In this loft Lady Burton spent many hours examining her husband's papers, and in the autumn of 1902 she commenced in earnest to write his life—a work that occupied her about eight months. That she was absolutely unfitted for the task must be clear to all who have any knowledge of Burton. Indeed, she was quite incapable of doing literary work of any kind properly. The spirit in which she wrote may be gauged both from the book itself, with its frequent offences against good taste, and the following citation from a letter to a friend: "I do not know," she said, "if I can harden my heart against the curs, but I can put out my tongue and point my pen and play pussy cat about their eyes and ears." By "curs" she means those who rated her for burning her husband's manuscripts, but in justice to her, let it be borne in mind that she had received some letters that were quite unworthy of the writers.
The great questions was, Would she live to complete her task? Owing to an incurable complaint she could give only a limited portion of her time to the work, and there were whole days in which no progress was made. Every page bears evidences of hurry. We have already told the story of the three appearances of Sir Richard just before the burning of The Scented Garden MS. Lady Burton persistently declared that after the third appearance her husband came again and never left her until she had finished her work. "He was constantly with me," she said to Mr. Murray, "appearing exactly as in life, and he advised and comforted me. He helped me most materially towards the compilation of his own biography, and gave me references to books and manuscripts so that the biography came comparatively easy to my hand. He gave me absolutely the position of the book in the shelf and the page and reference itself which I required."
A letter 683 of one of Burton's friends contains the following comments on the work. "I plainly see that the objects of writing the Life were two-fold. First to prove Sir Richard a Roman Catholic, and thus fit him to be buried with her, and secondly to whitewash his escapades and insubordination. As to the first, I know he despised 684 the Roman Catholic religion; and if any very deep sense of religious feeling existed at all, it was of the Mohammedan rather than anything else; but his religion was not very apparent, though he was fundamentally an honest and conscientious man, and I think he had but one enemy—himself. He was a very great man; very like a magnificent machine one part of which had gone wrong—and that was his hot temper."
Lady Burton's book was finished at Mortlake on 24th March 1893, and appeared in the autumn of that year. She then commenced the issue of the Memorial Edition of her husband's works. The Pilgrimage to Al Medinah and Meccah (2 vols.), The Mission to Gelele (2 vols.), and Vikram and the Vampire appeared in 1893, First Footsteps in East Africa in 1894. The venture, however, proved a failure, so no more volumes were issued. She published her husband's Pentameron in 1893, and the Catullus in 1894.
Writing 11th July 1893 to Mrs. E. J. Burton just before a visit to that lady, Lady Burton says—and it must be borne in mind that her complaint often made her feel very ill—"Send me a line to tell me what is the nearest Roman Catholic Church to you, as I must drive there first to make all arrangements for Sunday morning to get an early confession, communion and mass (after which I am at liberty for the rest of the day) because, as you know, I have to fast from midnight till I come back, and I feel bad for want of a cup of tea. ...The Life is out to-day."
The reception accorded to her work by the Press, who, out of regard to Sir Richard's memory, spoke of it with the utmost kindness, gave Lady Burton many happy hours. "It is a great pleasure to me," she says, "to know how kind people are about my book, and how beautifully they speak of darling Richard." 685
Most of Lady Burton's remaining letters are full of gratitude to God, tender and Christian sentiment, faulty English and bad spelling. 686 "I did see The Times," she says, "and was awfully glad of it. Kinder still is The Sunday Sun, the 1st, the 8th and the 15th of October, five columns each, which say that I have completely lifted any cloud away from his memory, and that his future fame will shine like a beacon in all ages. Thank God!" St. George Burton was wicked enough to twit her for her spelling, and to say that he found out as many as seventeen words incorrectly spelt in one letter. But she deftly excused herself by saying that she used archaic forms. "Never mind St. George," she writes good-humouredly, to Mrs. E. G. Burton, "I like old spelling." She did not excuse her slang by calling it old, or refer her friends to Chaucer for "awfully glad."
The greatest pleasure of her life was now, as she oddly expresses it, to "dress the mausoleum" on "darling Dick's anniversary." She says (21st October 1893 to Mrs. E. J. Burton), 687 "I received your dear flowers, and the mausoleum was quite lovely, a mass of lights and flowers sent by relations and affectionate friends. Yours stood in front of the altar." Then follows a delicious and very characteristic sample of Lady Burton's English: "We had mass and communion," she says, "and crowds of friends came down to see the mausoleum and two photographers."
She was glad to visit and decorate the Mortlake tomb certainly, but the pleasure was a very melancholy one, and she could but say, borrowing a thought from The Arabian Nights:
"O tomb, O tomb, thou art neither earth nor heaven unto me." 688
When Lady Stisted died (27th December 1893), Lady Burton felt the blow keenly, and she wrote very feelingly on the subject, "Yes," she says, in a letter to Mrs. E. J. Burton, "I was very shocked at poor Maria's death, and more so because I wish nothing had come between us." "Poor Maria," she wrote to St. George Burton, "You would be surprised to know, and I am surprised myself, how much I feel it." In a letter to Madame de Gutmansthal-Benvenuti (10th January 1894), Lady Burton refers to the Burton tableau to Madame Tussaud's. She says, "They have now put Richard in the Meccan dress he wore in the desert. They have given him a large space with sand, water, palms; and three camels, and a domed skylight, painted yellow, throws a lurid light on the scene. It is quite life-like. I gave them the real clothes and the real weapons, and dressed him myself."
"I am so glad," she writes to Miss Stisted, 689 "you went to Tussaud's, and that you admired Dick and his group. I am not quite content with the pose. The figure looks all right when it stands up properly, but I have always had a trouble with Tussaud about a certain stoop which he declares is artistic, and which I say was not natural to him."
Lady Burton now authorised the publication of what is called the Library Edition of The Arabian Nights. According to the Editorial Note, while in Lady Burton's Edition no fewer than 215 pages of the original are wanting 690 in this edition the excisions amount only to about 40 pages. The Editor goes on: "These few omissions are rendered necessary by the pledge which Sir Richard gave to his subscribers that no cheaper edition of the entire work should be issued; but in all other respects the original text has been reproduced with scrupulous fidelity."
By this time Lady Burton had lost two of her Trieste friends, namely Lisa, the baroness-maid who died in 1891, and Mrs. Victoria Maylor, Burton's amanuensis, who died in 1894.
Lady Burton spent the year 1894 and part of 1895 at Baker Street and Mortlake, making occasional visits to friends. As at Trieste, she surrounded herself with a crowd of servants and other idle people whom, in her good nature, she systematically pampered, and who in their turn did their best to make her life unendurable. She could, however, easily afford these luxuries, for thanks to the large sums received for her Life of Sir Richard, the Library Edition, &c., she was now in affluent circumstances. She won to herself and certainly deserved the character of "a dear old lady." In politics she was a "progressive Conservative," though what that meant neither she nor those about her had any clear notion. She dearly loved children—at a safe distance—and gave treats, by proxy, to all the Catholic schools in the neighbourhood. She took an active interest in various charities, became an anti-vivisectionist, and used very humanely to beat people about the head with her umbrella, if she caught them ill-treating animals. If they remonstrated, she used to retort, "Yes, and how do you like It?" "When she wanted a cab," says Mr. W. H. Wilkins, "she invariably inspected the horse carefully first, to see if it looked well fed and cared for; if not, she discharged the cab and got another; and she would always impress upon the driver that he must not beat his horse under any consideration." On one occasion she sadly forgot herself. She and her sister, Mrs. FitzGerald, had hired a cab at Charing Cross Station and were in a great hurry to get home. Of course, as usual, she impressed upon the cabman that he was not to beat his horse. "The horse, which was a wretched old screw, refused, in consequence, to go at more than a walking pace," and Lady Burton, who was fuming with impatience, at last so far forgot herself as to put her head out of the window and cry to the driver, "Why don't you beat him? Why don't you make him go?" 691 She occasionally met her husband's friends, Mr. and Mrs. Arbuthnot and Mr. Payne. One day at some dinner it transpired in the course of conversation that Mr. Payne had all his life been an habitual sufferer from insomnia.
"I can tell you how to cure that," said Lady Burton.
"How?" said Mr. Payne. "Say your prayers," said she.
After an attack of influenza Lady Burton hired a cottage—Holywell Lodge—at Eastbourne 692 where she stayed from September to March 1896, busying herself composing her autobiography. 693 Two letters which she wrote to Miss Stisted from Holywell Lodge are of interest. Both are signed "Your loving Zoo." The first contains kindly references to Mr. and Mrs. Arbuthnot, who had been visiting her, and to the widow of Professor Huxley 694 who was staying at Eastbourne; and the second, which is amusing enough, records her experiences among some very uncongenial people at Boscombe. Wherever she went, Lady Burton, as we have seen, was always thrusting her opinions, welcome or not, upon other persons; but at Boscombe the tables were turned, and she experienced the same annoyance that she herself had so often excited in others.
"I went," she says, "to a little boarding-house called.... The house was as comfortable as it could be, the food plain, but eatable, but the common table was always chock full of Plymouth Brethren and tract-giving old maids, and we got very tired of it."
Then follows an account of her establishment at Eastbourne. "It consists," she says, "of my secretary (Miss Plowman) and nurse, and we have our meals together, and drive out together whenever I am able. Then my servants are a maid, house-parlour-maid, a housemaid and a cook (my Baker Street lot). The cottage [at Mortlake] is in charge of a policeman, and Baker Street a caretaker. My friend left three servants in the house, so we are ten altogether, and I have already sent one of mine back, as they have too much to eat, too little to do, and get quarrelsome and disagreeable." Thus it was the same old story, for Lady Burton, though she had the knack of living, was quite incapable of learning, or at any rate of profiting by experience.
The letter concludes sadly, "As to myself, I am so thin and weak that I cannot help thinking there must be atrophy, and in any case my own idea is that I may be able to last till March."
Lady Burton from that time gradually grew weaker; but death, which "to prepared appetites is nectar," had for her no terrors. To her it meant release from pain and suffering, ultimate reception into the presence of an all-merciful God, re-union with her beloved husband. She did, however, last, as she had anticipated, till March. Early in that month she returned to Baker Street, where she died rather suddenly on Sunday the 22nd.
By her will dated, 28th December 1895, she left some £12,000 to her sister, Mrs. FitzGerald, 695 and the following persons also benefitted: her sister, Mrs. Van Zeller, £500; her secretary, Miss Plowman £25; Khamoor £50; her nephew Gerald Arthur Arundell, the cottage at Mortlake; the Orphanage at Trieste, £105. She directed that after her heart had been pierced with a needle her body was to be embalmed in order that it might be kept above ground by the side of her husband. She stated that she had bought a vault close to the tent, and that two places were to be reserved in it in order that if a revolution should occur in England, and there should be fear of the desecration of the dead, the coffins of her husband and herself might be lowered into it. She provided for 3,000 masses to be said for her at once at Paris, and left an annuity to pay for a daily mass to be said there perpetually. The attendance of priests at her funeral was to be "as large as possible."
Lady Burton was buried on Friday March 27th, the service taking place in the Catholic church at Mortlake where five years previous she had knelt beside the coffin of her husband; and a large number of mourners was present. After mass her remains were carried to the Arab Tent, and so she obtained her wish, namely, that in death she and her husband might rest in the same tomb.
As might have been expected, Lady Burton's Life of her husband gave umbrage to the Stisted family—and principally for two reasons; first its attempt to throw a flood of Catholic colour on Sir Richard, and secondly because it contained statements which they held to be incorrect. So after Lady Burton's death, Miss Stisted wrote and published a small work entitled The True Life of Sir Richard Burton. It is written with some acerbity, for Lady Burton as a Catholic was not more militant than Miss Stisted as a Protestant. It throws additional and welcome light on Sir Richard's early days, but as we have elsewhere remarked, the principal charge that it made against Lady Burton, namely that she was the main cause of her husband's downfall at Damascus, is unsupported by sufficient evidence.
That there should be a counterblast to The True Life was inevitable, and it came in the shape of The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton, which consists of Lady Burton's unfinished autobiography and a continuation by Mr. W. H. Wilkins. The work is a valuable addition to Burton lore, but Mr. Wilkins's friendship for Lady Burton led him to place her on a far higher pedestal than we have been able to give her. Perhaps it was natural that in dealing with the True Life he should have betrayed some heat. However, death has now visited Miss Stisted 696 as well as Lady Burton, and the commotion made by the falling of the stone into the pool is at this distance represented only by the faintest of circles. In 1898, Mr. Wilkins published, with an acceptable preface, three of Burton's unfinished works in one volume, with the title of The Jew, the Gypsy, and El Islam, and in 1901 he placed the public under further obligation to him by editing and issuing Burton's Wanderings in Three Continents.
Most of Burton's friends have followed him to the tomb. Edward Rehatsek died at a ripe age at Worli on 11th December 1891, and was cremated in Hindu fashion. At the time of his death he was working at the translation of the third part of The Rauzat-us-Safa. 697 In his last letter to Mr. Arbuthnot, after referring to his declining health, he finished by saying, "Hope, however, never dies; and as work occupies the mind, and keeps off despair, I am determined to translate for you, though slowly, the third part of the Rauzat-us-Safa, so as to make the history of the Khalifahs complete." 698
Mr. Arbuthnot continued to take interest in Oriental matters and wrote prefaces for several translations by Rehatsek and Dr. Steingass, including the First Part of Rehatsek's Rauzat-us-Safa (1891) and Steingass's Assemblies of Al Haririr (1898). His Arabic Authors appeared in 1890, his Mysteries of Chronology in 1900. He died in May 1901, and was buried at Shamley Green, Guildford. He left money for the Oriental Translation Fund, of which, it will be remembered, he was the founder, and his memory will always be honoured by Orientalists. A memorial of him—the Arbuthnot Institute—was opened at Shamley Green on 31st May 1905.
Mr. Ashbee died in 1900, Dr. F. J. Steingass in January, 1903.
After Burton's death, Mr. Letchford went to Bohemia as the guest of the Prince of Thurn and Taxis. At Vienna his next resort, he painted many beautiful pictures, one of the best being founded on Edgar Allen Poe's poem, "Silence." Finally he went to Naples, where he produced the series of pictures that has given him immortality—the illustrations to The Arabian Nights. Then followed days of darkness and trouble, but he was always courageous. "He felt that what he had striven for so long was now within his reach; he had the presentiment that he was about to take those flights of art which are permitted to very few." His portrait of the son of Sir William Wollcock is a work of genius.
In July 1905, hearing that Mr. Letchford was ill, I wrote to his sister, Daisy, 699 who lived with him. The letter was received, and Mr. Letchford intended replying to it himself. "He was only waiting to feel a little stronger," wrote Miss Letchford, "he never thought the end was near. On Monday morning of the 24th of July he still kept making wonderful plans for the future. He had the room in which he spent his last hours crowded with flowers, and as he felt his powers failing him he recited Swinburne's beautiful poem, 'The Garden of Proserpine':
"Suddenly he lost consciousness, and he awoke from his comatose state only to repeat the identical words which were Sir Richard Burton's last—'I am dying—I am dead.' His beautiful soul had left this world for ever, for it was indeed a beautiful soul." 700
Major Edward Burton, Sir Richard's brother, died 31st October 1895—after his terrible silence of nearly forty years. He was never married. Miss Stisted died in 1904. So of Burton's parents there are now no descendants. Within fifteen years of his death, the family was extinct.
Of the friends and intimate acquaintances of Burton who still survive we must first mention Mr. A. C. Swinburne, Mr. Watts-Dunton and Mr. John Payne. Mr. Swinburne has, year after year, it is scarcely necessary to say, added to his fame, and all Englishmen are proud of his genius. The Definitive Edition of his works has delighted all his admirers; and just as we are going to press everyone is reading with intense interest his early novel Love's Cross Currents. Mr. Watts-Dunton is in excellent health, and his pen is as vigorous as ever. He enjoys the proud position of being our greatest living literary critic.
Mr. Payne, who is still hard at work, ahs published since Burton's death translations of The Novels of Matteo Bandello (six vols. 1890), the Quatrains of Omar Kheyyam (1898), and—Atlantean task—the Poems of Hafiz (3 vols. 1901). His Collected Poems (1862-1902) in two handsome volumes, appeared in 1902; and he has since issued Vigil and Vision (1903), Songs of Consolation, and Hamid the Luckless (1904). In the last he returns to his old love, The Arabian Nights, most of the poems being founded on tales in that work.
Mr. W. F. Kirby, Dr. Grenfell Baker, Mrs. E. J. Burton, Major St. George Burton, Mr. Frederick Burton, Mr. P. P. Cautley, Mr. A. G. Ellis, and Professor Blumhardt are also living. His excellency Yacoub Artin Pasha is still Minister of Instruction at Cairo; Mr. Tedder is still at the Athenaeum.
Our task is ended. Sir Richard Burton was inadequately regarded in his lifetime, and even now no suitable memorial of him exists in the capital of the Empire, which is so deeply indebted to him. Let us hope that this omission will soon be rectified. His aura, however, still haunts the saloons of his beloved Athenaeum, and there he may be seen any day, by those who have eyes latched 701 over, busily writing at the round table in the library—white suit, shabby beaver, angel forehead, demon jaw, facial scar, and all. He is as much an integral part of the building as the helmeted Minerva on the portico; and when tardy England erects a statue to him it ought to select a site in the immediate neighbourhood of his most cherished haunt.
Our task, we repeat, is ended. No revolution, so far as we are aware, has distracted modern England, and Sir Richard and Lady Burton still sleep in sepulchral pomp in their marmorean Arab Tent at Mortlake. More than fifteen years have now elapsed since, to employ a citation from The Arabian Nights, there came between them "the Destroyer of Delights and the Sunderer of Companies and glory be to Him who changeth not, neither ceaseth, and in whom all things have their term." 702