I must now return, and finish my own Eastern career, more for the sake of showing the goodness of the Syrian heart, than for any other interest. I am bound, though late, to bear testimony to them.
After seeing Richard off, I had a cold eight hours' drive over the Lebanon, arrived at the khan at Shtora, found my horse in excellent condition, and slept for a few hours. Early in the morning I rode to see Miss Wilson, who kindly insisted on my remaining a day with her. Mr. Tyrwhitt-Drake, a kawwás, and servants and horses, met me here, and escorted me back to Bludán; but we lost our way in the mountains, and had an eleven hours' hard scramble. I was ill, tired, and harassed, and was thankful to find my friend Mrs. Rattray, who came over to keep me company. She was as much troubled as I was myself. I do not care who says to the contrary, but the world in general is a good place; for, although a few bad people make everything and everybody as miserable as they can—permitted, I infer, by an all-wise Providence, like mosquitoes, snakes, and scorpions, to prevent our becoming too attached to this life, and ceasing to work for the other, where they cannot enter—the general rule is good, and whoever is in trouble, as I have said, will always meet with kindness, comfort, and sympathy, from some quarter or other.
I had every right to expect, in a land where official position is everything, where love and respect accompanies power and Government influence, where women are of but small account, that I should be, morally speaking, trampled underfoot. I do not know how to describe with sufficient gratitude, affection, and pleasure the treatment I met with throughout Syria. The news spread like wild-fire. All the surrounding villages poured in. The house and the garden were always full of people—my poor, of course, but others too. Moslems flung themselves on the ground, shedding bitter tears, and tearing their beards, with a passionate grief for the man "whose life" they were reported to wish to take. The incessant demonstrations of sorrow were most harassing, the poor crying out, "Who will take care of us now?" The Moslems: "What have we done that your Díwan (Government) has done this thing to us? They sent us a man who made us so happy and prosperous, and protected us, and we were so thankful; and why now have they taken him from us? What have we done? Were we not good and thankful, and quiet? What can we do? Send some of us to go over to your land, and kneel at the feet of your Queen." This went on for days, and I received, from nearly all the country round, little deputations of Shaykhs, bearing letters of affection, or condolence, or grief, or praise. These sad days filled me with one gnawing thought—"How shall I tear the East out of my heart by the roots, and adapt myself to the bustling, struggling, everyday life of Europe?"
I broke up our establishment, packed up my husband's books, and sent them to England, settled all our affairs, had all that was to accompany me transferred to Damascus, and parted with the mountain servants. Two pets—the donkey that had lost a foot, and a dog that was too ill to recover—had to be shot and buried in the garden.
When all these sad preparations were finished, I bade adieu to the Anti-Lebanon with a heavy heart, and for the last time, choking with emotion, I rode down the mountain, and through the plain of Zebedáni, with a very large train of followers. I found it hard to leave the spot where I had hoped to leave my mortal coil.
I had a sorrowful ride into Damascus, and I met the Wali driving in State, with all his suite. He looked radiant, and saluted me. I did not return his salute, and he told his Staff that he was afraid I would shoot him. Somebody did that a little later on. He looked less radiant when the news of his own recall reached him a few days later, with a special telegram, that if he delayed more than twenty-four hours, he was to be sent in chains. He fought hard to stay, and I do not wonder, for he had a splendid position, and had bought lands and built a palace, which he never lived in; and he had to give up all his ill-gotten goods, lands, and palace, squeezed out of the peasantry.
At Damascus I had to go through the same sad scenes, upon a much larger scale than I had gone through at Bludán. All our kind friends, native and European, came to stay about me to the last.
I saw that Richard's few enemies were very anxious for me to go, and that all the rest were equally anxious to detain me as a kind of pledge for his return. I reflected that it would be right that I should coolly and quietly perform every single work I had to undertake—to sell everything, to pay all debts, and arrange every liability of any kind incurred by my husband, to pack and despatch to England our personal effects, to make innumerable friendly adieux, to make a provision or find a happy home for every single being—man or beast—that had been dependent upon us. This was rendered slow and difficult, as the Government left us pro tem., without a farthing. A servant generally gets a month's notice with wages and a character, but without any defence we were annihilated as if by dynamite. At last I made our case known to Uncle Gerard, who telegraphed to the Imperial Ottoman Bank, "to let his niece have any money that she wanted." Before I left I went and dressed our little chapel with all the pious things in my possession.
On the day of the sale I could not bear to stay near the house, so I went up to Arba'in, or "the Forty Martyrs," above our house, on Jebel Kaysún, about fifteen hundred feet high, and I gazed on my dear Salahíyyeh below, in its sea of green, and my pearl-like Damascus, and the desert sand, and watched the sunset on the mountains for the last time. I also met some Mogháribehs, who came up to pray there, and who prognosticated all sorts of good fortune to me.
In one sense I was glad, because I was a kind of hostage, giving the lie to his enemies. If there had been anything wrong, I should assuredly have paid the forfeit. I had no anxiety, for though I had magnificent offers—two from Moslems to shoot certain official enemies, as they passed in their carriage, from behind a rock, and another from a Jew to put some poison in their coffee—I slept in perfect security, amongst my Moslem and Kurdish friends, with my windows and doors open, in that Kurdish village, Salahíyyeh. Between us and the City was a quarter of an hour's ride through orchards that were wild and lawless—at least, in my time, no one would come there from sunset to sunrise, and timid people, not even in the day, without a guard. We had the house on a three years' lease, and my bedroom window and the Muezzin's Minaret were on a level, and almost joined, so that we could talk to each other. I used to join him in the "call to prayer," and he used to try not to laugh. I never missed a pin; I never had anything but blessings. All my work took me some time, but I resolved, whatever the wrench would cost me, I would set out the moment it was finished. My husband being gone, I had no business, no place there; I knew it would be better taste to leave.
We all began to perceive that the demonstrations were beginning to be of an excitable nature; the Moslems assembling in cliques at night, a hundred here and a hundred there, to discuss the strange matter. They were having prayers in the mosques for Richard, and making promises of each giving so much to the poor if they obtained their wish. They continually poured up to Salahíyyeh with tears and letters, begging him to return, and I felt that my presence and distress only excited them the more. I left more quickly because I was informed that my presence was exciting the people, who lived in hopes of his return, and his non-appearance was causing an irritability that might break out into open mutiny and cause another massacre. They were beginning with the usual signs of meeting in clusters in the streets, in discussing the affair in the mosques, in the bazaars, in the cafés, and putting up public prayers for his return.
As half the City wanted to accompany me on the road, and I was afraid that a demonstration might result, I thought I should be wise to slip away quietly. My two best friends, Abd el Kadir and the Hon. Jane Digby el Mezrab (Lady Ellenborough), were with me till the last, and, accompanied by Charley Drake and our two most faithful dragomans, who had never deserted me and put themselves and all they possessed at my disposal, Hanna Asar and Mr. Awadys, I left Damascus an hour before dawn, sending word to all my friends that parting was too painful to me.
"Linger not out the hours of separation's day
Till for sheer grief my soul to ruin fall a prey."[7]
I felt life's interest die out of me as I jogged along for weary miles, wishing mental good-byes to every stick and stone. I had been sickening for some days with fever. I had determined not to be ill at Damascus, and so detained. Pluck kept me up, but having braved the fatal 13th, and set out upon it, I was not destined to reach Beyrout.
When I reached that part of the Lebanon looking down upon the sea, near Khan el Karáyyeh, my fever had increased to such an extent that I became delirious, and had to be set down on the roadside, where I moaned with pain and could not proceed. Half an hour from the road was the village of my little Syrian maid. I was carried to her father's house, and lay there for ten days very ill, and was nursed by her and by my English maid. Many kind friends, English and native, came to see me from Beyrout and from the villages round about.
Mr. Tyrwhitt-Drake took our house, part of the furniture, the faithful Habíb, and the sais, my two horses, which I could not bear to sell into stranger hands, the dogs, and the Persian cat, "Tuss," who, however, ran away the day after I left, and has never been seen or heard of since. All the other servants and animals were well provided for in other ways. I was offered £15 for my white donkey, but I could not bear to sell him, so I left him also with Mr. Tyrwhitt-Drake, and he eventually found a good home with our successor, Mr. Green (afterwards Sir W. Kirby Green), and died. The bull-terriers also died natural deaths with Mr. Drake. It was a great relief to know that the former would never become a market donkey, nor the latter pariahs, nor be beaten, stoned, and ill-used. I was obliged to sell Richard's rahwán, and I sent it to the purchaser, the Vice-Consul who succeeded, from the village where I was ill. He came to pay me a visit. Although the poor horse had only been there one night, this gentleman told me he had no trouble in finding the house, for as soon as the rahwán got near the turn leading off the diligence road, he started off at full gallop, and never stopped till he reached the door, nor would he go anywhere else.
I went down to Beyrout as soon as I was well enough to move, and, assisted by Mr. Watkins of the Imperial Ottoman Bank, Mr. Drake, and Mr. Zal Zal, embarked in the Russian ship Ceres, the same that had brought me formerly from Alexandria to Beyrout. As we were about to steam out, an English Vice-Consul in the Levant gaily waved his hand to me, and said laughingly, "Good-bye, Mrs. Burton. I have been sixteen years in the service, and I know twenty scoundrels in it who are never molested; but I never saw a Consul 'recalled' except for something disgraceful, and certainly never for an Eastern Pasha. You'll find it's all right; they would hardly do such a thing to such a man as Burton." We were a fortnight at sea, detained by fogs and two collisions.
On reaching London I found Richard in one room in a very small hotel. He had made no defence—had treated the whole thing de haut en bas, so I applied myself for three months to putting his case clearly before the Foreign Office in his own name. I went to the Foreign Office, where I had thirteen friends, and knew most of its Masters, and I asked them to tell me frankly what was the reason of his recall.
Firstly, I was told it had been represented that he was in danger from the Mohammedans. That was too easily disproved by fifty-eight letters from every creed, nation, and tongue of the thirty-six in Syria, from Bedawi tribes, Druzes, Moslems of all categories, from the Ulemá, from Abd el Kadir; and, like proverbs, this homely correspondence sprung from the heart illustrated the native character better than books, and was a fair specimen of local Oriental scholarship. What the Press and the Public thought about it in various nations was the same—in forty-eight articles chiefly from the English Press and the Levant, and five leaders. All that England has ever done to him of neglect and slight has never touched him in any man's mind. He was the brightest gem in his country's crown, and his country did not deserve him. I went the rounds of my friends repeatedly in the Foreign Office, and insisted on having a reason for the recall.
When the Mohammedan question was disposed of, it was found that it was because "Burton had written a letter to convoke the Druzes to a political meeting in the Haurán." I asked if I might have a copy of that letter, and, having kept the original copy, I was able to put them side by side in the report, showing it was forged by Rashíd Pasha. He was then accused of opposing missionary work, because he had written advising a schoolmistress, in the kindest spirit, to try and prevent her husband entering into mining speculations: as there was so much cheating going on, he was afraid he would drop several thousand pounds. "Mining," was somehow changed to "missionary;" but that fact was disposed of by the regretful and indignant letters at his recall from all the other missionaries. He was accused of being influenced against the Jews because he protected the poor villagers from paying their debts twice and thrice over to the usurers, who took their money and refused receipts, leaving nothing to show. Amongst the letters one Jew wrote home that Captain Burton "was influenced by his Catholic wife against the Jews." I am proud to say that I have never in my life tried to influence my husband to do anything wrong, and I am prouder still to say that if I had tried I should not have succeeded, and should have only lost his respect. The Jews have never had a better friend than me. I distinctly divide the usurers from the Jews, just as I divide the good, honest, loyal half of the Irish Catholic nation from the Fenians and the moonlighters, who are mostly Irish living in England and America, and who go over for the purpose of fomenting disturbance. I have suppressed many a thing that civilized and idealized Jews would be ashamed to have known of their lower and fanatical brethren in the East and elsewhere. He was accused by the Greek bishop of firing into "harmless Greeks at play," because he fired a shot in the air to call assistance when we were being stoned to death.
Mr. Eldridge, who was quite a Russian at heart, went on the plan of never compromising himself by writing an official order to Richard; he never wrote him anything but private notes. Richard said he could not use private notes in official life as proofs. I thought this very wrong. I saw a plan in this mode of action, so I used to keep them in a portfolio till wanted, so that when I put the case together I was able to state the facts very correctly. I have got several packets of that Blue Book now, if anybody wants to see one. It ended by Richard getting the nearest thing to an apology that one could expect out of a Government office, and an offer of several small posts, which he indignantly refused. In his journal I find he was offered Pará, but would not take it—"Too small a berth for me after Damascus."
Shortly after, Mr. L—— offered him, that if he would go to Iceland to inspect some sulphur mines, he would pay his passage there and back, and his expenses, and if he found he could conscientiously give a good report of the sulphur mines, that he would give him £2000. He went, and as we were at a very low ebb, and as Mr. L—— did not pay for me, I was left with my father and mother, which was a very fortunate circumstance, because my mother died shortly after. I may put in a parenthesis that, though Richard was able conscientiously to give a splendid report of the mines, Mr. L—— did not pay him the £2000. The trip resulted in a book called "Ultima Thule: a Summer in Iceland"[8] (2 vols.), which was not published till 1875, and his "Zanzibar City, Island, and Coast" (2 vols., 1872); and he wrote a lecture for the Society of Antiquaries, a "History of Stones and Bones from the Haurán," and "Human Remains and other Articles from Iceland." We had ten months of great poverty and official neglect (but great kindness from Society), during which we were reduced to our last £15, and after that we had nothing to do but to sit on our boxes in the street, for we had nothing, not a prospect of anything; but we let nobody know that. He remarked one day when we were out on business—
"Lunch, one shilling,
Soup not filling."
And I noticed afterwards, in his journal, that he had longed for some oysters, and looked at them long; but he says, "They were three shillings a dozen—awful, forbidden luxury!"
At last my uncle, Lord Gerard, asked us up to Garswood, and we debated if we had a right to accept it or not. I begged him to do so, as I thought it might bring us good luck. We were alone in a railway compartment, when one of the £15 rolled out of my purse, and slid between the boards of the carriage and the door, reducing us to £14. I sat on the floor and cried, and he sat down by me with his arm round my waist, trying to comfort me. Uncle Gerard kept us one month, paid our fare up and down, and, without knowing that we wanted anything, gave me £25, and from that time one little help or another came to keep us alive without our asking for anything. We sold some of our writings, and it was discovered that some back pay was due to Richard.
During this ten months at home, we saw a great deal of Winwood Reade, whom all know by his travels in Africa, his many literary works, of which the cleverest, but the most harmful, was the "Martyrdom of Man," of which he presented Richard with a copy, which was carefully treasured till about six months before Richard's death. He told us the following account of a ghost story:—
There was a place in Africa or in India (I forget at this distance of time), where there was a haunted bungalow, and Winwood Reade was longing to see a ghost, as he was very sceptical about the existence of such things. In this particular bungalow there was a room on the ground floor, with folding doors of glass that opened to the ground, leading out into the compound. Every night at twelve o'clock these glass doors (being locked) slowly opened outwards, and the ghosts of three surgeons who had died of cholera appeared in their winding-sheets. Winwood Reade engaged the bungalow for the night, it being quite empty, but he could not induce anybody, for love or money, to go with him. At last he tempted a black boy, by large promises of money, to pass one night there, and the boy said if he might sleep on the roof he would, but nothing would induce him to go inside the house. So they started forth, and Winwood took with him a good novel, his gun, his watch, and plenty of brandy and water, and towards eleven o'clock made himself very comfortable on some cushions in a corner of the room in full view of the window. As his watch pointed to twelve, the doors slowly opened, he seized his gun, and in a moment the three white figures appeared. I said, breathless with excitement, "And what did you do, Winwood?" He smiled and hesitated, and said, "To tell the honest truth, I dropped my gun and fainted, and when I came to I got out of the house as quick as I could, called the boy, went away, and never went back." He was such a brave man he could afford to own this.
Richard writes at this time in his journal, "I called on some old friends, and as I came out of the house I heard the servants whisper, 'Why, Captain Burton looks like an old gypsy.'" This was after his recall.
We had one very pleasant evening at Lady Marian Alford's. She had been building her house at Prince's Gate, and Miss Hosmer had sculptured her fountain; it was the opening night. Lady Marian wanted to prepare a little surprise for her friends, so she made Richard dress as a Bedawin Shaykh, and Khamoor (my Arab girl) and me as Moslem women of Damascus. I was supposed to have brought this Shaykh over to introduce him into a little English society. He spoke Arabic to Khamoor and me, and broken English with a few words of French to the rest of the party. It was a delightful little party, and we enjoyed it very much, and—though they all knew him—nobody recognized Richard, which was very amusing; but presently the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh were announced, and Lady Marian had to go out to prepare them for this little joke, which amused them immensely, and so it gradually had to ooze out. There was a delightful supper, three tables each of eight. Khamoor in her Eastern dress came in with coffee on a tray on her head, and presented it kneeling to the Prince and the Duke, and to the others standing. Everything that Lady Marian Alford did was so graceful.
I see that Richard notices in his journal a correspondence between himself and the Rev. Herbert Vaughan, D.D. (our present Cardinal), which I imagine was about the Sházlis. And he also notices that his name is again left out of Sir Roderick Murchison's address, and asks, "Why? Old Murchison hates me."
Again speaking of Sir R. Murchison, Richard writes, "He was anxious to pay due honour to our modern travellers, to Livingstone and Gordon, Speke and Grant. He has done me the honour of not honouring me." Later on: "Received a card from him to go and see him."
We also went to Ashridge, Lord Brownlow's, on a visit to Lady Marian Alford, which visit we enjoyed immensely, where we met Lord Beaconsfield and numbers of other delightful people.
He also notices in his journal: "Had the satisfaction of hearing of Rashíd Pasha's disgrace and removal. Wonder if he wishes he had not crossed swords with me."
This year was the Tichborne trial, and Richard was subpœnaed by him, but his evidence did more good to the family. Amongst other things the Claimant said to Richard, "That he had met me in Rio de Janeiro, and that I had recognized him as a long-lost cousin; but, on fixing the dates, it was proved that I had sailed from Rio for London a week before the Claimant arrived there." We had one very lively meeting at the Royal Geographical Society. He writes—
"Rassam stood up about a native message to Livingstone. Colonel Rigby contradicted, and said there were no Abyssinians in Zanzibar. They began to contradict me, so I made it very lively, for I was angry, and proved my point, showing that my opponents had spoken falsely. My wife laughed, because I moved from one side of the table to the other unconsciously, with the stick that points to the maps in my hand, and she said that the audience on the benches looked as if a tiger was going to spring in amongst them, or that I was going to use the stick like a spear upon my adversary, who stood up from the benches.[9] To make the scene more lively, my wife's brothers and sisters were struggling in the corner to hold down their father, an old man, who had never been used to public speaking, and who slowly rose up in speechless indignation at hearing me accused of making a misstatement, and was going to address a long oration to the public about his son-in-law Richard Burton. As he was slow and very prolix he would never have sat down again, and God only knows what he would have said; they held on to his coat-tails, and were preparing, in event of failure, some to dive under the benches, and some to bolt out of the nearest door."
We went a great deal into Society those ten months, and we saw much of the two best literary houses of the day, where one always met la haute Bohème, the most interesting Society in London, mixed with the best of everything, and those were Lord Houghton's and Lord Strangford's.
About this time we went to visit Mr. ——, our then publisher, at his country-house, where he showed us all that was comfortable and luxurious, with ten horses in the stable—everything else to match. He gave us a large literary dinner, at which Lord Houghton, with his quiet chuckle, called out across the table, "I say, Burton, don't you feel as if we were drinking out of poor authors' skulls?" Upon which Richard laughed, and tapped his own head for an answer.
Richard was very anxious that Alexandretta should be the chief port in Syria, into whose lap the railway would pour the wealth of the province, for it is the only good port the country possesses on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. Alexandretta, if freed from its stagnant marshes, would be magnificent; the railway should go to Damascus, Jerusalem, and Aleppo.
With regard to Sir Roderick Murchison, his journal again contained the following, speaking of one of his books:—
"Since these pages went to print Sir R. I. Murchison has passed away, full of years and of honours. I had not the melancholy satisfaction of seeing for the last time our revered Chief, one of whose latest actions was to oppose my reading a paper about the so-called Victoria Nyanza before the Royal Geographical Society; whilst another was to erase my name from the list of the Nile explorers when revising his own biography. But peace be to his manes! I respect the silence of a newly made grave."
We went, for the first time in our lives, and the last, to a great banquet at the Mansion House, which amused us very much. Whenever we wanted to make any remarks at dinner-time we made them in Arabic, thinking that probably no one would understand us. Curiously, the people who sat next to us turned round, and said in Arabic, "Yes, you are perfectly right; we were just thinking the same thing;" and Richard said, "We spoke Arabic thinking nobody would understand us;" and they said, "It is most probable that out of all this huge crowd we are the only four people who happen to speak Arabic, and happen to sit together."
Another very interesting visit we paid was to the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum, Wandsworth Common, where the doctor, who was a friend of my husband's, invited us to spend the day and dine with him, and he showed us over everything; but I know that I, for one, felt awfully glad when we left it; some of the faces that I saw there I can see now if I shut my eyes and think.
In 1872, we were on a visit at Knowsley, the Earl of Derby's, and we planted there a cedar of Lebanon, which we had brought; and we went over the alkali works at St. Helen's, very interesting to Richard, who did not know so much of the "Black Country" as we did. We then went to Uncle Gerard's, where we met the Muriettas (now Marchesa de Santurce), and many other pleasant people. Here we went down some coal-pits (265 fathoms) for further information, and we planted more cedars of Lebanon and a bit of Abraham's oak, which we brought from Mamre, some distance from Hebron.
That year my mother got very ill, and we all assembled in town to be with her. She had been paralyzed for nine years, and, nevertheless, had been strong, active, and cheerful, and enabled in some fashion to enjoy life. Her strong brain kept her alive.
At this time the public, answering an appeal of mine in the Tablet, describing the poverty and destitution of the Syrian Inland Churches, sent me wherewith to furnish six of them, which has never been forgotten out there.
In 1872, poor General Beatson died at New Swindon. Richard sent thirty-two species of plants from the summit of the Libanus to the British Museum; and this year he got the news from Syria that he had gained his cause about the stoning at Nazareth. The Greek Bishop had brought an action against him before the Tribunal, and Richard won it with honour.
He wrote and lectured on the "Stones and Bones of the Haurán," March, 1872, and "Human Remains in Iceland" in late 1872.
I attended the Tichborne trial, and saw Sir John Coleridge examine my cousin, Katty Radcliffe. Richard whispered to me, "The next thing plaintiff will do, will be to call himself Lord Aberdeen." I came home from there, and found the other brother, Father Coleridge, S.J., giving my mother Communion. At this time, too, we attended all the learned societies, where Richard generally made speeches. We also went down to the Duke and Duchess of Somerset's, where we met Lady Ulrica Thynne, the Brinsley Sheridans, and afterwards, at their house, brilliant and fascinating Mrs. Norton.
Charles Reade, the well-known author, who was a great friend of ours, gave us a delightful dinner and pleasant evening, asking a great many actors and actresses to meet us. Sir Frederick Leighton began to paint Richard on the 26th of April, and it was very amusing. Richard was so anxious that he should paint his necktie and his pin, and kept saying to him every now and then, "Don't make me ugly, don't, there's a good fellow;" and Sir Frederick kept chaffing him about his vanity, and appealing to me to know if he was not making him pretty enough. That is the picture that Sir Frederick has now, and is going to leave to the nation; and both Richard and I always retained the pleasantest memory of the many happy hours we passed in his studio. Richard was examined on the Consular Committee, and made them all laugh. He complained that the salary of Santos had been very inadequate to his position; he had been obliged to use his own little capital to supplement. He was asked how his predecessor (a baronet) had managed, and he answered, "By living in one room over a shop, and washing his own stockings." Richard attended the Levée on May 13th.
We went to a Foreign Office party, where Musurus Pasha explained to Richard why he was obliged to go against him, by the order of the Turkish Government about Syria, and Richard said to him, "Well, Pasha, I did not know that you had; but I can tell you that, though I never practically wish evil to my enemies, they all come to grief, and you are bound to have a bit of bad luck on my account." The next day Musurus Pasha fell down and broke his arm. It is an absolute fact that everybody who did my husband an injury had some bad luck.
Richard tried to get Teheran, which was one of the places that he longed for and was vacant, and we knew that three names were sent up to her Majesty for approval; but we also knew, sub rosa, that Mr. (afterwards Sir Ronald) Thompson, a personal friend in their youth of Mr. and Mrs. (afterwards Lord and Lady) Hammond, of the Foreign Office, was to get it.
I brought out "Unexplored Syria" (2 vols.), in which Richard and I and Charley Drake collaborated, on the 21st of June, 1872, while Richard was in Iceland.
Richard sailed on the 4th of June from Leith for Iceland. The 5th of June was one of my most unhappy days. I got up early, and passed the day with my mother. She received Communion at a quarter to one; at 9.30 p.m. she asked to see everybody. We said prayers to her, but did not think her in any danger. At eleven some instinct made me refuse to go home to my lodging. We were summoned suddenly. I ran in and took her in my arms; she turned her head round upon my shoulder, looked at me, breathed a little sigh, and died like a child at a quarter to twelve p.m. All the week she lay in state, the room dressed like a chapel, with flowers and candles, and we, her children, passed all day by her, and had all our religious services in her room. (Richard notes in his journal, "Poor mother died about midnight, June 5th.")
On the 12th of June, attended by all the people she liked best, we buried her at Mortlake.
At last, Lord Granville wrote to me, and asked me if I thought Richard would accept Trieste, Charles Lever having died; and he also advised me to urge him to take it, because they were not likely to have anything better vacant for some time. And I was able to send Richard's acceptance of Trieste to Lord Granville on July 15th. We knew that after a post of £1000 a year, with work that was really diplomatic, and with a promise ahead of Marocco, Teheran, and Constantinople before him, that a commercial town on £600 a year, and £100 office allowance, meant that his career was practically broken; but Richard and I could not afford to starve, and he said he would stick on as long as there was ever a hope of getting Marocco.
Finally we were taken into some sort of favour again. Lord Granville had not understood Richard's letter about wanting to have the Sházlis baptized, and feared that it might result in a Jehád, or religious war, if the baptisms had taken place. Richard told him "he knew it would not." He knew he could carry it through; he was not a man to risk such a matter. His plan was to buy a tract of land, to give these people the means of building themselves cottages, choose their own Shaykh, their own Priest, and make for themselves a little Church. The village was to belong to him, and he would have put it under the protection of his friends amongst the Mohammedans. He would have taken no taxes from them, and no presents or provisions, as other people do, and the consequence is they would have been now a flourishing colony. That was the real cause of the recall; and, as I have said before, Richard said, "That is suffering persecution for justice' sake with a vengeance; but we won't have anything more to do with this subject until I am free from an enlightened and just-minded Government in March, 1891."
On the 26th of August I was going a round of country-house visits in Richard's absence, and arriving at ten o'clock at night at Uncle Gerard's, met the sad news that our youngest and favourite brother, the flower of our flock, Jack Arundell, commanding the Bittern, had died of rheumatic fever between the West Coast of Africa and Ascension, where he is buried—that is to say, he did not die of rheumatic fever, but it was a question of sleep saving him. A very slight dose of opiate had been administered to him to ensure this boon. He had never mentioned the peculiarity in our family of being very sensitive to opiates; he went to sleep and never woke again, to the grief and distress of all on board. He was only thirty-one years of age, was bright and good-looking; he was a dashing officer, with his heart in his profession, and a fine career was before him. He had not had time to hear of our mother's death before he joined her. It was a terrible blow to us.
Richard arrived on the 8th of June in Iceland, embarked for return on 1st of August, and arrived in England from Iceland at eleven at night on the 14th of September.
On the 5th of October, 1872, the day was fixed for Richard to have a tumour cut out of his shoulder or back. He had got it from a blow from a single-stick, when he was off guard and his back was turned. It was an unfair blow, only the man did it in fun; anyway, he said so. He had had it for a long time, and it had frequently opened and discharged of itself, but now it was getting troublesome. Dr. Bird, of 49, Welbeck Street, performed the operation. It was two inches in diameter, and from first to last occupied about twelve minutes. I assisted Dr. Bird. He sat astride on a chair, smoking a cigar and talking all the time, and in the afternoon he insisted on going down to Brighton. He did not wish me to go with him, but I accompanied him to the station. I always liked to wait on him, so I got him his ticket, had his baggage put in, and took him a place in a coupé whilst he went off to buy his book and paper, and then I called the guard. I said, "Guard, my husband is going down to Brighton. I wish you would just look after him, he is not very well;" and I gave him half a crown. Presently an old man of eighty hobbled by on crutches, "Is that him, ma'am?" "No," I said. Next a consumptive boy came by, "Is this him, ma'am?" "No," I said; "not yet." Many passed, and of all those who he thought looked as though they wanted taking care of, he asked the same question, and he got the same answer. Presently Richard came swaggering along, as if the whole station belonged to him—all fencers know the peculiar walk a soldier has who is given much to fencing and broadsword—and I whispered to the guard, "There he is," and I stood by the carriage till the train went, and I heard him whisper to a comrade, "She would never ask me to take care of such a chap as that, unless he was a raving lunatic. I'll take devilish good care I don't go near him; he would probably pitch me out of the carriage."
After this we had a large family party at Wardour Castle, which we enjoyed immensely.
A Greek priest from Syria came to see us, and we took him to a spiritualistic séance. He was dreadfully frightened, and said his prayers out loud all the time.
On his way up to Iceland he went to see Holyrood in Edinburgh, and, visiting Queen Mary's room, exclaimed, "No wonder she sighed for France." He went to the Levée held there by Lord Airlie (the present Earl's father).
Before I finish with Syria, there is a question I want to set at rest on behalf of both Richard and myself. During my husband's life, from his journey to Mecca in 1853, till his death in 1890, a period of thirty-seven years, a story was current about him, which he had no idea of, and when he did hear it, treated it as a good joke—that when he was on the road to Mecca he killed two Mohammedans, who suspected him of being a Frank and a Christian. He told me it was absolutely false; and, if any one knew what a horror he had of any one taking the life of anything, they would not doubt it for a moment. He would not allow even an animal to be killed, saying that "we had no right to destroy life." One of his greatest remorses was shooting a monkey in his younger days; "it cried like a child," he said, "and I can never forget it." This story did happen to two Englishmen, who were travelling in the desert about this time; and who, in consequence of their unfortunate necessity, never appeared before the public, nor gave an account of their travels.
Now, I mention this incident in connection with Syria (instead of Mecca), because, after my husband died, his mantle in this respect descended upon my shoulders. Mrs. Mentor Mott had assured me on leaving Syria "that I did not leave a single enemy behind me," but it issued from the British Syrian schools long afterwards, that the cause of my husband's recall was that I had shot two men, and wounded a third, because they did not stand up and salute me, and that I was afterwards abandoned and neglected; though it never reached my ears till five days after Richard's death, and that through a missionary's letter to the Newcastle Daily Chronicle, owing, I suppose, to my being a Catholic. He waited twenty years, till my husband could not contradict it, and then did not lose a single instant in publishing this utter fabrication. The fact is, these missionaries get to know a little Syrian Christian Arabic—some more, some less—and perhaps unintentionally they get hold of some wonderful stories, and make mistakes and mischief. This is the true story.
It was in a time of great excitement between Moslems and Christians. I was riding through a village of about thirty-five thousand Moslems. There was a feud between two local Shaykhs, the two principal men of the village. The Consulate favoured one and not the other, who were bullies. I rode through this village alone, having sent the men in attendance on me to do a commission. The son of the unfriendly Shaykh, a youth of twenty-two, wanted to commence the row by attacking me—spat at me, and tried to pull me off my horse. This in the East means volumes, my position there being that of a very great personage. If I had been cowardly, fainted, and screamed, there would not have been a Christian left alive by the evening in that village. In fact, as it was, all the villagers were upon their knees in deprecation of the outrage, but were afraid to interfere with the village bully; so I reined in my horse, and slashed him across the face with my hunting-whip, and he howled and roared as if he were about five years old. The noise brought my men up sharply, whom he had not seen, having thought I was alone; seeing what was going on, they flung themselves upon him, and I think he was very sorry for himself when they had done with him. There was a general scuffle, in which somebody's pistol went off in his belt, because they have the bad habit of keeping the trigger down on the hammer, instead of at half-cock; but the ball fortunately went into a wall, and nobody was hurt.
When I got home, a strong body of people from the village came up to tell me that the youth, to revenge his beating, had collected all the most riotous people of the village and was coming up at night to burn our house (Sir Richard Wood's house in the Anti-Lebanon, by the way, which he lent to Richard). I had not enough people about me for defence, my husband having ridden a little distance in the desert and taken most of our men; so I sent a mounted messenger over to the Wali, and the next morning at dawn I was horrified at my husband's confidential Afghan, in full kawwás uniform, armed to the teeth, coming to tell me that my horse was saddled at the door, and that I must get up and ride down to the plain; he would explain as we went. I found the plain covered with troops, who saluted me as I rode down, and then the Colonel rode up to me, and told me that the Wali had ordered him to burn and sack the village. I told him that if he did such a thing my husband and I would leave the country at once; that these things were quite contrary to our English ideas. He said, "Then I put myself at your orders." I told him that since he was so kind as to let me have what I wanted, he was to assemble the principal Moslems of the village, and to bind them over by an oath not to touch the Christians, who were chiefly very poor, Greek Orthodox by religion, and Fellahín of the Anti-Lebanon, and he should take the youth and put him in prison for a while—say, a month.
This was carried out, and at my request he drew off the troops, and there was great rejoicing in the village. For this conduct, for which the writer to the Newcastle Daily Chronicle has induced many people to believe that my husband was recalled, I received a complimentary letter from the Consul-General, Mr. Eldridge, who did not like me because I hated his way with Richard, and the thanks of the Governor-General, the Wali Rashíd Pasha, for having saved them a great deal of trouble, both then and in the expected riot which Richard prevented. Richard was also very pleased with me. I should be ashamed to mention these things, but I do not mean to die and to leave any attack upon my husband not cleared up, nor any on myself, if I happen to hear of them.
When the youth was let out of prison, he became my most devoted servant. The year after we left, his mother, who was very fond of me, did some trifling thing which he had forbidden her; they say it was selling eggs in the market. His father was absent, and, be the offence what it may, we received a letter to tell us that he called his mother into the courtyard, assembled the household, and with his own hands he strangled her, and buried her in the courtyard under the stones. I never heard whether his father said anything when he came home, but I did hear that while she was dying, she extended her arms to our house, and that she called piteously, "Ah, Ya Sitti! ah, Ya Sitti! if thou wert here this abomination never could have been done."
It is monstrous for any missionary of the British Syrian schools or otherwise, to pretend that my husband was recalled, because I defended myself against the man who attacked me. The real cause was very different; it was his one endeavour to do what England professes to admire (theoretically, anyway), what Richard did in practice, namely, sacrifice himself for Christianity's sake!