"21, Leamington Road Villas, Westbourne Park, W.,

"December 4th, 1883.

"My dear Burton,

"Thanks for your kindly note, which came to hand this morning. Would that in reply I could give as good an account of my time as you give. What a constitution of brass—no, of iron—yours must be! I am so glad that you are writing your own biography.[2] What a tale of stirring adventure by sea and land you will have to narrate! I can quite fancy, however, that if you had the choice, you would add a little active work now and then to the otium of endless scribbling. For the life of me, I cannot divine why your services have not been called into requisition during the late Egyptian imbroglios. As far as I know, we have not had a man in that country, save Rogers, conversant with the Arabic, and hardly one who can be accused of anything like a knowledge of Eastern peoples. I do not quite make out whether you are serious or not in the programme which you have drawn out for settling the Egyptian difficulty. In one point, at least, and that the principal point, viz. definite annexation, it coincides with what I wrote to our Jupiter Tonans."

He was very gouty all this month, but not laid up. He was able to attend the school feast and fête at Opçina, and was able to go to a masquerade ball at Baroness Morpurgo's. He was "Cœur de Lion;" I was "Berengaria," his wife; and Blanche was the goose-girl, out of the Christmas number of the Graphic. There was a very witty comédie performed by amateurs.

I now wrote a book called "The Sixth Sense," and was vain enough to think it very clever; but I was afraid it would do harm, and I took the courage to burn it.

We gave our usual Christmas-parties in January. He was also able to take plenty of drives with me, but could not walk much. We passed our lives between Trieste and Opçina, carrying our literature up and down. One of his great amusements was a small donkey which used to run into the terrace-garden, which overlooked the sea, where we used to breakfast, and the donkey and the setter used to have games of romps like two kittens playing, the donkey racing round the place, biting and kicking, and the setter dodging him. They seemed to know exactly what they were to do, and they came every day at the same hour to play.

Richard now took an immense dislike to our house in Trieste, where we had been over ten years. The fact is, I had increased it in my ambition to twenty-seven rooms, and just as I had made it perfection, he wanted to leave it. Certainly Providence directed, for shortly after that, the drainage got so very bad there as to be incurable, and after he got really ill, and his heart weak, it would have been impossible for him to mount the hundred and twenty steps, four stories high, to go in and out. We ransacked the whole of Trieste, but there was only one house that suited us in any way, and there was not the least likelihood of our being able to get it, as it was occupied; but, curiously to say, six months later we did get it, and got housed in it the following July.

On the 24th of February we had a great shock in the death of poor Reich, our fencing-master. He went out well dressed, with a cigar in his mouth, very early, took a walk in the Via Riborgo, mounted some steps, put a pistol to his head, and blew his brains out. Some people ran, hearing the pistol; he was quite dead, but his cigar was still alight. Suicide is the commonest thing in the world in Trieste; nobody takes any account of it. The fact is that he had been getting into bad health. An Italian fencing-master had set up in the town, and got all his best Italian pupils away. I had not fenced at all the winter 1882-3, and Richard, of course, had been away so much and had had many twinges of gout, and therefore it was a matter of great reproach to us that we had not gone and paid him visits, and cheered him up, and looked after him—so often a little friendship prevents a man from going to this extremity. Richard felt it for a long time.

Reich was a Bohemian and an old trooper, and Richard said he was the best broadswordsman he had ever seen. He has frequently told me to stand steady, and he has made a moulinet at me; you could hear the sword swish in the air, and he has touched my face like a fly in the doing of it. He did it frequently to show what he could do, but he used to say that he would not do it to any of his men pupils, for fear they should flinch either one way or the other, which would of course have cut their faces open; but he knew I should stand steady. I liked that.

We then had a trip down the Dalmatian coast in an Austrian-Lloyd's, to Sebenico, Zara, and Spalato. On this day five of Palmer's murderers were hanged in the presence of thirty-five Bedawi chiefs. Richard could never understand why they only hanged five instead of twenty-four, the number of those concerned, and why the Governor of El Arish was not hanged too. We went on to Castelnuovo, and to Cattaro, and then back. It was only for a few days, but it did Richard a world of good. We then had a visit from Major Borrowes, and Richard went for a trip to San Daniele, to Wippach, to Heidenschaft, and Plani, and came back. We spent our birthdays, 19th and 20th of March, in Opçina, and received a telegram with twelve friends' names attached to it.

We now had a visit from Mr. Oswald, from the Foreign Office, and the Mudies arrived—we showed them the lions of the place, and saw them on board en route to Corfu; also came Dr. Lewins, of the Army and Navy Club and Jermyn Street, a savant from Bombay, the same who is bringing out Miss Näden's works.

On the 30th of January we gave a masked ball to a hundred and fifty-eight people, which was a great success. It began at half-past nine, and lasted till six. In a room close to the door were two gentlemen of the party, who were appointed to "receive." Everybody who arrived had to go into that room and unmask, in order to be sure that we did not get any "riff-raff" in; they then masked again, and passed in before any one else was admitted. The unmasking began at supper, when the great surprise was to see who you got next to you. One big Viennese lieutenant, six feet high, and big in proportion, came dressed as a woman, and his airs and graces were lovely.

On the 19th of March Richard began to write on the Congo, and on this day one of his friends died (Major Wemyss).

The remains of Palmer and his two companions, discovered by Sir Charles Warren in the desert at Tih, were carefully collected and placed in three coffins, painted black, with a white cross upon each; they were received by the dockyard officials, March 30, and were removed to London for interment at St. Paul's Cathedral. This is in his journal of the 31st of March.

Colonel and Mrs. Montgomery were now appointed American Consul-General. Very nice people, but they could not stand Trieste more than ten days; left it, and settled in Switzerland.

Richard was very bad all April; but it was honest gout in the feet, and he was quite healthy.

In his journal he much mourns the death of Abd-el-Kadir in Damascus, on the 24th of April, at the age of seventy-six.

On the 1st of May he sent me to Bologna to be under the famous Count Mattei for my complaint; the journey occupied eleven hours. I took my niece Blanche. We found that he had gone to Riola, two hours' rail from Bologna, so we went on there to a pension Suisse, called Hôtel della Rosa. The train runs along the Reno river. The Hôtel Rosa holds about twenty patients, and was kept by Monsieur and Madame Schmidt; she was his right-hand agent, was initiated in all his business, and superintended all his patients. Now she works on her own account in London and other capitals. It is a lovely mountain place, this castle perched on a high crag about half an hour's scramble above the pension. Count Mattei has restored the castle, I think, of Savignano. There was nothing left but a little tower on the raw rock, and he has constructed the most solid, handsome, fantastic, eccentric castle possible to conceive, of stone and marble, regardless of expense, for he is the Monte-Cristo of the country.

The next morning I got up at five, and, with a strong horse and little cart, Blanche and I went up an awful breakneck road to a crag as high again as Mattei's castle, where was a solitary little country chapel. We asked to have Mass and Communion, as it was the first Friday in the month. A priest like an old family picture came out and said Mass and gave us Communion, and we scrambled down again by half-past nine for coffee at the pension. I then set off to have a second consultation with Mattei. This time the dog sat at my feet. And then he called his governess to show me over the castle. (Doré with a bad nightmare would be nothing to it.) It was grand, bold, splendid, and reckless; but the beds were marble—æsthetic biers—with classic garlands of flowers in marble vases on marble tables; the furniture a marble bench. Think of it in winter. There were drawbridges with bolts everywhere—the bedroom doors drawn up at night, showing black bottomless pits in the rock, into which a would-be assassin would fall. The look-out was splendid, wild and eerie. When I saw the mad allegories on the wall in fresco, I said, "Is it right to take medicine from such a lunatic? And yet he has cured hundreds and thousands, so I suppose I may."

Then I found that I was not to wait here, because all their beds were full at the pension, but I was to buy a month's medicines, to go to some quiet mountain place and rest, and perform my cure, and correspond with him. I was to eat and drink well, and do everything I always did; so my bourne will be Krapina-Teplitz in the Carniola, where Richard would also go for his gout-baths; a cheap, wild, quiet, mountain retreat. I found, however, just before going away from Mrs. Schmidt, that whereas he had told me to put one hundred globules of one medicine into my bath, that I must only put fifty, as he was very fond of beginning at the highest and letting you down, instead of beginning at the lowest, and bringing you up to what you can stand. I also found out that loads of people were frequently in agonies of pain, and had to remain so till they telegraphed for Madame Schmidt, who came with the antidote; and I did not like that prospect. I believe she has done away with all these risks now by her new improvements in treatment; but she was not a free agent then as she is now, and I should think must have a very great success.

These scraps of information will interest many people. I then came back to Venice, where I found dear Lady Marian Alford, which made me stop three days, and then I went on to Trieste.

After I got back Richard and I were dining, and I began my cure, "six globules dry on the tongue with the first spoonful of soup." Almost as soon as I had swallowed it, I began to feel very odd, as if I had a sort of private earthquake going on in me, and got frightened. Richard said, "Why, it can't be those miserable little globules. I would swallow the whole bottle." "Don't do that," I said, "but take what I have taken—six dry on the tongue with a spoonful of soup." In a few minutes he was deadly pale, and began to stagger about as I did. He said, "No more of that. These are things that ought to be done under the eye of the Count himself, or Mrs. Schmidt, and so neither you nor I will do that cure." I do not want to choke anybody off from doing the cure, because I think it would be a great success under Mrs. Schmidt's personal directions.

The Karso air was now charming, so that we went up there for awhile, and went over again to Duino and Monfalcone. But first we went during this month to see the whole of the Niebelungen, first the Rheingold, the Walküre, Siegfried, the Götterdämerung, beautifully performed at Trieste.

Krapina-Teplitz did Richard no good—the waters were too strong—and he came back on the 11th of June. Mr. Aubertin arrived on a visit at the same time, and they had a great deal to discuss, both being students and translators of Camoens. The Squadron was reported the same afternoon, saluted at four p.m., and we went on board an hour after. It was two years since their last visit. It was very much a repetition of that of 1881; there were eleven or twelve ships, and they stayed thirteen days.

First came off the Austrian Admiral's ball—a magnificent affair in the illuminated garden, with singers from Vienna; then an equally fine ball on board the Monarch, my brother Jack Arundell's old ship. Our ball on the same plan as last year, but—once bit, twice shy—at the Jäger.

It is a palatial sort of residence, on the summit of a glorious wood, commanding a view of sea, town, mountains, and woods, and when illuminated with coloured lamps, Bengal lights, and electric light, was like the last scene of a pantomime. It contains a ball-room that would easily hold a thousand people, refreshment-room, large supper-rooms, a gallery for orchestra, and several cloak-rooms. There is a terrace all round it, and gardens. So we were not dependent on the weather, nor the police, nor the peasants, and the grounds were illuminated just the same for people to walk in, fireworks, etc. Our cordon of police this year behaved very well, and were under an Inspector. We all thoroughly enjoyed it, and the cotillon was a splendid fantasia, as it generally is in Austria. The next day, was my last fête for the animals, and at night the opera. The Captains of the ships gave a dinner to Richard and me at Opçina.

Then came the Emperor's dinner at Miramar, a dance on board the Inflexible. We had a splendid ball on board the Teméraire (Captain, now Admiral, Nicholson, who was an immense favourite with everybody), and on the 23rd they all left, to our great regret. Mr. Aubertin and Richard went to Zara, to Salona, and Spalato, and came back on the 4th of July, and then we went up to stay at the Jäger instead of Opçina, when, having deposited them there, I went back to change house.

For several days, long processions of carts were going up to the new house, and Blanche and I and the servants worked for a month, but on the 8th of July we were able to sleep in our new place, and it was fit for Richard to come into on the 16th of July, 1883. Our new residence was one of those old Palazzone which the Italians used to build in the good old time; but it so happens it was built by an English merchant, as in old days there were English merchant-princes here, but they have long since died out. It had a good entrance, so that you could drive your carriage into the hall; and a marble staircase took you into the interior, then a very mean staircase of stone took you up to the rooms; the large ones were magnificent in size, and there were twenty of all sorts. The air, the light, was delicious, and the views, had they been in England, would have had express trains to see them. One showed you the City and Adriatic at your feet; one looked out on the open sea, this being a wooded promontory; one on an arm of the sea, a little gulf that looked like a lake surrounded by mountains, dotted with churches, spires, and little villages; and the other looked into gardens and orchards, dotted with villas. A peasant's house close to ours (about which there had been some litigation) bore a squib painted on the lintel by a wag of that time—"Carta, canta, villan dorme" ("Sing, paper; the peasant sleeps"). We also had a very large garden, and campagna (orchard) below it, wherein one could take a very tidy walk, and it overlooked the gulf in which the Austrian fleet always anchors. This was a far better home for Richard (ailing), for getting up and down stairs, for sitting in the garden, and for air, being in the hot summers eight degrees cooler than the City. He unfortunately, however, would have no bedroom, except the biggest room in the house—so large that he could divide it into four parts, sleeping in one, dressing in another, writing in another, and breakfasting in another; but it looked direct to the north, it received the full force of the Bora, it never saw the sun, and though in winter it was thoroughly well warmed, everything got damp there, arms rusted, and so forth, and it was not until we had been there for four years that I was able to persuade him to change his abode to the best room in the house, the second largest on the other side of the house, which looked to the south and the west. I always feel that his malady would not have made such rapid progress if he would have listened to that arrangement at first.

We swam and bathed all the summer; but Richard and I found for the first time that it did not agree with us, and that our long swimming days were over. I was playing with a little puppy in early August which bit me in play, and drew blood, but in a couple of days I woke with headache and very sick, and shooting pains all up the arm, and we thought I had got hydrophobia. The arm was swelled, scarlet, very painful, and I felt light-headed. I sent for a doctor, who examined the bite, and found I had been bitten by a scorpion, of which our new house was full, just in the same place that the tooth of the dog had broken the skin. He rubbed in laudanum. I had several doses of bromide of potassium, and got all right. I was stung three times after that, which produced the same effect; but we soon exterminated the scorpions.

We used to read and write a great deal in the garden, and very often used to spend the greater part of the day there.

We went over to Monfalcone to get rid of Richard's flying gout, and Miss H. E. Bishop again came to stay with us, and we had a charming time at Dr. Gregorutti's villa and museum, and afterwards at Aquileja close by. Miss Bishop and I were delighted; but we had to hang back a little, because there was an old gentleman staying at Aquileja who did not know Richard, and he was teaching him very elementary science and ancient history in the museum, as if he were a little boy of five; and Richard was such an awfully kind man, and had such a respect for age, that he listened with as much gravity and respect as if he really were five; but he did not dare to turn round and look at us. We then had a visit from Mrs. Moore, the Consul's wife from Jerusalem. We went in to Trieste to receive Sir E. Malet; and then we made a little pilgrimage to Henri V.'s tomb at Gorizia, and the monks gave me a bit of wood off the coffin of Charles V. Richard got much better, we returned home, and Lord Campbell arrived.

At this time poor "Zæo" was performing in the theatre, and taking her nightly leaps of seventy-five feet. One night she missed and fell. Miss Bishop and I used to visit her daily and try to do what we could for her.

To our great regret, our niece, Blanche Pigott, had to leave us on the 2nd of October, 1883, having been with us for about eighteen months; but she was required at home, and so we lost our whilom daughter. I was very glad at having Miss Bishop with me; not only a devoted friend, but so knowing about sickness. After seeing our niece off, Richard walked home, and when Miss Bishop and I had finished various commissions we arrived home, and found him with his first serious attack of gout.

CHAPTER X.

MISCELLANEOUS TRAITS OF CHARACTER AND OPINIONS.

I am afraid all this "gup," as Richard would call it, will be considered rather light and frivolous about places so well known, but I want to give every word my husband has said about his life, and where I think he has forgotten anything, I like to put it in afterwards. I am afraid of its reading in a jerky style, for a friend, who one day sat in a corner when we were collaborating on one of his big tables, wrote the following specimen of us as we were beginning our work:—

"Burtons—Husband and Wife.

"He. Bless (sic) you, I say hold your tongue! Who wants your opinion?

"She (in a smaller voice). Oh, it is all very well, but you know you are like an iron machine, and I do all the wit and sparkle.[1]

"He. Oh, I dare say—the sparkle of a superannuated glow-worm. (Then both roared with laughter, and writing is suspended for several minutes.)

"She. Now then, go on, old iron-works, and have the first say."

(This is really the way most of our works, when collaborating, have been written.)

But I have a greater object than this. I want to prove to the world, that, though he was far from the sphere suited to his immense talent and services, which he had richly earned from the Governments that threw him away, his life was as happy as it could be made under the circumstances. It was not the being chained to a hard barren rock, as is generally represented. If the Governments had shown their appreciation of his services, had placed him where he ought to have been placed, I believe I may say he would not have had a sorrow in the world. It is true that the climate was bad—all our climates were—but once gout had laid hold of him, it pursued him in every climate, good and bad, and he suffered much. Indeed, it was one of our pet jokes that we were so inured to bad climates that we were generally ill in good ones.

I do not forgive the Governments for this, and less the Conservative, for which he worked so hard; but they were merciful about "leave." He did not owe to them a penny of the money that enabled him to do what he liked, go where he would, have what he liked, and have the best of loving care, both wifely and medical, all his last years. He had to give half his pay to his Vice-Consul when absent, and so it suited all round, but it galled him to have to ask for leave, and if they could make no better use of him, they should at least have let him go on full pay in 1886, when he had served them forty-four years, and felt his breaking-up coming on. The only comfort I find in the blow dealt him, about not getting Marocco, is, that I fear shortly after he would have become unequal for the post, and I know that quite latterly he was not able for more than he did.

He only made four attempts to better his official life after his career was broken by recall from Damascus, and they were at the latter end of his life. One was to be made a K.C.B., in 1878; the second in 1880, to be appointed Commissioner for the Slave-trade in the Red Sea—that was ten years before his death; one to succeed Sir John Drummond-Hay in Marocco, 1885—when that was refused him, in his heart he threw up the Service, though necessity kept him on; and in 1886 his last appeal was to be allowed to retire on his full pension.

There seems to have been all along, during my husband's life, an impression that he was always craving for Government honours, and complaining of neglect. This is absolutely untrue. He was too proud, too manly, too philosophic. He was profoundly silent on the subject. It was I who did it, I who asked, I who made interest, and left no stone unturned to get him advanced to his proper deserts, not from a mean vanity, nor selfish ambition, but because I saw all these long years, with deep pain, what all the world knows and acknowledges now, his true merits and great work; the true hero, abandoned and forgotten, so surely as Gordon was, silently eating his heart out by a foreign fireside, with a craving for England and his fellow-men as strong as Byron's. I alone am to blame, if blame there is; and in those days the Press backed me. What harm would it have done the Service, or the Foreign Office, to have given him his last four crippled years, with his pension? This reproach has been thrown in our teeth by successful people who ought to have had better taste.

In married life we quite agreed about most things, and one was that complete liberty took off all the galling chain, popularly attributed by men to the monotony, dreary respectability, and conventionality of the usual British home circle, which frightens so many men from entering into matrimony, and which forms the antidote to the cosiness, companionship, and security of home, to two people who understand each other; consequently, whenever he showed a tendency to wander, and to go without me, though I was overjoyed when I was told I might go, I never restricted him. I provided every imaginable comfort for him; I transacted all his business at home, so that he might feel that he had left his second self, that nothing would go amiss when he was away. When he returned, he got a warm and joyous welcome, and was asked no questions. He told me what he liked, at his own sweet will, and I knew that he always returned to me with pleasure. He smoked where he liked, he brought whoever he liked into the house, his friends were always welcome, and he knew he need never be ashamed or afraid to ask anybody in to lunch or dinner; in short, his home was his own, and it was comfortable. On my part, I never wanted to go away from him for an hour; but when he sent me, as he often did, on various business for him, I went. But I am glad to think, now that he has gone, that after my business was terminated, no amount of pleasure or engagements, or a need to rest, ever held me back one hour when I might have been with him. I was always on board, or in the train, two hours after the work, whatever it was, was done, but I am equally sure that if I had said to him, "Jemmy, I am hipped, or I am bored, or I want a change," he would have told me to pack up my things and to go off for a week or a fortnight to Paris or London, or anywhere else I liked.

Richard was a most moral and refined man at home in his domestic life. He was not only the best husband that ever lived, but the pleasantest man to live with, and the easiest. He was too large-minded for all the usual small worries and Grundified conventions that form the cab-shafts of domestic life in civilization. He was a man with whom it was possible to combine, to keep up all the little refinements of the honeymoon, which tends to preserve affection and respect, and a halo of romance, which we kept up for thirty years, which is to civilized European life, just what putting one's self on a lower rank than one's husband in Moslem life is in the East—it preserves respect to both man and woman; whilst anything immoral, or cruel, or dishonest called forth his anger and severity.

He was a man who, if he had not practised great self-control, could have had a very violent temper; but he had it so completely under him, that I have very seldom seen him in a rage, except, as I say, at anything cruel or unjust, ungentlemanly or immoral. With regard to domestic temper, it is a consolation to me to say that we never had a quarrel in our lives, nor even cross words, although occasionally women-friends worked hard to that effect. I always hold it as a rule that it is the most ungenerous thing a woman can be guilty of to "nag" a man, because, if he is a gentleman, he is at an utter disadvantage—he can't strike her. I have often seen women nagging at their husbands till I have wondered why they did not knock them down and jump upon them. When we married, I made a promise to myself that I would never do this, and if I ever saw him a little put out about anything, and felt myself getting irritable, I used to go out of the room on some excuse till it had passed, and then come back, and by that time we would begin to chaff about it, and it was all gone. I remember once slamming the door when I went out, and I heard him roaring with laughter.

He never had any mean jealousy, as a little man would have had. If I got any praise he was glad, and when he knew that I had striven my heart out in somebody's service, or for some good, and that I got slighted, as I often did, or a still worse return, he used to be furious, and I always used to have to pretend that I liked it to keep him quiet. In some few cases, let us say in the service of the poor, or in the protection of animals, I was more frequently seen than he was, and some ignorant person would say, "Look, my dear, that is the kind lady's husband;" and he used to roar with laughing, and say, "What a capital joke for me to be known only as 'Lady B.'s husband'!" Then we used to laugh, and I used to pretend to be delighted with my importance.

I am glad to say there was only one will in the house, and that was his. He was master and mistress both, but, like all great men, he gave carte blanche for all little things; but if he once put his foot down, and had he chosen to say black was white, white I knew it had to be. I like that. I was only too lucky to have met my master; I hate a house where the woman is at the helm. Then, like all great men, he was open to reason, and if, after having agreed to his views, I said later on, "I am going to do what you wish, but, before it is too late, what would you think of such a plan?" he would reflect a moment, and if my idea was really good, he would at once say: "Why, of course, I never thought of it; do what you say." But if his way was best, he would say, "No, I have decided."

His kindness of heart, and consideration for other people's feelings, nobody will ever know. In public life, and with his dependents, he was severe, but very just. He was always touched by any show of confidence and trust, and I must say he met it everywhere. He was adored by servants, by children, by animals, and by all people under him—soldiers, sailors, and tribes. When any British subjects were put into prison, and he ascertained that it was unjust or harsh (for instance, as the old man of ninety imprisoned a whole winter at Damascus, deep snow on the ground, in a narrow cell with scarce bread and water enough to keep him alive, for owing a Jew sixteen shillings which he could not pay, and these things are numerous), he used to go down once a week to the prisons, and let them out on his own responsibility, and let their accusers fight him instead of them. Hence, often complaints to the Home Government against him from the rich and powerful. Once a British sailor in Trieste was put in prison for some drunken lark; he had good-naturedly treated a native soldier to a drink, and when Jack had had enough, the native stole his watch. Jack, naturally, immediately knocked him down and took it from him, so he was locked up. The next day Richard got a very dirty-looking note, on which was written outside, "The Council." The seal was Jack's dirty thumb. Inside was—

"Burtin,

"i ham him trobel, kum and let me haout.

"Tim Trouncer."

Richard was delighted, and immediately went off and got the sailor out, and got the authorities to put the native soldier in his place. I simply give this as an illustration of the manner in which he was trusted and loved.

His mode of study was as follows:—

In early life he studied everything till he had passed in it, whether it was medicine, law, theology, or any other branch. In after life he kept his knowledge on a steady platform, studying up all things together to a certain point at so much a day, "raising the platform" (as he called it) equally. He never passed a day without reading up something in one of his twenty-nine languages; hence he spoke them all without difficulty, never mixing them. He then read a good deal, and took notes, and cut any useful and interesting paragraphs from about ten English and four local papers. He used to examine into the meaning and the etymology of words as he went on, with all their bearings and different spellings; he never read hurriedly, passing anything over. He wrote for a certain time in the day at several different tables—a table to each work. He kept himself up in all the passing events of the day, wrote his journal, copied anything that struck him, and at night he always "cooled his head" with a novel. If he were sick he would go to bed for several days—went on the starvation system, banished all business from his mind, and had piles of novels on chairs by his bed. One day he would get up quite well and go to work again. The most remarkable thing about him was, that every man who spoke to him found, that his one specialty was Richard's specialty. It seemed as if there was nothing that he did not know; and as for hidden things, he seemed to guess them by intuition as if he were a magician.

People will wonder if I tell them of a quality quite unsuspected on the exterior. The older he grew, the greater dislike he had for women who went wrong. He was always civil to them, especially in his own house, but there was a coldness in his manner to them, in contrast to people who were innocent, and he seemed to detect them by instinct. He used to tell me that he inherited this from his father, who in his old age was exactly the same, and if any lady known to have affaires gallantes was coming, that he used to turn round to his mother and say, "Mind, Martha! I won't have that adulteress put by me." He was also very indignant if any lady was insulted. He especially disliked a man who boasted of favours received, or let one know in any way about it—he always said such a one was no Englishman; and when he heard that any woman had lost her reputation through being simply kind to anybody, he took her part. He said, "Those are not even the men who 'kiss and tell,' but the men who 'tell and have not kissed.' A man when he really has any affair with a woman, if he is a man, is deadly silent about it." In his journals he has mapped and classified his men into three sorts as regarding their conduct with women:—

"1. The English gentleman who kisses and does not tell.

"2. The snob who kisses and tells, or if he does not actually tell, he insinuates with a smile and a gesture.

"3. Is the lying coward who tells and does not kiss, has never been allowed the chance of kissing, who has a snub to avenge, or who blackmails for money; who forge their own love-letters, and read them not only to their friends, but at cafés and clubs.

"The two last classes were more or less unknown in England till the introduction of so much foreign blood and foreign contact. It never would have occurred to the pure-blooded Englishman. Unfortunately, when men debase themselves by asking ladies for money (there is always something generous in a woman to a man—not to her own sex), they pity them, and are kind to them, and give it to them, instead of doing what they ought to do—ringing the bell and having the man turned out of the house. I have seen more innocent women lose a spotless reputation by those acts of kindness, than others by an illicit love with an English gentleman. When I see a man trying to prove that a woman drinks, or that she is out of her mind, or hysterical, or a liar, if he tells it to me once I may forget it, but if he tells it to me twice I know that that man has got something serious to hide, and that that woman knows his secret. If the man is effeminate, or deformed, or vain, morbid, or craving for notice and sympathy, be sure it is his own state he describes, and not the woman he runs down, who has snubbed him and knows what he wants to hide."

Of critics and reviewers he wrote as follows:—

"They no longer review books; when they are incompetent they review the author, and if the author's politics and religion do not happen to agree with the office of that paper, it admits scurrilous and personal paragraphs on the authors themselves, bringing up a sort of dossier of the author, which would be considered even disgraceful in a trial in a criminal court. Thirty years ago this would never have been allowed. This may amuse the writer, it may excite the reader, but I protest against it. Nothing can be less profitable to an author or a reader than a long tirade of peevish, petulant, personal comment, and unanswerable sneer. This is only used by people who can shelter themselves under an anonymous signature, or a Critique manqué, and is quite the mark of a pretender in literature and critical art, and which seldom disfigures the style of a true or able critic."

Much as he disliked unjust or coarse criticism, he delighted in playful bits of chaff like the following from the writer of the feuilleton in the Queen, the lady's newspaper and Court chronicle. He had simply written to the Morning Post a little chaff, telling truly what he had seen at a private Davenport séance.

"Oh, R. F. B.! Oh, R. F. B.!
How can you such a ninny be?
Why peril a good name and fame
By playing into tricksters' game?
Why, when all other dodges fail,
Apply your aid to prop a tale
Not half so true as 'Gammer Gurton,'
With such a name as R. F. Burton?"

"Gaiety," in speaking of Echo, said—

"The Echo is just a bit wild,
Its par is indeed a hard hitter;
In fact, it is not drawn mild,
It is a matter of Burton and bitter."

Anent the "Arabian Nights," a young girl says—

"What did he say to you, dear aunt?
That's what I want to know.
What did he say to you, dear aunt?
That man at Waterloo!

"An Arabian old man, a Nights old man,
As Burton, as Burton can be;
Will you ask my papa to tell my mamma
The exact words and tell them to me?"

There was another capital chaff on his "Lusiads," but I cannot find it.

With regard to flowers, he would go out and bring one little wild flower and put it in a glass of water on his table—sometimes a single leaf. If anybody gave him a bouquet, or brought hothouse or garden flowers and put them under his nose, he would turn away with disgust; and people will no doubt laugh when I tell them that it was a peculiar form of asceticism which ran like a thread (one amongst many) through his life. He learnt singing, but he found his own voice so disagreeable in song he would not go on with it, whilst his speaking voice never had its equal—so soft and deep and attractive, that every one would stop to listen as if it were a sweet-toned bell.

In music he had the finest ear, so that a false note was an agony to him; and he could fully appreciate all Eastern music and gypsy music that would sound tuneless to an English ear, and only loved the minor key. He would go to an opera to hear a new prima donna, but he could not abide amateur music, and at evenings at home, if anybody proposed a little music, and a girl got up and nervously warbled a ballad about banks and butterflies, he used to put his hand to his stomach and walk out of the room. He did not allow me to cultivate much music, but if I sang melancholy music in a minor key, in a soft low voice, he would throw open the door even while he was at work.

He was intensely simple in his tastes. I used to busy myself greatly, Martha-like, about making his room extremely comfortable; but the moment I put anything pretty in it, it used to be put in the passage. He liked large plain deal tables, about six feet long and three or four feet broad, with no table-cloth. He would tie a red bandanna on the leg for a penwiper. He liked hard wooden writing-chairs, and to have a great many of these tables—one for each separate work; a small iron bedstead, with iron wove mattress, no sheets, but plenty of English white soft warm blankets. He would have no night-light; but would never have blinds nor shutters drawn, that he might see daylight as soon as possible, and the last of the twilight. His bookshelves were all of plain deal, and each category upon which he was working, was kept separate. He would not have his books and papers touched, and preferred dust and cobwebs to their being moved. His three private rooms contained only books, swords, pistols, and guns, scientific instruments, a few medicines, and plenty of clothes. He loved his old clothes. He would order rows of greatcoats and ulsters, and then go out in a little thin coat to keep himself hardy.

He had a great love for boots, and sometimes had as many as a hundred pairs in the house. I used to implore to be allowed to give his old hats away to the cabmen, and he only laughed immensely at my getting so ashamed of them; but he always had loads of new clothes, and wore the old ones for preference. There was one rather amusing story about a fencing-shoe. He lost one, and he went and asked his bootmaker if he would make him another. He said, "No; he would make him a pair." He took this shoe all over the world, and every bootmaker he saw he asked him to make the odd shoe; but nobody ever would. At last we found out that there is a superstition amongst bootmakers that if they make one boot they die. He tried it for eighteen years and never succeeded, and I have the odd shoe now in remembrance.

He never would keep two of anything. If he had two things of a sort he gave one away, and if he became attached to any particular thing he would give it away—another asceticism—nor would he indulge in any perfume except good eau de Cologne.

With regard to food, he was very fond of what some people would call common things; but no man understood better how to order a dinner, or what to order, and how to enjoy it, especially in Paris. He used to say that French cooking and English materials and a good cellar ought to keep any man alive for a hundred years; but when he could not get these luxuries he preferred, not the demi-semi sort of table with sham entrées, but whatever food of the country the natives ate. For instance, in West Africa on the coast, everything was turtle, which abounds. In Brazil it was fejão and farinha, which fejoada was brown beans, covered with a very savoury sauce, and coarse flour (the two mixed up together are delicious); and also a kind of hot-pot, which was kept continually going. In Damascus and all Eastern places it would be kous-kous, of which he never tired, and kabábs; and in Trieste, risotto (a savoury rice dish with lumps of meat thrown about in it), polenta (yellow meal made something like a pudding with little birds in it), ravioli (Genoese paste), and so on.

But, in fact, in each place that we went to, he used native dishes, native wine, and native smoke, cigars or otherwise, because, as he argued, they were adapted to the climate. So when we came to a pretentious hotel, and he asked for common things—let us say the little black olives—the proprietor would say, "Oh dear, no, Sir; we don't keep such common things as that;" and he used to say, "Then send out sharp and get them." He loved bácalá (dried codfish) and sauerkraut, but they have both such a horrid smell that I bargained to have them on Saturday, the day after my reception day (Friday). One thing he could not bear, and that was honey. As some people know that there is a cat in a room, he also could not sit in the room with honey, and knew even if it was kept in the most secret drawer or cupboard. Sometimes after a dinner or lunch I have said to him, "What made you look so uncomfortable?" And he would say, "There was honey in the room, and I thought they would think I was mad if I asked to have it removed; but I felt quite faint."

His great treat of all was a sucking-pig, three weeks old, roasted well with the crackle, stuffing, and apple-sauce; and this was always ordered on our wedding-day and on his birthday.

With regard to what he drank, from the time of Richard's attacks of gout, he stuck steadily to three ounces a day of whisky-and-water during the twenty-four hours. His favourite wine was port—he used to call it the "prince of wines;" but he was not allowed it during the last three years and a half. Champagne he cared but little for. I was so sorry that he could not add, being no longer living, his testimony to Dr. Broadbent, when the discussion was on in the papers about drink in 1891; but I can do it for him now, and confirm it too. In all bad climates—West Africa, India, and elsewhere—when an epidemic such as cholera or yellow fever comes on, the first men to die are the water-drinkers, and when the first virulence has polished them off, it clears off the drunkards, and the only persons left living are the moderate drinkers. This is a positive fact, and anybody who gainsays it, has had no practical experience in very bad climates.

Our days used to be passed as follows:—

Of course, I am not speaking now of the last three and a half years that he was sick and I broken down. In his days of health and strength he suffered from insomnia, and he could not get more than two or three hours' sleep. For the first twenty-two years of my married life, I made our early tea at any time from three to half-past five, according to the seasons (and if I happened to go to a ball I did not find it worth while to go to bed); we had tea, bread and butter, and fruit. Now, if it was a home day, we would set to work first on our journals, then on the correspondence, and then to our literature. I did the greater part of his correspondence by dictation or directions, and then copied for him or wrote with him and for him. At eleven or twelve, according to the seasons, we had a regular déjeuner (lunch), answering to the continental fashion. He would then go to the Consulate or we went for a long walk, or I would do visits or shopping, or look after the Societies of which I was President—it might be for the poor or the animals. If it were summer, we would take an hour's swim; if it were winter, an hour at the fencing school. In our declining days, in the summer time, we had an hour's siesta before beginning new work. At four o'clock a sit-down tea of bread and butter and fruit and jam, at which most of our intimates and our Staff would flock in; and then we would return to our literature till evening dinner, either in garden or house. After dinner we smoked and read, went to bed about ten, and read ourselves to sleep.

Sometimes we were invited out, or invited friends, and this was varied by long excursions, riding, driving, walking, or boating. We generally knew every stick and stone for fifty miles round the place we lived in, and, of course, larger travels or camp life varied again from this. Camp life for me would begin two hours before dawn, when I would see the horses watered, fed, groomed, and saddled, and somebody else the striking of the tents, the packing and loading of the baggage animals. At dawn we started, and we rode until the sun was impossibly hot. We then called a halt, got shade if we could, loosened the girths, watered our beasts and ourselves if possible, fed them and ourselves if we could, and in all cases rested. After about a couple of hours we went on again till sunset. We then bivouacked for the night. If we were amongst any tribes, his diwan was spread, chibouks and lemonade were prepared, and he sat in state and received chiefs or notables. I used to walk off with the horses, and went through the whole detail again of changing saddle and bridle for clothing and halter, cooling, watering, feeding, clothing, picketing, and then back to the tent to join the party in a humble and unostentatious manner as would become a young man, if I were posing as such—say a son or a dependant.

Once the visits were over we had supper, and to bed, and to-morrow da capo.

During our last three and a half years we were both broken down, though I am still alive to tell the tale, and we had to forget what we used to do, and train down to what we could do; but I look back with comfort and pride on the reflection that during our thirty years of married life we never lost a minute, and that it was all occupied in trying to "soar," and not to "drop." The word always in his mouth was "work, work, work," and his motto always, "Excelsior!"

He had another peculiarity on which he rather prided himself. In his latter years about most things he was excessively open—in fact, I used to be rather surprised and sometimes worried at the way in which he talked quite openly of his plans before utter strangers, and corresponded freely about literature with people he had never seen, and I often think that he came to a great deal of harm that way, that untrue people were apt to trade upon it; and, on the other hand, on the things he really felt most, he prided himself on his secrecy, and was very fond of hiding things. I used to tell him he was a regular magpie, because in the end he hid them so well that he used to have to come and call me to try and find them.

He used to trust me with the whole of the money, and I rendered him a monthly account, and it amused him immensely to pretend to people that I never allowed him any money, but sent him out with half a crown. Sometimes, when he made a small literary profit, he would hide it away, and it used invariably to get stolen. Once he put away £18 after this fashion, and our cook in our absence let some boy-friend of hers come in to play with the weapons; the boy poked his nose into all the drawers and found it, and stole it, and after that he did not hide any more.

He never knew how much he had, if he had debts or anything. I managed all that, and used to show him once a month a total of what was spent and what there was to go on with. He liked money for what it would bring, but he was very generous; he never gave it a thought, and he spent it as fast as he got it. He gave freely. He was born to be rich, and he liked to be thought rich. His own motto which he composed for himself was, "Honour, not Honours;" and his chaff motto for young ladies' albums, and which he would never explain to them, was as follows:—