requires a completely modern treatment and you have not a soul as rival.”[296] Tootal, who shared Isabel’s interests in music and was a founder of the ‘Club Beethoven’ in Rio, does not appear to have acted on this advice. He died in 1893 in Hampstead at age 55, ‘after a few hours illness’.[297]